For the first time in decades, no youths are living at Los Prietos Boys Camp.

Santa Barbara County closed the Probation Department-run facility this month after years of significant declines in the juvenile justice system population.

Now, County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig plans to turn the forested facility at 3900 Paradise Road into a training center for hand crews. The Fire Department also will develop a youth training and mentorship program with the Probation Department, leaders told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.  

At its peak, the residential camp and high school for juvenile offenders had about 30 boys a day in custody. That’s when “youth were still incarcerated for much less serious offenses than what they are now,” Deputy Chief Probation Officer Sam Leach said.

For the past two years, there were about five boys at a time at the camp, which wasn’t enough to offer the robust programming the camp used to be known for, according to probation staff.

As part of the closure plan, courts stopped committing youth to the camp in December and the boys left the camp in early February, Leach said.

Fire Training Plan and Permitting Process

Hartwig wants to make the site a training center for hand crews, which he says have outgrown their spot at the Cachuma Lake Recreation Area.

Hand crews do wildland firefighting, prescribed burns, and fuel reduction projects such as defensible space programs.

Los Prietos Boys Camp has permanent facilities including a kitchen, a dining hall, classrooms, and dormitories for overnight stays.

The fire and probation departments will create training programs for youths “to continue to invest in the lives of vulnerable youths and carry on the ethos of discipline, respect and responsibility that are core to the history and living legacy of the Los Prietos Boys Camp.”

“I look forward to using our firefighters as mentors for these young men,” Hartwig said.

The Board of Supervisors authorized the Fire Department to apply for a long-term special use permit with the U.S. Forest Service. The camp was built on Los Padres National Forest land.

Leach said that, realistically, it will take the rest of the year to get the permit application submitted and hopefully approved, and the youth training program could be developed by spring 2025.  

Los Prietos Boys Camp staff residents will vacate the site before the end of the year, when the Probation Department’s use permit expires. County Fire will apply for a new permit to take effect on or before Jan. 1, 2025.

Santa Barbara County Fourth District Supervisor Bob Nelson said it’s sad that there’s no longer a place for a residential youth offender program like this in the juvenile justice system. He added that he was glad the county is finding a way to try to keep the facility after the permit expires.

Why Probation Decided to Close the Boys Camp

“The youth who used to be committed to the camp technically no longer exist,” Chief Probation Officer Holly Benton said.

Los Prietos Boys Camp accepted only lower-level youth offenders, and those boys are usually not incarcerated in today’s juvenile justice system.

The Santa Maria Juvenile Hall is a secured detention facility for youths facing serious and violent charges, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for them to be in an open, minimum-security site, she said.

In the past five years, the number of youths in the county’s juvenile justice system dropped from the 500s to the low 200s, she said.

There was pushback when then-Chief Probation Officer Tanja Heitman announced the camp closure plan in 2022, including from people who graduated from the program.

Community members were concerned that the peer relationship-building and culture of the camp wouldn’t transfer over to a facility in town on the Juvenile Hall campus.

Probation created a “trust unit” treatment facility at the Juvenile Justice Center meant to have more of a college dormitory environment than the cell blocks of Juvenile Hall.

With a large drop in population, the cost-per-youth for the camp skyrocketed in recent years. The county also couldn’t provide the same opportunities for boys at the camp when there were only a handful of them, Heitman said in 2022.

Benton said this week that the department has done additional public outreach about the closure and received feedback on programs for youths in the juvenile justice system.

She said she was most excited about the mentoring piece of the new program with County Fire, and that it could be modeled after similar programs elsewhere.

“There’s always something you can build from,” she said.