Professor Jessica Heldman (JD) ‘04 Quoted by CBS 8 News on Problems in San Diego Youth Detention Facilities

 

SAN DIEGO (February 13, 2026) - University of San Diego (USD) School of Law Children’s Advocacy Institute’s (CAI) Executive Director and Fellmeth-Peterson Associate Professor in Child Rights, Jessica Heldman, quoted in an article titled, “Trouble Inside San Diego’s Youth Detention Facilities.”

According to the article,  in May 2025, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that his office would investigate conditions at San Diego’s juvenile halls to determine whether San Diego County and the County Office of Education are complying with the law and fulfilling their legal obligations to the children in their care.

Bonta’s investigation comes five years after California transferred responsibility for supervising and caring for juvenile offenders from the state to individual counties. The shift was intended to keep youth closer to home—allowing them to remain in their communities and nearer to their families while in custody.

"This shift in policy and in the way that youth justice is structured in this state ideally puts youth in closer proximity to their own communities and their own families, and gives counties the opportunity to develop more community-based programs and services," said Jessica Heldman.

Heldman's research shows that support within the community is one factor that is driving the number of incarcerated youths down and reducing the number of juveniles in maximum security facilities.

However, granting counties custody of juvenile offenders can also lead to abuses.

"When we have 58 different counties, that means we have 58 different juvenile justice systems," said Heldman. "When each of these systems is responsible for the secure confinement of some of the youth, it is a significant challenge to ensure that they are going to be safe, that the youth are going to get the kind of programming that is designed to help rehabilitate them."

The piecemeal approach only adds to the fact that juvenile justice centers can create a dangerous power dynamic between guards and the young people they watch over.

"We have a long history of seeing the kinds of issues like excessive use of force, like bad actors taking advantage of vulnerable youth through physical abuse, psychological verbal abuse, and sexual abuse. This has been going on since the beginning of these kinds of facilities, so it is a fair question whether, characteristically, these facilities simply place children at risk of harm."

To read the full story visit CBS8 News San Diego.

The Children's Advocacy Institute (CAI), founded at the nonprofit University of San Diego School of Law in 1989, is one of the nation's premiere academic, research, and advocacy organizations working to improve the lives of children and youth, with special emphasis on improving the child protection and foster care systems and enhancing resources that are available to youth aging out of foster care.

In its academic component, CAI trains law students and attorneys to be effective child advocates throughout their legal careers. Its Child Advocacy Clinic gives USD Law students three distinct clinical opportunities to advocate on behalf of children and youth.

CAI's research and advocacy component, conducted through its offices in San Diego, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C., seeks to leverage change for children and youth through impact litigation, regulatory and legislative advocacy, and public education. Active primarily at the federal and state levels, CAI's efforts are multi-faceted—comprehensively and successfully embracing all tools of public interest advocacy to improve the lives of children and youth. To support CAI’s work, please visit our website.

Each year, USD educates approximately 800 Juris Doctor and graduate law students from throughout the United States and around the world. The law school is best known for its offerings in the areas of business and corporate law, constitutional law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, public interest law and taxation.

USD School of Law is one of the 88 law schools elected to the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates. The law school’s faculty is a strong group of outstanding scholars and teachers with national and international reputations and currently ranks 34th nationally among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 35th nationally in past-year faculty downloads on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1954, the law school is part of the University of San Diego, a private, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.