Probe Paints State Youth Authority as a System in Chaos

The man Gov. Gray Davis handpicked to investigate charges of brutality, sexual misconduct and other abuses plaguing the California Youth Authority testified Tuesday that “it would be impossible to overstate the problem.”

State Inspector General Steven White, who has investigated the state’s juvenile prisons since summer, spoke of a system in chaos.

He said that staff members at the agency’s Chino facility encouraged fights among rival inmates and that some employees knew of the abuses in the prisons but “have not spoken up to the degree they ought to have,” partly out of fear of retaliation.

The inspector general made his comments at a fact-finding hearing of the Senate and Assembly public safety committees on California’s juvenile prisons, which include more than a dozen lockups and conservation camps.

White and other top-level Davis administration officials said some progress had been made in correcting problems and restoring the luster of the agency, once a national model for the rehabilitation of young offenders.

“But there is a long way to go,” said White, a former Sacramento district attorney.

The Youth Authority abuses, detailed in a series of Times stories last year, resulted from what White called “an implosion of spirit and a failure of ethical standards,” coupled with a “leadership vacuum.” He said the governor ordered that the problems be “cleaned up and cleaned out.”

Sue Burrell, an attorney with the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, testified that many problems may persist.

She charged that in some attempts to make agency wards in Chino leave their rooms, security officers had sealed the rooms with tape and sprayed chemical Mace or other chemical gas into them.

Burrell also contended that some wards have been denied access to required special education programs or were stripped to their underwear and moved to metal “cages” where they attended school lessons.

She said some cages at the Chino, Whittier and Preston facilities resembled “dog kennels” and others looked like “gunmetal gray telephone booths.”

“It’s kind of like Barnum and Bailey,” Burrell said. “It’s time for these things to be fixed.”

When she complained about the cages last summer, Burrell said, Youth Authority administrators told her they had “long-term plans to get rid of them.” She said she also raised the issue in lawsuits.

Pressed by Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) on whether the alleged gassing of inmates is a continuing practice, state Youth and Corrections Agency Secretary Robert B. Presley said he would look into it and report back to lawmakers.

Presley, a former state senator, and newly appointed agency Director Jerry Harper, a former executive of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said reform is underway but not finished.

“We’ve learned a lot today,” Presley told Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), who presided over the hearing. “I think slowly, gradually we’re getting things in place.”

Presley said he is working with Harper, who has been on the job for 10 days, to dramatically improve the level of recruiting and training employees.

The committees also heard from a parade of youth offender experts, veteran agency employees, parents of Youth Authority wards and probation officers.

Armando Lopez, 26, a paroled murderer from the San Gabriel Valley who spent seven years in the Youth Authority, gave the legislators a firsthand account of the harsh realities behind bars.

He said young offenders become even more hardened at the Youth Authority, in part because employees are preoccupied with their own safety and cannot concentrate on preparing inmates for release.