Forum: Debate over use of closed Camarillo facility

Facility should be converted into juvenile detention center

Supporting the decision to build a correctional facility that will reduce the overcrowding of inmates will not only facilitate juvenile offenders but also provide special medical or mental-health needs.

This would make the state's 16th facility. It would hold juveniles and young offenders up to age 25.

But Cal State officials oppose this plan. They desire to convert this mental hospital into a new university.

CSU officials should not be able to purchase this Ventura County site because they are unable to pay for this land.

Previously, they purchased a Camarillo lemon grove but were unable to finish paying on that land because of insufficient funds.

The old mental facility was only considered by CSU after they realized they could not afford to build a campus at the lemon grove from the ground up.

Approving the juvenile center will prepare the Youth Authority to handle the rise in juveniles to be incarcerated due to the increase in crime.

Although some residents are uncertain of what decision to make on this issue, they're in favor of the plan in which patients will be part of the project.

There has been a proposal that because CSU will not be using the entire building immediately, it could lease out the remainder to the Youth Authority.

If this site does become a CSU campus, students and staff will dislike the idea of mentally ill patients located on campus.

Whereas, if the correctional facility was on the site, all of the inmates would be locked up and only guards would be walking the facility.

Building a new CSU can wait. Another CSU campus to educate baby boomer's children once they reach college age is a wonderful plan. There are available campus' that are not booked to capacity.

But opening up a new correctional facility for inmates makes more sense.

Detention centers are currently busting at the seams.

The juvenile inmate population is nearly 150% of the system's capacity.

It is a benevolent offer to Ventura County, but juveniles need a place for rehabilitation.

Having a CSU does not solve the immediate problem and will not help the juveniles get the help they need now.

Without this necessary reform, going to college will be the furthest thing from these young criminals' minds.

Lakescia Smith is a reporter for the Daily Forty-Niner.