When San Diego County went looking for grant funds to help build a 300-bed jail for juveniles, officials argued that the 1950s-era Juvenile Hall on Meadowlark Lane was strained to the breaking point.

“There is literally no more room at the inn,” the county warned in a grant application in 1999 seeking $36 million in construction funds for what would become, in 2004, the East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility.

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“The most interesting story in California criminal justice policy is what has happened to juvenile crime and incarceration,” said Joan Petersilia, a Stanford University law professor and co-director of the Criminal Justice La Center there. “We have the most innovative policies anywhere, but the least amount of data to assess how they are working.”