Dismal California Prisons Hold Juvenile Offenders

JOHN M. BRODER / NY Times 15feb04

Are Prisons Obsolete?

WHITTIER, Calif., Feb. 10 — The mission of the California Youth Authority, which runs the state's 10 juvenile prisons, housing 4,600 inmates, is to educate and rehabilitate offenders sentenced by juvenile courts. But state officials and outside experts brought in to study the system say it fails in its most basic tasks, because of antiquated facilities, undertrained employees and violence endemic within the walls.

Youths with psychological problems are ignored or overmedicated, classes are arbitrarily canceled, and inmates or whole institutions are locked down for days or weeks at a time because of recurring gang violence, according to the independent experts, retained by the state after it was sued two years ago in a class action brought on inmates' behalf.

Two wards committed suicide at one prison last month, and dozens more try to kill themselves every year, officials and parents of wards say. Conditions in many of the institutions were described by the experts as "deplorable," with blood, mucus and dried feces on the walls of many high-security cells.

Youths in solitary confinement are often fed what officials call "blender meals," in which a bologna sandwich, an apple and a carton of milk are pulverized and fed to the inmate by straw through a slit in the cell door.

The system's mental health programs are in "complete disarray," the experts found.

"The vast majority of youths who have mental health needs," one report said, "are made worse instead of improved by the correctional environment."

There are more than 4,000 serious assaults by wards on other wards each year throughout the California juvenile prison system, an average of more than 10 a day, according to Dr. Barry Krisberg, a nationally recognized criminologist who was among the experts reviewing the Youth Authority.

"These levels of ward-on-ward and ward-on-staff assaults are unprecedented in juvenile corrections across the nation," Dr. Krisberg wrote in a damning report released this month.

He said corrections leaders elsewhere were "astounded" to hear of the prevalence of violence in California juvenile prisons. Guards instigate fights among wards, he found, and fail to protect those who are singled out for rapes or beatings by other inmates.

"It is abundantly clear from a range of data that I collected as part of this review," Dr. Krisberg wrote, "that the Youth Authority is a very dangerous place and that neither staff nor wards feel safe in its facilities."

He also noted that California was the only state that used small cages, known as secure program areas, or SPA's, to isolate prisoners from one another and from members of the staff during instruction or counseling, a practice one prison pastor called "demonic."

State officials newly appointed to run the Youth Authority do not dispute most of the findings. They have promised quick action to remedy them, starting with the elimination of the security cages, which are in use in several of the juvenile prisons.

State Senator Gloria Romero, a Democrat who heads a special legislative committee overseeing the state's adult and juvenile prison networks, called conditions in the Youth Authority "barbaric" and "inhumane."

Senator Romero said that while the latest accounts were shocking, there was little new in them. She said that investigations and lawsuits over the last decade had uncovered similar abuses and that little had been done beyond hiring more guards and pouring vast sums of money into the system. The state now spends $80,000 a year on each imprisoned young offender, she said, and yet recidivism approaches 90 percent. "On all counts," she said of the system, "it's been a failure."

Karapet Darakchyan, an 18-year-old car thief, has been in the juvenile prison system for three years. For more than four months — he has not counted the days — he has been confined to the high-security lockup at the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility here in Whittier, a result of an assault on a guard last fall.

Mr. Darakchyan, a former member of the notorious White Fence gang in East Los Angeles and a young man with an admitted "anger problem," spends 23 hours a day in a 4-by-8-foot cell. Other than for showers, he leaves the cell only to receive instruction or counseling, during which he is confined inside a steel mesh cage barely big enough to stand or turn around in.

Mr. Darakchyan, who was led from his cell in handcuffs for a brief interview, offered no specific complaints about his treatment at Nelles. "It's not a good place to be," he said matter-of-factly. "It's a jail. You've got to deal with it."

Asked whether he was receiving any useful treatment or training, he just shook his head.

The crisis in the Youth Authority, and similar problems in the vastly larger adult prison system, pose serious managerial and political challenges for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has said he is "gravely concerned" about the California prison system, which costs $6 billion a year, and has already replaced the directors of youth and adult corrections. He has also proposed reductions in spending on prisons and wants to revamp the parole system to reduce the prison population, which now exceeds 160,000.

Mr. Schwarzenegger has vowed to renegotiate a contract that provides large raises over the next three years for prison guards. The guards' union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which negotiated that contract with the governor's predecessor, Gray Davis, has been a heavy contributor to political campaigns and until now considered politically untouchable.

Walter Allen III, the new director of the Youth Authority, said that the reports so critical of the system were "substantially correct" and that he had ordered his staff to prepare remedies and a timetable for achieving them. He also said he had retained Dr. Krisberg to advise him and would work to settle the class-action lawsuit against his agency.

Laura Talkington of Fresno, whose 19-year-old son, David, has been held in Youth Authority prisons since he was convicted of arson four years ago, makes no excuses for his crime. But she is furious at the state for the treatment he has received, which has included beatings by the staff and fellow inmates. Attention deficit disorder has been diagnosed, she said, but he has received no treatment for it, or remedial education.

"There is no rehabilitation," Mrs. Talkington said. "There is only punishment and a lot of abuse."

Sara Norman, a staff lawyer with the Prison Law Office, one of the groups that brought the suit against the Youth Authority, said inmate advocates were seeking the appointment of a special master to ensure a top-to-bottom overhaul of juvenile corrections in California.

"The system is completely out of control," she said. "We don't want another blue-ribbon commission. The panel of experts' findings are right there. The system needs to be fixed now."

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