Violence and pepper spray incidents spiked inside Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar after Los Angeles County started shifting young people out of the troubled Los Padrinos facility under a court-ordered depopulation plan. Union leaders, watchdogs and state inspectors say the rapid reshuffling strained staffing and training at Nidorf and helped trigger a surge of clashes late last year. Families and officials are now pressing county leaders and regulators for concrete fixes and clearer timelines.
Between the first and second halves of 2025, deployments of oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray at Nidorf jumped about 150 percent, while overall violent incidents rose roughly 23 percent. Both measures peaked in September before trending down by December, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
State Inspectors Kept The Facility On Notice
The Board of State and Community Corrections has repeatedly cited Nidorf for problems that include missed safety checks, improper room confinement and lapses in use-of-force training, and has concluded the hall is still unsuitable for confinement. Under state law, the BSCC says Los Angeles County must file and follow corrective action plans to fix those issues, according to the Board of State and Community Corrections.
Transfers And Staffing Strained Operations
The Probation Department began transferring youth from Los Padrinos to Nidorf in mid-September under a court-ordered depopulation plan. The department reported that 39 youth had been moved as of Sept. 15 and said parents and attorneys were notified once the young people arrived. The agency said it would continue carrying out the court plan while briefing the Board of Supervisors and other stakeholders, according to a department announcement to the Los Angeles County Probation Department.
Union leaders and some probation staff argue that the upheaval from those transfers, combined with longstanding vacancies and slow hiring, helped fuel more confrontations inside the halls. Eddie Chism, president of the deputy probation officers union, told the Los Angeles Daily News that moving youth without enough properly trained staff leads to more acting-out behavior. Supervising deputy union president Reggie Torres told the outlet the department has been dealing with about a 28 percent vacancy rate and an average time-to-hire of roughly 432 days. Separately, an inspector general review cited at least one OC-spray deployment it deemed improper and pointed to systemic staffing and safety shortcomings, according to Corrections1.
Oversight And What Could Come Next
Legal and regulatory scrutiny has intensified. California Attorney General Rob Bonta asked a court last year to weigh placing the county’s juvenile facilities under a third-party receiver amid ongoing safety concerns, as reported by AP News. At the county level, supervisors have ordered plans to phase out pepper spray in certain housing units and have required more frequent oversight of OC deployments by the inspector general and the Probation Oversight Commission, according to LAist…