Judge Trying Suit Filed by Inmates Tours Juvenile Hall

The padded rooms at Juvenile Hall are usually reserved for the real troublemakers: the kicking, screaming, biting youths who endanger others. But for a few minutes on Sunday, the “rubber rooms” were home to a different kind of occupant: a judge.

Surrounded by a phalanx of attorneys and a half-dozen of the county Probation Department’s top-tier managers, Superior Court Judge Linda H. McLaughlin toured Juvenile Hall, asking questions and taking notes.

At the request of the county, which is defending itself against a class-action, civil-rights lawsuit that alleges that adolescents were mistreated at the hall, McLaughlin got a look at the facility and a detailed description of the life that teens live there. She paid special attention to the areas that form the key elements of the trial: rubber rooms and the cubicles where misbehaving youths are tied to metal-frame beds with soft strips of cloth.

Wearing sneakers, dark blue corduroy slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, McLaughlin walked into one of the windowless rubber rooms and stood silently for a few minutes, taking in the bare, tan walls, the mattress on the floor, the heavy smell of disinfectant, the scratched window in the door. She touched the walls, which look normal but which give slightly when they are pounded.

Turning to Juvenile Hall director Stephanie Lewis, who was leading the tour, McLaughlin asked about the ventilation in the rubber room.

“Is this how it would be?” the judge asked.

“Is it stifling?” Lewis asked.

“It might be to the breather,” McLaughlin said.

Lewis told the judge that rubber room detainees are under constant surveillance by staffers. But what if the staff member steps away for a moment, McLaughlin asked. Could a child in a padded room be heard if he or she needed help? Lewis assured her that any shouting would be heard down the hall.

Not far away, the judge entered one of the “tie-down” rooms, where a bed is bolted to the floor. McLaughlin, her bailiff, her clerk and a paralegal, who were also along on the tour, crowded into the small room and the door closed behind them. The judge wanted to see what it would feel like to a teen shut inside with several staff members about to apply the soft-tie restraints at the wrists and ankles. She made a few notes on her pad and left the room silently.

McLaughlin permitted reporters inside Juvenile Hall but barred photographers. The 80-minute tour provided a rare glimpse into the place where hundreds of errant adolescents are kept each year.

The American Civil Liberties Union and San Francisco’s Youth Law Center, representing all current and former detainees of the hall, contend that the standards of care there fall far below what they should: that teen-agers are tied down or thrown into rubber rooms too frequently and without sufficient cause and that their privacy is routinely invaded with strip-searches, censored mail, monitored phone calls. The plaintiffs also contend the teen-agers have difficulty getting access to phones and lawyers.

The county insists that teen-agers are restrained or placed in rubber rooms, which the county calls “safety” or “de-escalation” rooms, when they are so dangerous that they could hurt themselves or those around them.

As the trial enters its fourth week today, the plaintiffs are scheduled to wrap up their case and the county will begin presenting evidence that its policies and practices are necessary for the security of the facility and well within the national norm for handling juvenile offenders.

The tour group, about 20 people in all, became a bit of a curiosity to the detainees. As the tight knot of adults meandered through the hall, clusters of youths who were eating sandwiches or watching television fell silent, then giggled nervously as the tour group passed.

Lewis led the group through each of the 15 units of the hall, from where the boys and girls are separately admitted and processed to where they live, work and play. The outdoor areas resemble a school yard, with basketball courts and baseball diamonds cut into the broad lawns. But the extra-high fences and, in high-security units, barbed wire were reminders that this was no school.

McLaughlin walked slowly down the long corridors, looking into the single rooms that make up most of the living space, and into the occasional dormitory-style accommodations. The rooms are made of painted cement block, with a mattress on a cement ledge built into the wall. Some rooms have toilets; some have a tiny counter for writing with a small stool. They have only one window, high up and clouded with dirt. The units have been decorated with bright touches: one life-size poster of basketball hero Magic Johnson, another that quotes singer Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

McLaughlin examined the central monitoring stations, where staffers can cut off a detainee’s phone call after five minutes. She passed by the restroom areas, where the staff can watch teens on the toilet or in the shower, their bodies blocked only by waist-high barriers.

McLaughlin examined one of the rooms that have been converted from singles to doubles because of overcrowding. A cot, slung with green canvas and fitted with a bowed mattress, was wedged against one wall, perpendicular to the room’s normal bed.

As the group ended its tour, two youths were being admitted. In jeans and torn, dirty white T-shirts, the two thin adolescents were escorted inside, their hands behind their backs.