Being a supportive mom can feel impossible when your child is locked up in the Los Angeles County juvenile hall. If he’s anxious, depressed or crying, there’s no reaching over for a tight embrace. But for the past three years, the county has restricted all types of physical contact during visits.
When she makes hourslong trips to her now 21-year-old son, that has left Chevonda Perry feeling “worthless” as a mother.
“That’s the worst feeling ever, when you feel like you can’t do anything to help your children,” Perry said in an interview. “One hug is worth a thousand visits.”
Today Perry is part of a group that includes family members, incarcerated youth and advocates fighting to overturn policies statewide that ban human touch during visits to juvenile detention facilities. Dubbed the Hug Act, Assembly Bill 1646 would allow all youth confined in county-run juvenile detention facilities the right to engage in “nonsexual physical contact” with visitors and require counties to draft policy accordingly.
The bill’s author is Culver City Assemblymember Isaac Bryan. His supporters say such contact with loved ones shouldn’t be treated as a reward for good behavior, or left to the whims of facility staff. Dozens of California youth justice advocacy groups have signed on to the bill, arguing that regular hugs from parents are vital for rehabilitation. They point to studies showing that physical touch with loved ones leads to better mental health, less violent behavior and an increased ability to re-enter society.
L.A. County’s probation department is harming youth by continuing to ban hugs, Bryan said at an Assembly Public Safety Committee hearing in March.
“That is not a system that’s rooted in care and rehabilitation,” he testified. “That is not a system that is good for our young people. It is not good for their families. It is not good for the communities they come from or the communities they will return to.”
So far, the Hug Act has no formal opposition, but probation leaders have highlighted potential consequences of its passage, particularly more fentanyl and weapons entering facilities.
At the March 3 hearing, Danielle Sanchez, legislative director of the Probation Chiefs of California, warned the bill could “lead to litigation and other unintended impacts.”
‘We want to hug our moms’
The idea for the Hug Act unfolded in a meeting of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors two years ago. Olivia Shields, a justice transformation policy coordinator with the Urban Peace Institute, testified in front of a poster created by youth at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. Ten requests to improve their lives were listed.
The last request — “We want to hug our moms” — got an immediate endorsement from Supervisor Janice Hahn. Since then, Hahn has visited the youth at Los Padrinos regularly, developing relationships and even appearing in court on their behalf.
Earlier this month, she co-authored a countywide motion to support the legislation, saying that she was “beyond proud” of the young people who have been pushing for the change to state law.
“When I saw that poster, it was heartbreaking,” Hahn said in an interview with The Imprint. “Letting them feel the love and the touch of their own mothers is going to help them during the worst journey of their lives, in a place where they feel like they’ve been left to languish by themselves.”
Since then, detained youth helped craft the Hug Act’s language, wrote letters of support and produced artwork for outreach campaigns. They’ve also enlisted family members to speak out in Sacramento.
For the past two years, the young people have had ongoing support from the nonprofit Hoops 4 Justice, which offers basketball, mentoring and civic engagement opportunities within the juvenile justice system.
Shields said the bill marks the first time incarcerated youth have helped write a piece of California legislation, and many of them told her they are hoping to improve the experiences of their peers.
That Hug Act wasn’t the only piece of legislation that young people housed in the highest-security section of the juvenile hall had been working on. When Shields first arrived at Los Padrinos, a young person gave her a handwritten draft of a bill that would make it harder to transfer youth to the adult criminal justice system. That bill was also introduced by Bryan this year.
“If you give them the right support and encouragement, these young people can do, and will do, massive things,” Shields said of such behind-bars activism.
Policies vary statewide
Every county has different policies for visitors to juvenile halls, though not all have rules on touching or hugging spelled out in official policies.
In Ventura County, “a brief hug is allowed at the beginning and end of the visit — no other contact is permitted,” according to the probation department’s website. Non-contact visits are mandated for youth “who pose a significant threat to the safety and security of the juvenile facility,” Riverside County policy notes.
In the Central Valley county of San Joaquin, “contact visiting” is a privilege that can be earned — or lost. Behavior in the two weeks leading up to a weekly visit determines whether a young adult will be permitted to hug his or her family, a website explains. In those instances, Rule 11 states: “Once the visit is concluded, the visitor and youth are allowed a good-bye hug and the parent and/or guardian is asked to again be seated.”
In L.A. County, a sign inside the department’s Campus Kilpatrick tells visitors in block letters: “This is a no-contact visitation facility.”
Family members have concerns about visits to juvenile facilities beyond policies that control touching. At Los Padrinos, parents often arrive only to have visiting hours suddenly changed, or to be told they’ve been canceled due to lack of supervisory staff. Relatives are also regularly turned away for wearing inappropriate clothing, or for suspicions about their drug use.
One mother of a son currently detained at a Los Angeles detention facility said staff see family members as threats.
After hugging her son on his birthday last year during a visit to Los Padrinos, she was banned from visiting him for three weeks.
“I felt powerless every time I went to visit,” said the mother, who has not been named to prevent possible reprisals against her son. “All I want to do is keep him strong and on the right path.”
Those who do manage to get inside say not being able to hug adds one more outrage. A body of research that has grown since the pandemic shows it may also be harming the detained youth — a lack of physical touch referred to as “skin hunger” or “touch starvation.”
A 2002 journal article on touch deprivation in adolescents found negative impacts when teens miss out on hugs, such as increased drug use, lower academic performance and higher rates of aggression. More recently, a 2024 meta-analysis of dozens of related studies in the Nature Human Behaviour journal found physical touch can decrease the stress hormone cortisol, lower blood pressure and enhance immune-system function.
The Oakland-based Legal Services for Prisoners with Children underscored such science in its letter of support for the Hug Act, stating: “This isn’t sentimentality — it’s neuroscience.”
L.A. County cracks down on contraband — and hugs
The Los Angeles County Probation Department oversees the state’s largest juvenile justice system, with roughly 560 youth and young adults detained per day in juvenile halls, camps and “secure youth treatment facilities.”
Physical contact has been banned in its facilities for the past three years as an attempt to counter the entry of contraband and a rash of drug overdoses, county officials said. A 2023 report by the county’s Office of Inspector General noted a host of prohibited items entering its juvenile halls, including a football stuffed with marijuana, confiscated cell phones, tattoo devices, vape pens, pills and a handcuff key.
Drugs in these facilities have caused serious harm. In 2023, 18-year-old Bryan Diaz died at the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar from an apparent fentanyl overdose. Two years later, at least 12 people in two separate incidents were hospitalized after use of illegal drugs they gained access to at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall.
Los Angeles County Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa said he understands why youth need to feel the touch of loved ones while incarcerated in juvenile detention facilities. “There’s nowhere on planet Earth you could feel more alone,” he said at a recent county meeting.
But allowing all physical contact at juvenile detention facilities in California is complicated if it involves, for instance, family members who have victimized the detained youth. What’s more, Rosa said a lack of facility staff has made it difficult to offer family visits, which require close supervision. At a board of supervisors meeting earlier this month, he said his department would need an additional $1 million to be able to staff visits that involved physical touch.
“We have made tremendous gains in stopping contraband from breaching the walls,” Rosa said, praising safety measures such as drug-sniffing dogs and full-body scanners. But he added that “it will take more staff members during visitation in order to do this in a way that doesn’t compromise” that progress.
Despite such views, the state has tried to nudge the L.A. County Probation Department to allow hugs during visits. A December letter written by Office of Youth and Community Restoration Ombudsperson Alisa Hartz describes regular contact between detained youth and their families as necessary to improve educational outcomes, sustain programming and decrease violent behavior.
The state’s top juvenile justice agency provided a sample policy that notes: “visitors and youth may engage in appropriate affection and contact during visitation, including a hug/kiss at the beginning and end of the visit and holding hands while seated, unless a specific, immediate, and documented safety concern exists.”
Jeremy Loudenback is a senior reporter for The Imprint. The Imprint is a partner of The Intersection and CVJC.
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