Another Try at Youth Justice Reform

Seven crisply uniformed young men marched across the grounds of the Fred C. Nelles School on a January day six years ago, clutching their certificates as the first graduates of the California Youth Authority’s new boot camp.

Then-Gov. Pete Wilson was on hand in Whittier to endorse the type of get-tough juvenile justice reform the public seems to crave--reforming young burglars, rapists and street thugs with regimentation and harsh punishment.

In the LEAD program--for Leadership, Esteem, Ability and Discipline--wards rose at dawn to drill and run obstacle courses. When they weren’t having military-style bed or locker inspections, they learned to change diapers in a parenting class or drafted prospective household budgets.

But two years after that 1994 graduation ceremony, the Youth Authority quietly abandoned its experiment. Officials conceded that LEAD graduates were just as likely as other young parolees to return to crime once the strictures of boot camp living were lifted.

The short-lived program was one of many fitful attempts to remake the California Youth Authority, the 58-year-old youth prison system that The Times has found often fails to rehabilitate young offenders and sometimes abuses them. The agency and its superiors in Sacramento, while saying it does the best it can with a tough population of offenders, acknowledge the need to make improvements.

An array of academics, public interest groups and correctional consultants said in interviews that there are no easy fixes for the troubled agency, which houses the most incorrigible young offenders in California.

But the experts said that fundamental changes must be made, particularly with the number of young criminals expected to mushroom over the next decade. California already locks up juveniles at a higher rate than any other state. And over the next decade the state expects to add 1 million more 14-to-24-year-olds, the demographic group that experts said tends to drive increases in crime.

Each member of that new generation who ends up in the Youth Authority costs taxpayers $38,200 a year--$8,200 more than room, board and tuition at Stanford University.

Critics say that money should be better spent, using approaches that seem to work in other states: Small institutions are more effective than large ones. Programs that keep prisoners close to their families and communities succeed best. Increased institutional staffing allows wards more attention and more help preparing for life outside. Young offenders must be tracked closely once they return home, to make sure rehabilitation sticks.

The goal of youth programs should be to establish “living situations that are more like the outside world. We know that these kids are going back home soon,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Gov. Gray Davis has taken steps to stop excessive force in the 7,563-prisoner Youth Authority, the largest of its kind in the nation, following reports by a state inspector general of widespread abuses. On Thursday, Youth Authority Director Gregorio S. Zermeno was forced to resign, allowing Davis to reconsider the direction of the agency.

It remains to be seen whether Davis will expend political capital and taxpayer funds to offer more rehabilitative services and job training to young criminals.

Others, such as Assemblyman Rod Pacheco (R-Riverside), bluntly say that it’s time the state acknowledges that some teenagers are beyond redemption. “Some people think that any juvenile can be rehabilitated, and I believe that’s a false hope,” Pacheco said.

Members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. said that, if anything, officers should be allowed to restrict privileges even more for violent wards. “Sometimes we are tending to make these institutions too much like summer camp,” said Louie Adame, the prison guard union vice president.

Promising Results in Massachusetts

Nearly 27 years ago, the state of Massachusetts embarked on a radical remaking of its juvenile justice system. Its “training schools” were widely seen as failures when Jerome Miller, then director of the Department of Youth Services, abruptly closed the large facilities and replaced them with much smaller lockups, halfway houses and group homes.

Miller also ordered a more therapeutic, less authoritarian handling of young offenders. In some unusual cases he even sent youths on mountain-climbing expeditions, a whale research excursion and to arts institutes in attempts to inspire change.

Although such methods initially infuriated the public and prison employees who viewed them as too soft, the political leaders stood fast. Small is best, they said. The state’s youth lockups are limited to 150 prisoners and as few as 30, compared to the 1,000 or more in the California Youth Authority’s largest institutions.

Massachusetts facilities have one worker for every five prisoners, compared with one worker per 27 wards in some CYA housing units.

“That way, you have a much better chance of knowing all the offenders and then dealing with their problems,” said Edward J. “Ned” Loughran, former head of the Massachusetts agency. “They have intensive therapy and group therapy, and you can really get to know them and manage them.”

Although the state initially spends up to $65,000 annually to care for each youth--70% more than the California agency--it often pays as little as $6,000 a year to release wards to their homes with day monitoring.

A 1991 study by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency showed that Massachusetts parolees had the lowest recidivism rate of the five states surveyed--and CYA veterans the worst. A quarter of those released in Massachusetts were convicted and imprisoned again within three years, compared with 60% in California, the study found.

Youth Authority officials put the agency’s current re-incarceration rate at closer to 50%. And they caution against comparisons.

Because California, unlike many other states, tends to send its lesser offenders to county lockups, the Youth Authority ends up with the most violent ones. The state is one of only three in the nation that can hold young offenders until age 25, making the CYA clientele the oldest in any youth correctional system.

Other large states with many violent criminals have made only sporadic and limited attempts at reforming their juvenile prisons--but none of those efforts have markedly reduced recidivism. Correctional experts tend to cite model programs in smaller states, with fewer violent offenders.

Although Massachusetts is smaller and has a lower percentage of violent offenders than California, experts insist that successful programs bear common characteristics including, most critically, developing workers who can resolve conflict with words rather than force. They say it is a particular challenge to find workers who can be patient and empathetic in stressful and dangerous surroundings.

“If you get a staff person who is experienced and knows how to build relationships with kids and treats kids with dignity and respect--that one person can handle an entire group,” said Max Scott, a onetime CYA consultant who has helped run a Southern California program for juveniles for 34 years.

The Youth Authority has “a lot of wonderful staff who are still trying to pursue rehabilitation and treatment,” said Krisberg, who is advising the inspector general in an inquiry into abuse in the Youth Authority.

But the Youth Authority’s commitment to rehabilitation and its attempts to link wards to the outside world have withered. Special programs don’t have nearly enough slots--leaving hundreds of wards without the proper therapy, critics said.

“There is a good model there, but it only serves the few,” said Dan Macallair, associate director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco.

Alternatives to a Prison Cell

Other states offer many more options for juveniles--both those on their way toward prison and those who are trying to make the difficult transition back to the streets. The options include unlocked “residential treatment centers” and home-release programs, in which offenders report during the day for classes and training.

In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, hundreds of youthful offenders are sent to community programs that keep them occupied from after school until 9 p.m. Electronic ankle devices track them overnight.

Gang members and others in the Community Intensive Supervision Program’s neighborhood centers do homework, play games, eat dinner and clean up. They go to individual and group counseling. Staff members take them to neighborhoods around Pittsburgh, where they clean streets, register voters and paint homes for the elderly.

Intensive supervision--one staff member for every five youths--has helped overcome skepticism that greeted the centers when they first opened. One review found that just 15% of the participants released during one year were rearrested within a year of their parole.

Still, such approaches are not without risk. In 1995, one offender committed a series of armed robberies while he was supposed to be under supervision.

California corrections consultants have repeatedly recommended such alternative approaches, but the advice has been mostly ignored by the state’s political leaders.

A few small experiments have won praise. In Paso Robles, for example, about 25 wards live outside the CYA prison, at the Camp Roberts National Guard base. Once they demonstrate exemplary behavior and work habits, the prisoners are transferred to the nearby military installation, where they help refurbish the buildings and grounds, learning job skills from carpenters and electricians.

The Paso Robles prison has a recidivism rate approximately 10% below other Youth Authority facilities, in part because of Camp Roberts and other “pre-release” preparations, contends Kate Thompson, superintendent of the institution.

But such programs are few and far between.

The situation does not improve when wards end their stay with the “YA,” as they call it. Many are simply dropped at a bus station for the long ride home.

Once there, they typically will be the responsibility of a single parole agent, who will usually oversee at least 50 other parolees. That leaves little time to keep tabs on the progress of those released from youth prisons, much less to check in with family members, friends and employers.

Parole agents in Wisconsin routinely make such inquiries. But they oversee just 12 former prisoners each.

In the short-lived LEAD program that ended in 1996, greater follow-up with parolees was promised but never paid for, leading to the program’s demise, said David Steinhart, director of the Commonweal Juvenile Justice Program in Marin County.

“It’s the deep-sea diver analogy: If you come up too quickly 1/8after leaving prison 3/8, you get the bends,” said Krisberg. “These wards need a very gradual and structured reentry into society.”

But a range of political considerations has prevented the state from enacting reforms.

Conventional wisdom says politicians and the public may not be willing to pay for better treatment of criminals. Fear of running afoul of neighborhood groups has preempted any thought of moving small correctional facilities closer to urban areas. And juvenile justice watchdogs see at least one other hurdle--getting white, suburban voters and legislators to care about the fate of the youth prison system’s mostly poor and urban inmates, 78% of whom are Latino and African American.

Often ignored in these calculations is the greater cost that society and taxpayers bear when wards commit new offenses and land back behind bars, analysts said.

“These guys come out again and commit offenses at very high rates,” said Steinhart. “There is a double cost--the cost of whatever crimes they commit, and then the cost of reincarcerating them for whatever time, and sometimes for the rest of their lives.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

CYA Inmate Profile

Ethnicity/race of inmates

Gender of inmates

Source: California Youth Authority,

November 1999 data