Brown’s budget cuts fail state’s struggling youth

Closing the North Coast Youth Correctional Facility is a bad idea in every way, but one that may prove hard to avoid in light of a coming $1.7 billion state budget shortfall for the next two-year funding cycle.

Although its residents aren’t there by choice — having been sentenced for breaking the law — it probably isn’t quite right to call it a youth prison. It is a form of energetic intervention by society to try to save youths whose lives are slipping off course. Young men between the ages of 14 and 25 get a chance to earn high school diplomas — 30 last year and 15 so far this year — while learning how to resist addiction behaviors and gang involvement.