She brought ‘teeth’ as L.A.’s juvenile hall watchdog — but claims state defanged her
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After one of her first visits to L.A. County’s juvenile hall in Sylmar, Efty Sharony filed a report that said she witnessed conditions worse than anything she’d seen in “over 20 years of experience visiting every level of carceral facility in California.”
Teens housed in the county’s Secure Youth Treatment Facility could be heard screaming throughout the building, slamming their bodies against doors, crying and howling, she wrote in a 2023 report to the state’s Health and Human Services secretary at the time, Dr. Mark Ghaly.
Urine flowed from beneath cell doors housing youths who had been held in isolation for more than 18 hours during a lockdown, according to Sharony’s report. The unit, at the time, held dozens of youths who had been convicted of serious and violent crimes.
The conditions at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall were exactly the kind of problems Sharony hoped to help solve as part of a broader effort led by Gov. Gavin Newsom to ensure humane treatment amid a remaking of the state’s youth prison system. In her role as the ombudswoman for the state’s Office of Youth and Community Restoration, Sharony said supervisors told her she was supposed to be “the only teeth” the agency had.
Weeks after Sharony sounded the alarm bells about Nidorf, an 18-year-old housed there died of a drug overdose. The California Board of State and Community Corrections ordered the hall closed the same day.
But instead of encouraging her to keep digging, Sharony alleges her bosses soon told her to stop investigating juvenile halls.
Three months later, she was fired and replaced by an attorney who had previously worked for the Newsom administration but had no prior experience with juvenile justice, according to a whistleblower complaint Sharony filed last year.
“It became clear that Efrat’s superiors were more interested in creating the illusion of addressing the many crises in the state’s juvenile facilities rather than doing anything about it,” the complaint read.
A spokeswoman for the state department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on confidential personnel matters, but said the agency remains committed to promoting “trauma responsive, culturally informed, gender honoring, and developmentally appropriate services for youth involved in the juvenile justice system.”
That approach, the statement said, includes giving the ombudsperson “full authority” and “sole direction” to investigate complaints from detained youths.
“Ensuring every complaint is thoroughly investigated is critical to protecting youth across the state and a primary goal of OYCR,” the spokeswoman said.
Sharony’s attorney, Matthew Umhofer, said he has not received any response to the whistleblower complaint, which is a precursor to a lawsuit.
“Efty was fired in retaliation for doing her job. She was fired because her findings about the deplorable conditions in juvenile facilities didn’t align with the state’s political narrative. That’s illegal,” he said. “We’ve given the state every opportunity to right the wrong here, but if they don’t, we’re prepared to fight for Efty in court.”
Sharony’s allegations that state officials have little appetite to fix chronic issues in L.A.’s juvenile halls echo other recent concerns about flagging efforts to improve the county’s crumbling youth facilities.
For years, conditions at L.A. County’s juvenile halls have been deteriorating in plain sight. But despite entering into a settlement with the county to mandate reform, the California attorney general’s office has done little to force change as kids remain in squalid and dangerous conditions.
Faced with questions about his office’s failure to enforce a four-year-old court settlement mandating reforms in the halls, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said earlier this month that he is considering placing them in “receivership,” essentially wresting local control of the facilities away from the L.A. County Probation Department.
The California Board of State and Community Corrections also ordered another L.A. facility, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, shut down last year, but the Probation Department ignored the order for months without consequence. A judge finally intervened last month, and roughly 100 youths will be relocated from Los Padrinos to other facilities under a plan made public by the Probation Department earlier this month.
Sharony’s firing infuriated local officials who have watched the situation at the halls deteriorate for years.
Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-Panorama City), who authored a bill to revoke probation departments from overseeing how juveniles are housed, said Sharony’s firing was a colossal mistake.
“I was livid that they fired someone that was passionate, who had experience in this space, and they brought in somebody from the inside,” Menjivar said. “How are you going to have accountability when you hire somebody who is already on the team?”
Sharony — who previously worked as an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School’s Juvenile Innocence & Fair Sentencing Clinic and oversaw prisoner reentry programs under former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti — said she believed the ombudswoman’s post would allow her to be part of the state’s reimagining of the juvenile justice system.
Newsom announced his intentions in 2019 to shut down the state’s youth prison system, which formerly housed juveniles convicted of serious crimes such as murder until they turned 25. The Office of Youth and Community Restoration was created by the Legislature in 2021 in part to oversee conditions at the local juvenile halls that would receive the state’s youngest prisoners.
Sharony said her oversight role allowed her to drop in on juvenile facilities with just 48 hours notice to conduct spot checks and review conditions identified in a complaint. It didn’t take long, she claims, for those visits to ruffle feathers.
When she left business cards with youths at a Contra Costa facility while investigating concerns about access to mental health services, Sharony said the department chief called her supervisors within the Office of Youth and Community Restoration to complain.
After she documented the squalid conditions at Nidorf, local officials again allegedly tried to go over her head and voice frustrations, said Sharony. In the whistleblower complaint, Sharony said “her colleagues vocally prioritized political relationships over the timeliness of their investigations.”
The HHS spokeswoman declined to comment on Sharony’s specific allegations.
A spokesperson for the Contra Costa County Probation Department said they had “never filed a complaint with OYCR and would not characterize any of our conversations with OYCR as a complaint.”
“Our relationship and interactions with OYCR are consistent with how we engage with any state agency or oversight body,” the department said in a statement. “We work within the processes and policies established to maintain a constructive and professional relationship.”
Sharony said in her whistleblower complaint that her reports out of Los Angeles went ignored by state officials.
“She was left in the dark, confused about why she was suddenly removed from conversations regarding the serious findings of her initial investigation,” the complaint read.
An HHS spokeswoman said the Office of Youth and Community Restoration did not have the authority to investigate whether a Secure Youth Treatment Facility complex was in compliance with state regulations. Sharony said in an interview that didn’t preclude them from acknowledging concerns about conditions there.
In an email attached to the whistleblower complaint, Sharony’s bosses said they were pausing her in-person visits “as we make final adjustments to our Policies & Procedures and continue to hire and onboard new staff. It’s expected that field visits will resume in the next few weeks.”
But then, in June 2023, Sharony was fired. She said she was never given a reason for her termination.
She was replaced by Alisa Hart, a former deputy legal secretary in Newsom’s office who helped work on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and had previously worked with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She also previously worked as a staff attorney with the pro bono civil rights firm Public Counsel. Sharony contends Hart’s lack of experience working in the juvenile justice system made her less qualified for the ombudswoman’s post.
A spokeswoman for the Office of Youth and Community Restoration said the agency “hires the most qualified candidate when filling a vacant position,” but declined to answer specific questions about Hart other than to point to her biography on a state website. A spokeswoman for Newsom said the governor had no hand in her hiring.
Kate Lamb, the HHS spokeswoman, said the ombudswoman’s office received 49 complaints from Nidorf and Los Padrinos juvenile halls last year. Investigations into 22 of those complaints have not been completed, Lamb said.
In 2023, when Sharony worked in the ombudswoman role for half of the year, the office received twice as many complaints and all have since been closed out, according to Lamb. Some of those complaints were handled after Sharony had exited the agency.
Those who frequent L.A.’s juvenile halls said Sharony’s removal is just one indication that state officials are not taking the county’s youth justice crisis seriously.
“The first ombudsperson was someone who was widely known and respected as a veteran stakeholder in the juvenile system here in L.A.,” said Jerod Gunsberg, a veteran criminal defense attorney who represents juveniles. “Then after that, the ombudsperson is removed from her position, and we’ve never heard anything again here in L.A.”
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