The San Francisco Chronicle’s investigation into declining juvenile hall populations exposed what many in the field have known for a while: Juvenile crime is falling in California, but the costs of incarcerating an ever-smaller number of kids is skyrocketing. At the same time, we’ve seen a rise in mental illness among those living on our streets and in our county jails. To meet the growing need for treatment, and the declining need for juvenile incarceration, we should transform San Francisco’s juvenile hall into a mental health justice center.

This issue is personal to me. Growing up, my mom worked as a nurse at the juvenile hall in Ventura County. Realizing there was only so much she could do for the kids in that setting, we became a foster family, taking in nearly a dozen kids over a decade and adopting two: my younger brother and sister. I saw firsthand the impact of trauma, incarceration and mental illness on young people and how the lack of effective treatment and intervention can literally stack the deck against them from Day One.

As a California native, I also heard the frequent refrain blaming Ronald Reagan for our mental health crisis because he shut down the state mental health facilities as governor. That may have caused the problem 45 years ago, but I believe there’s a statute of limitations on blaming Reagan for your problems. Democrats have had sole control of California for the past 10 years and control of San Francisco for the past 50. What have we done to solve the mental health crisis?

And it truly is a humanitarian and public health crisis.

According to the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, as many as 90% of the youths at juvenile hall have diagnosable mental health issues. About half of adults booked at County Jail are battling mental illness as well. Conditions on our streets are just as dire, as I see every day working in the Tenderloin. A psychiatric nurse recently told me about a man who visited San Francisco General Hospital’s emergency room more than 100 times last year because of persistent mental health challenges, but who was repeatedly discharged because of a lack of available mental health beds.

At the same time, San Francisco finds itself in the enviable position of having a nearly empty juvenile hall. As a result of great work by the Juvenile Probation Department and community organizations, the 150-bed hall is at just 30% capacity. I saw this work firsthand as the president of the city’s Juvenile Probation Commission, as we instituted culturally competent programming and created pathways to employment through coding and culinary arts programs.

But leaders must respond to the times and to the shifting problems facing a city. We can no longer justify maintaining a 150-bed juvenile facility that is 70% empty and costs us $364,000 per kid per year. Instead, we should get serious about our mental health crisis and transform juvenile hall into a mental health justice center for youth and adults, serving those inside and outside the criminal justice system.

Such a center would offer a range of treatment options, from crisis services and short-term transitional care to intensive, inpatient treatment for those placed under conservatorship orders. Critically, the Department of Public Health should be the lead agency, rather than the Sheriff’s Department or Juvenile Probation Department, with treatment, not incarceration, the primary objective. A “just transition” retraining and hiring preference program should be established for current juvenile hall counselors to minimize the disruption and labor effects on those employees.

Juvenile hall already has proved adaptable to these sorts of changes, with empty units converted into a “merit center” for dedicated and progressing youth, and a tech center for incarcerated youth interested in learning how to code. In a sense, the proposed conversion to a treatment facility is a natural evolution of those steps.

It is worth noting that, despite the significant reduction in juvenile crime, there are still a handful of youthful offenders charged with very serious offenses each year, including murder and rape. We will always need a small, secure setting for those few young people who pose a genuine public safety threat. But whether that is a small facility in San Francisco or a regional partnership, there is simply no justification for maintaining a 150-bed juvenile hall any longer.

It’s time for action — let’s transform juvenile hall into a mental health justice center.

Leif Dautch is the former president of the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Commission and a candidate for district attorney of San Francisco. These views are his own.