Dear John xxxxxx, 

Last Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to create the Probation Oversight Commission (POC), a body that will have real oversight over LA County's Probation Department. This commission will be the first of its kind in the entire United States!
 
The POC will have many important powers including: 1) the ability to inspect facilities and investigate complaints, 2) subpoena power to acquire documents and testimonies, 3) meaningful community engagement and membership, especially by people impacted by the juvenile and criminal law systems, and 4) ability to conduct policy and budget review of the department overall. 

The Los Angeles County Probation Department is the largest probation department in the United States with approximately 6,000 field office and probation facility staff members, who engage with approximately 7,750 youth on an average day. The probation department's budget has increased over the past few years to an astounding $1 billion, even though the youth population in camps and juvenile halls has decreased by 51% since 2012. During the same period, there was only an 11.8% reduction in probation staff. 
 
This is an important victory to our membership of more than 1,200 because we all have endured the suffering of incarceration and most of us were first incarcerated when we were youth. The creation of the POC will ensure that the probation department does its job to serve youth and adults on probation, a job that many community-based organizations have done without the same capacity, infrastructure, and funding of the probation department. This is a historic moment for all of us!

As one of the organizations that co-founded the Los Angeles Youth Uprising Coalition (LAYUP), a campaign made up of youth, community, allies, and grassroots community-based organizations working to end youth incarceration in LA County, we are grateful and honored to be part of a campaign that believes in the youth. We want to thank our LAYUP partners for making this victory possible -- thank you to Youth Justice Coalition (YJC), Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network (AIYN), Children's Defense Fund (CDF), and Urban Peace Institute (UPI) -- and many others for the hard work you all put into all of this.
 
But most of all, thank you to everyone that shows up and supports this movement—we are deeply grateful to all of our allies, partners, and supporters, who make all of this progress possible. 
 
The movement continues!

With gratitude,

Kent Mendoza
Manager of Policy and Community Organizing