YOUTH AUTHORITY: FIX IT OR SHUT IT DOWN

It's Just a Training Ground for Youths WHO Will Graduate to Prison

California is a failure in the juvenile corrections business. Five
recent expert reports on the California Youth Authority stingingly
indict the conditions and programs offered in its 10 prisons. The
reports are so damning they have surprised even some of CYA's most
ardent critics

The time for tinkering is over. We should explore shuttering the Youth
Authority or drastically altering it to better meet its mission of
rehabilitation. Talks should begin immediately with all stakeholders
- -- probation officers, juvenile court judges, prosecutors, CYA
employees and others -- to consider whether to create local or
regional facilities to replace the Youth Authority.

A growing number of counties, including San Francisco, San Mateo and
Alameda, have either imposed a moratorium on sending juvenile
offenders to CYA or are considering such an action.

Who can blame them? Reading the expert reports, there is only one
conclusion you can draw -- the CYA is guilty of fraud. It is fraud
against taxpayers who expect rehabilitation and safer communities for
the $80,000 they spend annually on every CYA ward. It is fraud against
counties that entrust their youthful offenders to the state. And, most
tragically, it is fraud against the parents who hope that the term
their children serve at CYA will change them for the better.

CYA's mission is to protect the public through programs that offer
wards alternatives to violence, drug addiction, gangs and lawlessness.
But right now, CYA is just a training ground for the terribly troubled
California Department of Corrections, a gladiatorial school where
wards hone their criminal skills. Sure, there are CYA success stories.
But with a recidivism rate between 50 and 90 percent, depending upon
whose data you quote, it is obvious that CYA too often fails its
mission of rehabilitation.

The Youth Authority does face unique challenges. It is home to some of
the state's most violent youthful offenders. Its facilities are too
big and too old. Unlike any other state, it houses wards up to 25
years of age. The gang culture is pervasive. Some wards have already
been to prison. A 2001 assessment found that the vast majority of CYA
wards had multiple mental health disorders.

But that doesn't justify the failures. For instance, in 2002 the
Office of the Inspector General found that the mental health delivery
system in CYA's lockdown units was in "complete disarray." Yet,
there was still no mental health service protocol in place for
lockdown units on Jan. 19 when two cellmates at high risk for suicide
killed themselves in the Ironwood lockdown unit at Preston, the CYA
prison in Ione. At the time, both were on psychotropic medications and
one was awaiting placement in a mental health unit. Today, CYA still
has nearly 30 wards with diagnosed mental health problems in lockdown
units.

When I recently toured Preston with newly appointed CYA Director
Walter Allen, there was at least one other ward considered high risk
for suicide confined in that same dank, depressing lockdown unit at
Preston. Another ward at Preston had been in a second lockdown unit,
called Tamarack, for 188 days -- a nightmarish vision from a Dickens
novel!

This is outrageous and heartbreaking. This has to stop immediately.
And such problems are found throughout the CYA system.

It is heartening that while past administrations have largely ignored
these problems, new Youth and Adult Correctional Agency Secretary
Roderick Hickman and Director Allen have both pledged to clean CYA up.
But this job will take much more than words and good will. We have
allowed past scandals to blow over with little or no reform. Not this
time. The light of attention must continue to shine until the job is
done.