Los Angeles youth asked to hug their moms. Now it is California law.

What happened

California’s new Hug Act began as a request from young people held at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles County, The Appeal reported in a story by Victoria Valenzuela. Ilana Parach of the mentorship group Hoops 4 Justice told the outlet the youth listed programs they wanted, including family resources and reentry support. “At the bottom of that list, they wrote, ‘We want to hug our moms,’” Parach said. According to The Appeal, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan heard their stories and introduced the bill, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on September 27.

Parach told The Appeal that Los Padrinos stopped contact visits after the pandemic and that officers at Board of Supervisors meetings cited staffing shortages, finances and drug concerns. Mercedes Maradiaga told the outlet she visited her son every weekend and could not hug him, even after what she described as a beating by officers in September 2024 that left him needing knee surgery. Parach said youth told her of a mother whose visits were suspended for two weeks after she hugged her son on his birthday.

According to The Appeal, Los Padrinos was shut down in 2019 over conditions that violated state standards and reopened in 2023. In 2025 the California Attorney General charged 30 officers, on counts including child abuse, over alleged “gladiator fights” between youth. The article did not report outcomes in those cases or include comment from the county Probation Department.

The law gives youth a right to consensual physical contact during visits unless officials find a significant safety or security concern, requires facilities to document restrictions, and takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, The Downey Patriot reported. “Denying incarcerated children hugs doesn’t keep anybody any safer,” Bryan said while the bill was under consideration, according to the Patriot. Advocates Olivia Shields of Urban Peace Institute and Emily Zamora of Youth Justice Coalition told The Appeal they will keep pushing to close Los Padrinos and move youth toward community care. “Detention is not a place where young people will have their needs met,” Shields said.

Our reflection

Look at where that request sat on the list. Asked what they needed, these young people put last the first thing every child needs. A mother on one side of a table, her son hurting on the other, and a rule between them. A birthday hug answered with two weeks of empty visiting days. That rule taught young people that their own mothers’ arms were a threat.

Drugs do get into facilities, and short staffing is real. Still, when a system chooses the rule that is easiest to manage over the child in front of it, that is a heart problem dressed up as procedure. And before any of us feels clean, check the house. Plenty of men reading this were raised by fathers who withheld affection as discipline, and plenty of us now run the same no-contact policy on our own sons. We call it toughness. Usually it is an old wound still giving orders.

Mark tells of a man with leprosy, a man the law said no one should touch, kneeling in front of Jesus. Jesus reached out his hand and touched him, and only then said, “Be clean.” The touch came first. In Luke 15 the father runs to a son who had wasted everything and has his arms around him before the boy finishes his rehearsed speech. Some young people in detention have done real harm, and a hug erases none of it. It is where honest accountability can start, because a person who knows he is held can afford to look at what he did. Grace and truth come in the same arms. Liberty to the captives begins with being treated as somebody’s son.

These young people changed state law from inside a locked building, because an adult stayed long enough to be trusted with the bottom of the list and then carried it to people with power. Facilities must now write their own rules, and a “significant” safety exception can be stretched until it swallows the right, so families will need to watch how it is used. That kind of staying is what we try to bring to detention programming and re-entry mentoring at We The Revolt.

Find out this week whether young people detained in your county can hug their parents, and pray for the mothers who sit in those visiting rooms. Then come sit in one with us.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

Luke 15:20

Source: The Appeal, “Incarcerated Los Angeles Youth Fought for the Right to Hug Their Parents — and Won”