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Some advocates say the California state youth agency has been so bad for so long that it should be scrapped for good. "Right now we're dooming them all to certain hell." says Jakadi Imani, executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland.

“[Brown] gotten some pressure from folks who have interests in keeping youth prisons open, like special interest groups,” Habtegeorgis told Colorlines. “He’s trying to compromise to keep certain facilities open, but also allow counties to have a financial incentive to keep youth in their county lines.”

The tension between police and Oakland youth is palpable on the streets, says Crystallee Crain, founder of Heal the Streets, a violence prevention and youth leadership development program at the center: "They feel it at school, as consumers in stores; they feel it while they're driving down the streets."

En total, California tiene 1,234 presos juveniles, más de la mitad hispanos y un cuarto de ellos de Los Ángeles.

"That he was just roughed up in this way and then just shoved along is just unacceptable and I think it has to be taken very seriously, this may be a part of a larger pattern or practice of use of excessive force," Jakada Imani, Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center.

The California Assembly Budget Committee voted Friday in favor of a provision of Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal that calls for the elimination of the state's youth prison system.

Abel Habtegeorgis, our Media Relations Manager, speaks about our organization's legacy and what we're working on.

Jakada Imani, executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, Calif., discusses the possibilities for this radical change. The organization has been advocating since 2004 for the closure of the state's youth prisons.

...groups like the Ella Baker Center in Oakland (through they're Books Not Bars program) has been fighting adamantly for returning the kids in DJJ to the counties for supervision here.

"I believe very strongly that this issue isn't taken as seriously as it needs to be and I think that's not hyperbole. If there was this level of violence and loss of young, white men, we would certainly know that we had a national epidemic."