Third Official to Leave State Youth Authority

The superintendent of the state-run youth prison at Paso Robles, where investigators are probing allegations of abuse against wards, announced her resignation Wednesday.

Kate Thompson’s departure marks the third retirement of a high-level official from the California Youth Authority in two weeks.

Last month, as The Times published a report on alleged brutality by officers at El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility, Youth Authority Director Gregorio Zermeno was ousted by the Davis administration, in part because he failed to implement new restrictions on the use of force.

A few days later, Brian Rivera, a deputy director who was regarded as a possible successor to Zermeno, announced his voluntary retirement. Rivera had just been assigned to inspect the Youth Authority’s 11 facilities to ensure that the governor’s new policies were being followed.

The agency has been under intense scrutiny from agents of state Inspector General Steve White. Last fall, they found a pattern of abuse and brutality at the Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino, where officers were allegedly setting up fights among wards.

White’s office, along with internal affairs investigators from the Youth Authority, is examining allegations that officers also arranged fights among wards in a living unit at Paso Robles. They are also looking into whether officers employed excessive force in sending handcuffed wards to detention sessions in the prison gymnasium.

Thompson, who has overseen the prison for about eight years, declined to discuss her departure from the institution halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In an interview last year, she defended the so-called gym TD (temporary detention) practice as “the safest and most humane” way to protect wards and staff after disturbances at her institution.

Thompson started with the Youth Authority in 1970 as a parole agent and had served as superintendent at Paso Robles since Oct. 31, 1991. She was previously assistant superintendent at the Ventura School, now called the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility.

Stephen Green, a spokesman for the state Youth and Adult Correctional Agency that oversees the Youth Authority, said Thompson’s retirement had been in the works for months.

State officials say that in coming months they expect other high-level retirements from California correctional facilities, in part because of a sweetened pension benefit available to veteran employees.

The Youth Authority is responsible for the state’s toughest juvenile criminals. It spends $427 million annually to house nearly 7,600 wards.

Times staff writer James Rainey contributed to this story.