Grand Jury Urges End to VisionQuest Contract

The San Diego County Grand Jury on Tuesday recommended that the county end its contract with VisionQuest, the controversial juvenile rehabilitation program, and remove all local teen-agers from the program.

A 15-page grand jury report praised the program as an “honorable” one with “lofty” goals. But the jurors, noting that VisionQuest so far has only a 31% success rate, said that the program’s “chances for success are very meager” and charged that it is not cost-effective.

The county stopped sending youths to VisionQuest last fall, when the grand jury began investigating the program, but some San Diego-area juveniles remain in the program.

In addition to “strongly” urging that the county sever its ties to VisionQuest, the grand jury recommended:

- That the county reopen the unused Rancho del Campo facility to house local juveniles assigned to VisionQuest or awaiting admission to the county’s programs for juvenile offenders. (The Board of Supervisors has already approved funds to reopen as many as 40 beds at the East County facility.)

- That the Board of Supervisors make available to county-operated facilities funds that are now being used to pay for privately operated programs like VisionQuest.

- That a task force be appointed by supervisors to produce a comprehensive plan to rehabilitate juvenile offenders. The task force would also work to resolve the philosophical differences between the county Probation Department and Juvenile Court officials over preferred methods of dealing with juveniles.

The last recommendation is an apparent reference to the dispute that arose between Probation Department and court officials over the effectiveness of the VisionQuest program. Court officials, including Juvenile Court Administrator Michael G. Roddy, were among the strongest supporters of the program. But the report noted that judges who send juvenile offenders to VisionQuest “have no documented evidence that the program is successful.”

The grand jury said that some Probation Department officials complained that “some conditions existing at VisionQuest were not conducive to the well-being of the . . . county youth placed there.” The report also objected to what it called VisionQuest’s lack of accountability to the county.

John Doug Willingham, deputy chief juvenile probation officer, declined comment Tuesday until his office is asked by County Chief Administrative Officer Clifford Graves to respond publicly to the report. But Willingham called the grand jury study “an excellent and very thorough report.”

Roddy did not return a reporter’s phone calls.

Mike Cracovaner, a VisionQuest spokesman, declined comment on the report until VisionQuest officials have had a chance to read it.

According to the report, it costs $34,000 annually to send a youth to VisionQuest. The state pays 95% of the cost, and the county picks up the rest. Founded in the early 1970s as an alternative to incarceration for troubled youths, VisionQuest is best known for its cross-country wagon train treks, and operates wilderness camps in Arizona, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

California officials denied the program a license to operate in California earlier this year, but Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) has introduced a bill that would allow VisionQuest to operate in the state.

Initially, VisionQuest officials told county authorities that their rehabilitation program enjoyed a success rate of 73%. Later, in testimony before the grand jury, they put their success rate at 50%. However, the report noted that, of the first 100 San Diego area youths committed to the program, 69 were rearrested, putting the local success rate at 31%.

Local school officials also criticized the program’s education program and said that youths returning to Juvenile Court schools after serving time at VisionQuest were lacking in academic and motivational skills.

Several juveniles have died at VisionQuest camps. Earlier this year a Chula Vista couple, Gerardo and Elisa Cano, sued the controversial organization and San Diego County, charging negligence in the April, 1984, death of their son Mario, 16, in Silver City, N.M.

The grand jury report said that a “better-trained and more alert” staff could have prevented young Cano’s death and other “highly publicized deaths” that have occurred at VisionQuest.