Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill this month expanding the current Youth Bill of Rights, which ensures the safety and equal treatment of incarcerated youth in California.
Existing law established the Youth Bill of Rights, which ensures incarcerated juveniles are guaranteed a safe living environment, adequate healthy meals and snacks, protection from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse or corporal punishment, and access to healthcare.
The new law updates the guidelines by guaranteeing juveniles the right to receive behavioral health services, such as prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of substance abuse disorders and life stressors and crises.
Ms. Wahab’s expanded bill will allow incarcerated youth access to therapists, mentors, counselors, and any other behavioral treatments, per the bill.
During incarceration is often when troubled youth learn they have a treatable behavior disorder. She said, in her statement, leaving the condition untreated “contributed to their incarceration.”
The Youth Bill of Rights was passed in 2022 and guaranteed rights for youth confined in any juvenile facility in the state, per the legislation.
Previously such rights applied only to the Division of Juvenile Justice in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which housed the state’s most serious youth offenders and was shut down in 2023.
