CYA Programs Touch Young Lives Gone Astray

The concept and programs of the California Youth Authority are as valid today as they were in 1941 when 14-year-old Barney Lee, CYA ward No. 1, left San Quentin for a new training school in Whittier. Barney had been convicted for the murder of a cruel and violent uncle. The state assumed the role of parent for him under the idea of parens patriae (the state is the parent).

The mission of the California Youth Authority is monumental: “to protect the public from criminal activity by providing education, training and treatment services for youthful offenders committed by the courts; assisting local justice agencies with their efforts to control crime and delinquency; and encouraging the development of state and local programs to prevent crime and delinquency.” It requires the efforts of countless professionals who work around the clock to effect change in the lives of young men and women 365 days a year.

As a former ward -- No. 95397, released in 1971 -- I embraced the opportunities for change that were offered by the CYA at the former Youth Training School in Chino, now known as Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility. I learned the value of education through the efforts of high school teachers. I learned that hard work would have its rewards through the vocational training at the facility.

Although the length of my incarceration did not afford me the opportunity to complete requirements for a high school diploma, I was determined that once released I would covet education as a way out of a life that would surely have landed me in prison again and again.

June 1984, when I was hired as a vocational instructor at the youth training school in Chino, was a defining moment in my life. I had beaten the odds and come back to a facility that once held me captive. I came back as a teacher, a teacher with the same idealism I had found in my own teachers in that facility.

I am confident that the lives I have touched over the years have affected society in positive ways, much as my life was touched by those dedicated professionals who affected my life as a ward. I continue to touch lives as a professor in a local community college.

I am teaching future corrections professionals so that they also may touch lives and change society in a positive way.

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John Berge, who teaches at Mount San Antonio College, spent 16 years as a teacher in a gang intervention program he developed at the California Youth Authority facility in Chino.