An Education in Brutality

The images of what goes on in California’s juvenile prisons are vivid: Teenagers beat and stab others and are beaten themselves, in daily and expectable routines. Some are confined 23 hours a day in 4-by-8 cells, where for meals they must suck pulverized bologna and milk from a straw stuck through a small metal slit. The mentally ill are often thrown into predatory general populations, getting only sporadic medical treatment.

Five newly released studies recount in numbing detail this brutality of life for the 4,000 offenders locked up by the California Youth Authority.

At a hearing on the CYA today, Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) plans to denounce the 11-prison system as “a fraud to the taxpayers, who expect rehabilitation and safer communities for the $80,000 they spend annually on every CYA ward … a fraud to the parents who hope their children would be changed for the better, only to [see them] come out harder, angrier, more mentally unstable or more criminally sophisticated.”

Romero’s rhetoric stings, but strong words failed in the past to change a system described by one national expert as suffering violence “unprecedented in juvenile corrections across the nation.’’

The chief barrier to change is the state’s prison guards union, which opposes “coddling” and threatens political retribution on politicians who suggest reform.

Not every part of the California Youth Authority is an irredeemable rathole. The prisons, the worst features of the system, could learn from the state and county probation camps. Camp Glenn Rockey, for instance, run by Los Angeles County in San Dimas, specializes in violent offenders. It attempts to change behavior from the moment its wards wake up, make their beds and quietly await morning lineup. Good behavior translates into points that can knock days off a sentence. At another model, the Los Robles Youth Correctional Camp near San Luis Obispo, juvenile offenders are trained to fight fires. Last month, its wards helped clear rubble after an earthquake hit the region.

Outrageously, these programs are on the budget chopping block although prison guards enjoy a 7% salary increase this year, along with unrestricted sick leave, and will get a 10% pay boost next year. Prison administrators recently hired 1,000 employees with no legislative approval.

The youth system’s population actually plummeted in the last few years, from about 10,000 in the mid-1990s to just over 4,000 today. Costs to counties had soared, and offenders ended up back on the streets or in cheaper county facilities. Some state leaders say the juveniles remaining in the CYA are beyond redemption, the worst of the worst. Even if that were true, sending young offenders to modern-day Bedlams only makes them more dangerous when they get out.

There is momentum now for change. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature have an opportunity to throw real weight into the fight to make California’s youth prisons more than schools for violence.