Barbering academy opens inside LA County youth facility in Sylmar, post says

What happened

Officials gathered on Saturday to celebrate the launch of what a Facebook post calls “California’s first juvenile hall barbering academy,” at the Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility in Sylmar. According to the post, film producer Scott Budnick, known for The Hangover, volunteers at the facility.

The Los Angeles County Probation Department runs the facility. On its website, the department says the secure youth treatment model allows “high risk youth to be rehabilitated locally under juvenile court jurisdiction.” The department lists vocational training, high school and college courses, a credible messenger mentorship program and Bible studies among the programs offered there.

The part of the post we were able to see does not say how many young people are enrolled, who teaches the classes, how the academy is paid for, or whether the training hours will count toward a California barber license. We The Revolt could not independently confirm the launch or the claim that it is the first in the state before publication.

Our reflection

The young people at Nidorf are spending part of their adolescence behind a fence. They miss birthdays and funerals. Underneath all of that, they lose the ordinary experience of being seventeen out in the world. Then the gate opens and the hardest part begins. A young person can come out changed and walk back onto a block that still knows them by their worst day.

Jesus knew that kind of hometown. When he taught in the synagogue in Nazareth, the people who had watched him grow up asked, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” and they were offended by him (Mark 6:3). They knew his trade and his family, so they were sure they knew him. Mark says he could do no mighty work there except heal a few sick people, and that he was amazed at their unbelief. In Nazareth, unbelief looked like familiarity.

I have to name where that lives in me. Most of us say we believe people change. Then a young man comes home with clippers and a certificate, and we drive past his chair to the shop we have always used. We call it caution. Often it is a fear we have never examined, making the decision for us. The danger runs the other way too. A trade can train the hands while an old wound keeps running the heart. A sharp line-up does not heal grief or quiet an anger that has been in charge for years. Christ goes that deep, and he does not leave a person stuck in shame. Ask Peter, restored by a charcoal fire after denying him three times (John 21).

Think about what a barber’s chair asks of you. You sit still and let someone hold a blade at your neck. In a lot of our neighborhoods the shop is where men talk straight. A boy sitting there hears how grown men talk about work, and on a good day he hears them talk about God. Training a young person to stand behind that chair means training them to be trusted, one customer at a time.

Jeremiah wrote to exiles in Babylon and told them to build houses and plant gardens. Then he pushed further: seek the peace of the city they had been carried to. He never told them to just wait out the clock. A trade learned inside fits that instruction, and it only holds if someone is waiting at the gate. That is why We The Revolt’s re-entry mentors stay beside young people for twelve months after release, when support usually ends, and why we pair that with workforce and financial literacy. A first paycheck needs a bank account and a budget. It also needs somebody who picks up the phone when the first week goes sideways.

If you own a barbershop or run a business near one of our hubs in Miami, Chicago or Houston, we want to build this kind of bridge with you for the young people in our own detention centers. Pastors, that invitation is yours too. The steps below are small enough to start this week.

And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.

Jeremiah 29:7

Source: Facebook, “On Saturday, officials celebrated the launch of California’s first juvenile hall barbering academy at Barry J. Nidorf Secure Youth Treatment Facility in Sylmar. Film Producer Scott Budnick (The Hangover), a volunteer at the correctional fac”