Alameda County, home to the city of Oakland and the place where most of the county�s juvenile offenders come from, is planning to build a $117 million, 540-bed juvenile detention center. This would give the modest-sized county the largest juvenile hall per capita in the country. Chicago, with three times the population, only has a 498-bed juvenile facility.

"All reports and studies show that juvenile crime has been down sharply for the last few years, so why are we building larger institutions?" asked Robin Templeton of Books Not Bars, one of the organizations trying to pressure the county to halt plans to build the new facility. "We should be putting this money into education and creating jobs for young people," she said.

Youth protesters with the help of several local organizations, including Books Not Bars and the Youth Force Coalition, have sent shock waves around the state with large and vocal protests.

A contingent of youth activists traveled 400 miles from the Bay Area to San Diego for a California Board of Corrections meeting where whether Alameda County would receive additional funds for the new juvenile hall was discussed.

Although the Board of Corrections executive committee had recommended the state grant the county an additional $2.3 million to build the facility, after the youth voiced their protest, the Board of Corrections rejected the county�s petition for additional funds, in an unprecedented move. Alameda County did receive an expected $33.1 million to build a new 330-bed facility.

"Schools not jails, books not bars!" chanted protesters outside a July 24 County Board of Supervisors meeting in Oakland. Organizers say officials should be focusing on rehabilitation efforts not merely punishment for youthful offenders.

The five county supervisors voted 3 to 2 to go ahead with plans to build the new juvenile hall and seek additional funds from sources outside the state. The dissenters were two Black supervisors, who voiced concerns about the disproportionate number of Black youth being arrested.

Many of the youth protesters are the same activists who fought against an initiative California voters passed last year, Proposition 21. The initiative makes it possible for 14-year-olds to be tried as adults and youth as young as 16 to be housed in adult prisons. While it was called the Juvenile Justice and Prevention Act, not one dollar actually went to prevention programs or rehabilitative services, activists said. In addition, in 1997 California removed the word rehabilitation from the penal code, so the state no longer considers rehabilitation a goal of incarceration.

"The Honorable Louis Farrakhan told us that the war against drugs was actually a war against Black youth and as goes California, so goes the nation," said Min. Keith Muhammad, of the Nation of Islam mosque in Oakland, who spoke at the rally in protest of the new facility. "So it is no coincidence that California was the first to pass the three strikes and you�re in for life, Proposition 21, and is now building the largest youth detention center in the country."

Many protesters also point out that the current juvenile hall is in San Leandro, a suburb of Oakland, and the new facility would be built in Dublin, Calif., nearly 30 miles away.

"Most of the young people locked up live in Oakland, it would be a hardship for their parents and loved ones to travel to Dublin to visit them," said Kehinde Koyejo, 20, one of the young protesters.

The new facility would also be built adjacent to the county jail and near a federal penitentiary.

"It�s as if they are tracking the youth straight to the adult system," Mr. Koyejo said. "You go to the hall then you graduate next door to the county or down the street to the pen."