LOS ANGELES — California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Wednesday he will ask a judge to place a court-appointed official in control of L.A. County’s juvenile halls.

The move comes after years of failure to comply with court-ordered reforms that have been marked by riots, drug overdoses, allegations of child abuse and the death of a teenager.

“We must act,” Bonta said at a news conference Wednesday morning. “Receivership is the only path forward that ensures their rights, their safety and their futures are no longer subject to institutional failure.”

Bonta said receivership means a court-appointed official would take over “management and operations of the juvenile halls” from the L.A. County Probation Department, including setting budgets and hiring and firing staff.

Bonta said he had given the county more than four years to fix the problems rampant in the hall. He called the county’s failure “repeated, constant and chronic.”

“Continuing to wait is no longer an option,” he said, describing the move as “a last resort, but it’s also the one path left to protect the safety, dignity and basic rights” of the youth detained in Los Angeles.

Bonta said he also will ask for a court order requiring the county to establish a compensation fund for young people harmed in county custody, which they could use to pay for medical treatment and educational services, among other benefits. He emphasized the county will also be paying for all the changes made by a monitor.

A probation department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The California attorney general’s office began investigating L.A. County’s juvenile halls in 2018 and found probation officers were using pepper spray excessively, failing to provide proper programming, and detaining youths in solitary confinement in their rooms for far too long. A 2021 court settlement between L.A. County and the state attorney general’s office was aimed at improving conditions for youth and tamping down on use of force.

Bonta said Wednesday the department has failed to improve “75%” of what they were mandated to change in the settlement.

Two of the county’s juvenile facilities were shut down in 2023 after repeatedly failing to meet basic standards to house youth under California law. That same year, 18-year-old Bryan Diaz died of a drug overdose at the Secure Youth Treatment Facility, and reports of Xanax and opiate overdoses among youths in the halls have become a regular occurrence in recent months.

Nearly three dozen probation officers have been charged with crimes related to on-duty conduct in the past few years, including 30 indicted earlier this year by Bonta for staging or allowing so-called “gladiator fights” between juveniles in custody. Officers also routinely refuse to come to work, leaving each hall critically short-staffed.

“This drastic step to divest Los Angeles County of control over its juvenile halls is a last resort,” Bonta said Wednesday in a statement. “Enough is enough. These young people deserve better, and my office will not stop until they get it.”

L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose district includes Los Padrinos, said she “wholeheartedly” supported receivership. Hahn, who initially cheered the reopening of the juvenile hall in her district, had becoming increasingly frustrated at routine crises inside the facility.

“We have spent years trying to improve conditions, exhausted every tool at the County level, and still, we are failing these young people,” said Hahn.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes Barry J. Nidorf Hall in Sylmar, appeared slightly more skeptical that receivership would be the silver bullet to shatter decades of dysfunction. She said much of the problem was rooted in the union contracts, which she said shielded employees accused of misconduct.

“In order for a receivership to have a chance at successful restructuring, the state must take on the challenge L.A. County has faced for decades — employment agreements and civil service procedures that have protected the rights of those who have harmed our young people, instead of the young people themselves,” said Horvath.

The threat of receivership has lurked over the county for months.

L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell called it the “elephant in the room” in July, as the politicians discussed ways to try to stop the flow of drugs into the halls. Bonta first suggested he might seek receivership in May, in response to questions for a Los Angeles Times investigation on the probation department’s years of defiance of state oversight.

The unions representing probation deputies, supervisors, and managers said in a joint statement they were “cautiously optimistic.”

“For years, the Board of Supervisors has ignored our warnings and failed to invest in the sworn officers who serve on the front lines,” said Stacy Ford, president of the union for deputy probation officers. “The result has been a manufactured crisis — one that the County itself has perpetuated through chronic hiring freezes, hostile working conditions, and the outsourcing of public safety responsibilities to untrained civilians.”

Conditions at the halls have only gotten worse since the imposition of the 2021 settlement with the attorney general’s office. Bonta on Wednesday said it was “regression, not progression.”

Incidents in which staff use force against youths have increased over the life of the settlement, records show. The L.A. County inspector general’s office has published six reports showing the department has failed to meet the terms of the state oversight agreement. Oversight officials have caught several probation officers lying about violent incidents in the halls after reviewing video footage that contradicted written reports.

Bonta asked the court to appoint Michael Dempsey — who has served as the monitor over the halls during the settlement — as the receiver. A hearing on Bonta’s motion is slated for Aug. 15.

After the state shut down the county’s other two major detention centers, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey was reopened but quickly became a haven for chaos. In its first month of operation, there was a riot and an escape attempt and someone brought a gun inside the youth hall.

Late last year, California’s Board of State and Community Corrections ordered Los Padrinos closed too after it failed repeated inspections, but Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa ignored the order, leading some to call on Bonta to intervene. Eventually, an L.A. County judge ordered the probation department to begin emptying Los Padrinos until it came back into compliance with state standards.

Eduardo Mundo, head of the county’s probation oversight commission, said he couldn’t tell if the receivership would be a net positive for the department.

It was unclear, he said, how a receiver could solve the seemingly intractable issues such as persistent staff callouts that bedeviled chief after chief. “I can’t even say if it’s good or bad,” said Mundo.

“Quite frankly, I don’t know how much more receivership does to fix the staffing issue ... Do all these people decide they’re going to come back? Probably not.”

He said he suspected it would be years before anyone found out as he believed the county would likely fight the receivership, even though some supervisors had professed support.

“I can’t imagine the county isn’t going to appeal this even if some in their chambers think it’s a good idea,” said Mundo. “You want to preserve your autonomy.”

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