In the Colusa County foothills town of Stonyford, more than 100 juvenile offenders are tucked away in a camp that features a strict, regimented program designed to rehabilitate them.

Platoon leaders at the Fouts Springs Youth Facility oversee uniformed wards as they drill, work and attend school from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily. Even after they are returned home, they are kept under tight rein by probation officers who do random nighttime checks.

The program is the envy of probation officials throughout California, but it is rare in the state for a very simple reason: The counties that run it are paying for it themselves.

"We may be a small, rural county, but we didn't fall off the tomato truck yesterday," said Carl Womack, chief probation officer for Colusa County, which pays for the camp along with Solano County. "Our county believes if a person commits a serious crime, there has to be some sort of consequence for it."

While many other counties in California rely on controversial and expensive out-of-state programs run by private firms to handle their troubled youth, a handful have refused to follow that example, choosing instead to find their own solutions.

The result is a series of innovative programs in areas across the state where counties have simply said 'no' to letting their youths be shipped off to Arizona, Nevada or elsewhere for rehabilitation.

Responding to the death of 16-year-old Nicholaus Contreraz of Sacramento in a privately run, out-of-state program in March, state officials and lawmakers are now arguing over whether California should continue to export more than 1,000 California youths at a cost of $45 million annually.

Amid the debate, some probation officials are arguing loudly that, even though they may not like the out-of-state option, it is all they have.

But some counties already are ignoring the financial bite and finding ways to keep their juveniles close to home.

In Kern County, the 60-year-old camp system has been kept alive largely with county general fund money.

Toothbrushes in hand, inmates at Orange County's Joplin Youth Center in Trabuco Canyon await their turn at the sinks in their dormitory. Even when the county went bankrupt five years ago, juvenile programs were retained. Bee photo / Chris Crewell

During the lean years, some of the programs were closed. But in January 1997, when the California Youth Authority increased its cost of incarceration, Kern supervisors found $2.1 million -- $30,000 per youth each year -- to open a last-chance program for repeat offenders and bolster the county's rustic mountain camp. Many counties spend more than $40,000 annually per child to send a youth out of state.

Two decades ago, Kern began putting probation officers on high school campuses, providing first-time and low-level offenders with programs that focus on behavior.

Larry Rhoades, the county's chief probation officer, believes that's why Kern, unlike other California counties, did not see a huge increase in serious juvenile offenders several years ago.

"We don't have hard evidence," he said. "But we feel this 10- to 15-year cultivation of early intervention programs has affected subsequent generations."

"The citizens of this community have said we're going to treat our juveniles locally. I don't know why Kern County has done that (and others haven't)."

The answer may be as simple as political will.

In Orange County, for example, officials refuse to send youths to out-of-state programs. Instead, they have funded an extensive probation system to deal with delinquents at every level. From day treatment programs to a hillside camp to a forestry program, youths are counseled, schooled and confronted about their behavior.

"I have enough options to meet the kids' needs," said Stephanie Lewis, Orange County's chief deputy probation officer in charge of programs. "If I determine there's an unmet need, we'll find a way to bridge the gap."

Michael Schumacher, the Probation Department's chief, said he has been able to be progressive because county supervisors have been willing to spend money on the 13,000 juveniles arrested there every year. About one-third end up in custody.

Even when the county went bankrupt five years ago, juvenile programs were kept running.

"It starts with philosophy," Schumacher said. "The bottom line is they're our kids, and we should deal with them as best we can."

So, when more than $13.5 million in federal welfare funds became available, Orange County officials used the money to expand its day treatment program.

When $2 million in the same kind of funding became available in Sacramento County, the Probation Department had hoped to use it for new surveillance equipment and fences at Juvenile Hall. But county supervisors stripped the money from probation and used it to cover a general fund deficit.

At the time, supervisors said they knew probation needed the money, but couldn't ignore the deficit.

"It takes a commitment on the part of the local board of supervisors," Schumacher said. "You can't just keep them (incarcerated) and not do anything with them."

Officials in some counties say they have no choice but to send children out of state. They simply don't have the money to run their own programs or to pay the California Youth Authority to house midlevel juvenile delinquents.

One expert estimates that if counties are prohibited from using out-of-state youth programs, 2,000 serious offenders will be forced back into California communities each year. Many will be placed in group homes and other less secure facilities and may endanger neighborhoods.

No one has worried more about this dilemma than Nick Cademartori, probation chief in San Joaquin County, who had 24 youths in the Arizona Boys Ranch at the time that Contreraz died there March 2.

He moved quickly to pull the boys out. But he sent 10 of them to VisionQuest, another private, Arizona-based juvenile program that has had its own share of controversy over the years.

"It's a method to fill the gap," Cademartori said. "We've got no place to put these kids."

This is the state of California's program for dealing with midlevel juvenile offenders: Counties find themselves sending youths to programs in other states whether they want to or not.

"Options? I do not have a local option," said Butte County probation chief Helen Harberts, who sends troubled youths to Nevada-based Rite of Passage. "That is why we're in the terrible position we're in."

It is cheaper for California counties to send many of their troubled juveniles out of state than to keep them here. After state and federal reimbursement, it costs each county less to send children elsewhere than to deal with them at home or ship them to a CYA prison.

In San Joaquin County, Cademartori oversees a 45-bed camp program for delinquent youth, as well as a 135-bed Juvenile Hall.

Both are perpetually overcrowded and, with a delinquent population that overwhelms probation officers, San Joaquin's rate of commitment to both out-of-state facilities and the CYA is among the highest in the state.

But as one of California's poorer counties, San Joaquin cannot afford to send its chronic nonviolent offenders to the CYA, even though there are four CYA facilities just south of Stockton.

The CYA's new fee system, imposed two years ago, charges significantly more for lesser offenders than for murderers, meaning all of California's counties have been searching for different ways to house midlevel felons. The charges are higher for lesser offenders to discourage counties from dumping them into CYA prisons rather than trying rehabilitation.

Typically, they are youths that have run away from at least a few group homes or probation ranches and have committed repeat property crimes such as burglary or auto theft. Usually, they have not harmed anyone seriously, or they would be eligible for low-rate CYA incarceration.

Cademartori and others would prefer to run programs in their own counties, keeping kids close enough to have them work through problems with their families and to reintegrate them into their own communities.

"Out of sight, out of mind is not in the best interest of the kids," he said.

But he can't afford to.

So last year, his probation officers sent 119 youths to the Arizona Boys Ranch, Glen Mills Schools in Pennsylvania, Rite of Passage in Nevada and VisionQuest in Arizona.

Although it costs him $3,679 per month for every youth he sends to VisionQuest, Cademartori pays only about 45 percent of that because state and federal agencies reimburse for out-of-state placements for low-income youth.

Technically, delinquents are considered foster children if they are placed in unlocked facilities such as the Arizona Boys Ranch rather than in lockdown places such as a CYA facility.

Because the out-of-state programs typically are remote and inaccessible, they don't use locks or fences, making them eligible for foster-care dollars.

But if Cademartori were to start a similar program in San Joaquin County, he couldn't make the same deal. County-run programs are ineligible for state and federal rebates. That's why Colusa and Solano counties foot the entire bill for Fouts Springs camp.

"Standards are so restrictive that they almost deny the ability to be creative or innovative," said Dan Macallair, associate director for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco.

Ideally, he said, counties should be able to contract for individualized services on a case-by-case basis using funding that comes with fewer restrictions.

The problem with current legislative reforms, he said, is that most are aimed at modifying the existing system. What troubled youth need, he said, is a complete system overhaul.

Many probation officials agree, saying that if they were given fewer restrictions they could easily find more productive solutions inside California.

"The real issue is building capacity in a system which has been grossly underfunded and neglected," said Harberts, adding that it would not be difficult to have programs run by one or more counties in remote California sites.

The dilemma is not unique to California.

Over the last two years, officials in Illinois have been moving toward a total reform of the state's policy of sending delinquents out of state.

When the review began, Illinois had more than 800 youths scattered across 20 states at a cost of more than $65 million to taxpayers. Now, only about 175 youths remain out of state -- 100 of them in contiguous states, which allows youths to be closer to home than they would in Illinois programs. The changes have brought back about $55 million annually to Illinois taxpayers, money that is being put directly into local programs.

In California, a similar effort would have to be accompanied by a change in law to allow group homes more control over wayward youths. Currently, group home operators are not allowed to chase after runaway wards or lock them inside homes.

Three weeks ago, Illinois legislators passed a law that would allow certain types of group homes to have locked doors.

"We found a problem, we fixed it and now we have legislation to allow us additional flexibility," said Ron Davidson of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and a researcher into programs for troubled youths.

In the past, California officials have objected to allowing locked doors in group homes because of the danger of child abuse. But advocates of changing the law say sometimes such measures are necessary to get children to focus on rehabilitation and reduce the chance of them harming themselves or escaping.

"There needs to be technical assistance at the state level to help counties develop a continuum of care," said Sylvia Johnson, chief probation officer of Alameda county. "There needs to be some discussion as to alternatives to out-of-home placement. . . . We need to do something. They're our children."