State Recommends Citing Youth Facility : Corrections: The county is ordered to relieve crowding in its juvenile hall, where inmates often sleep on the floor.

Ventura County’s juvenile hall is often so crowded that youths must sleep on the floor.

It is so understaffed that corrections workers say they sometimes have trouble stopping fights.

And it’s operating in violation of state laws, which could cost Ventura County the certification for its main juvenile jail, California Youth Authority officials warned Thursday.

State officials have recommended citing the 84-bed Clifton Tatum Center for violating state law, said Richard Rose of the California Youth Authority.

If the county does not bring the institution into compliance with staffing and other requirements by early June, the 22-year-old building could be deemed unfit to detain minors, Rose said.

Should the hall, located at 380 N. Hillmont Ave., lose that certification, “it could lose federal funds and their liability could go sky-high,” said Rose, who is assistant deputy director of the authority’s corrections branch.

State officials toured the hall and examined its records.

They found that the building was filled beyond capacity for 39 days from Jan. 19 through Feb. 28. The inmate population rose to 100 five times and once hit 109, according to a state letter to F. William Forden, director of the Ventura Corrections Services Agency.

The letter also said:

* Some youths detained for more than one weekend were not getting medical examinations as required by law.

* Some slept on three-inch mattresses on the floor despite a requirement that beds be 12 inches off the floor.

* Staffing fell below the required ratio of one worker for every 10 youths during the day.

Forden was not available for comment Thursday.

But Deputy Director Frank Woodson said Thursday: “We’ve had as high as 115. We have to bring in extra mattresses. They sleep on the floor. For the last 20 days, we’ve been hitting close to 100. That taxes the staff and the facilities and everything.”

On Thursday, the hall housed 93 youths for charges ranging from trespassing to attempted murder.

Two inmates told The Times they don’t mind the crowding that forces them to share a room.

“It’s better company,” said a 13-year-old named Tony, who was serving time for battery, petty theft and threatening.

His roommate, Esteban, 16, said sleeping on a mattress on the floor is all right because rooming alone “would be boring.”

David Conahey, division manager of the juvenile hall, took a different view:

“It’s putting a hardship on us in extra staff costs, and I think tensions run higher when it gets more crowded,” he said. “The more bodies you have in a small space, the more they get on each other’s nerves.”

Gang tensions are more likely to erupt in crowded conditions, corrections Officer Daryl Dixon said.

“Usually, all four units go out to the exercise yard at once, but with the amount of people we have in here now, we had to split it up,” Dixon said.

Conahey said the hall’s 31 officers, augmented by temporary workers, usually are just enough to meet the legally required 10-to-1 daytime staff ratio and the 30-to-1 nighttime ratio.

“We’re all right until we get to 90” detainees with nine staff members on duty, Conahey said. “But that 91st kid means I’ve got to bring in another corrections services officer.”

The county is employing 1,000 hours worth of temporary help every two weeks to buttress the juvenile hall staff, at a cost of about $10 per hour, Conahey said. That has cost more than $161,000 this fiscal year, well over the $99,000 allotted by the Board of Supervisors, Conahey said.

Part of the crowding is caused by youths who sleep in juvenile hall at night, after drug and gang counseling during the day at the Frank A. Colston Youth Center across the street. Seven girls from the Colston center are staying at juvenile hall this week, said Woodson.

Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Barbara Lane said the county recently approved building a 10-bed addition for girls at the Colston center. “But other than that, we simply haven’t had a new bed in years.”

Another cause of the crowding “is simply the increase in delinquency, and it takes a Ph.D. thesis to analyze,” Lane said.

Lane said she heard 10 cases of rape last month, and 19 cases of murder and attempted murder between April and December last year, mostly in drive-by shootings.

Convictions sent the defendants to other facilities, but during the months-long trials, they had to be housed in the county system, she said.

Conahey said he will be working on short-term solutions this week and next, hiring more temporary help and placing some youths into other programs ahead of schedule.