Rehabilitation, Not Brutality

Do criminals deserve second chances? What if they’re 15 years old? More and more, age does not change the equation. California’s state youth correctional facilities have become like adult prisons--or worse, according to a report on the California Youth Authority by Times staff writers James Rainey and Mark Gladstone, published Friday and Saturday. The head of the Youth Authority has resigned, and an apparent pattern of abuse against juveniles is being investigated by the state.

There are no easy fixes, but Gov. Gray Davis should put his weight behind common-sense reforms.

The allegations in the report--of beatings by guards and other prisoners, of punishments that look like torture, of psychological brutality--are not unique to California. Five state officials in Maryland were forced out this month after allegations of widespread brutality and maltreatment in the youth correctional system. Georgia is phasing out its paramilitary youth camps after a stinging rebuke by the U.S. Justice Department that the camps are “not only ineffective but harmful” to juvenile offenders. Other states have also faced problems with boot camps, which were a response to demands a decade ago that government get tougher on juvenile crime.

Defenders of California’s youth prisons argue that they are full of the worst of the worst, often violent repeat offenders ranging in age from 12 to a very adult 25. Assemblyman Rod Pacheco (R-Riverside), says bluntly, “some people think that any juvenile can be rehabilitated and that’s a false hope.” But giving up on thousands of them, most of whom will return to their neighborhoods, is not an answer. As USC sociology professor Malcolm Klein has said in regard to deliberate humiliations at an Arizona boot camp, “The more repressive you get with juveniles, the more you reverse the process of rehabilitation.”

Ending brutality is necessary but not sufficient. Well-tested reforms have to come next. One is a sharper focus on literacy. Although California requires schooling for youth inmates, some miss much of the school year while being punished, and for others the schooling comes too late. Another is drug treatment, and California’s youth treatment programs have far too few slots for the demand. Small facilities and intensive counseling also aid rehabilitation. Massachusetts, for instance, caps youth lockups at 150 prisoners, compared with 1,000 or more in California’s larger facilities, and has a fraction of California’s repeat offender rate.

Davis made the right start last Thursday by accepting the resignation of Youth Authority Director Gregorio S. Zermeno. But the governor’s recent veto of a bill providing for community-based punishment of parole violators was widely seen as bowing to a powerful supporter, the prison guards union. Fixing the Youth Authority will require him to show the sort of steel and zeal he has given to his education crusade.