Posted on Sun, Oct. 17, 2004
Where hope is locked away:
Chances to aid young inmates slip away amid punitive climate of fear, violence
By Karen de S� and Brandon Bailey
Mercury News
IONE - Teenager Armando Raya entered the razor wire-topped gates of the California Youth Authority -- and walked into the critical juncture of his life.
Inside the state's juvenile prison system, the son of Central Valley farmworkers might straighten himself out. He might explore why he turned to guns and gangs. He might learn to take responsibility for his crime -- a drive-by shooting that left his victim tied to a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.
He might even embark on a new path. ``My son is a good son,'' Raya's father wrote to a juvenile judge, explaining that the boy went to church and worked at a 99-cent store to help pay the bills. ``He wants to be somebody in life.''
But at the Youth Authority, Raya's prospects for reform are abysmal.
A six-month investigation by the Mercury News has uncovered deep structural flaws in a system where violence dominates, gangs rule and fear pervades. Despite its mandate to rehabilitate young offenders, a comprehensive new analysis provided exclusively to the newspaper shows 74 percent of all wards are arrested on new criminal charges within three years of their release.
Critics say the Youth Authority's failure to rehabilitate wards is all the more troubling because that is the agency's mission under state law, and because young offenders have a better chance of changing their lives than adults.
And under state law, virtually all of the Youth Authority's wards eventually will be released -- regardless of whether they have improved or lost ground.
All Californians suffer the consequences of the youth prison system's failures -- from the inmates and their families, to the victims of new crimes, to the taxpayers who must foot the agency's $387 million annual bill.
Faced with lawsuits and critical news reports, state officials have vowed to correct the Youth Authority's problems. But experts say the system, which now spends more than $71,000 an inmate each year, needs far more than piecemeal reforms.
To assess the problems, reporters made repeated visits to five Youth Authority institutions, including a weeklong stay in a mental health unit, and tracked the progress of several wards over four months. A reporter and photographer also toured more successful youth facilities in Texas and Missouri.
They found a California Youth Authority in which prison culture is entrenched, emotionally disturbed youths go largely untreated and many inmates emerge even angrier and more dangerous than when they came in.
In a series that begins today, the Mercury News will explore:
� Education: Experts and Youth Authority officials agree that academic training is a major factor in preventing young offenders from committing new crimes. But classes at some Youth Authority schools are canceled as much as a third of the time because of security lockdowns, teacher absences or altercations. Despite state law requiring the Youth Authority to provide all wards with a high school education, the agency admits it falls short in many cases.
� Treatment: More than two-thirds of wards have diagnosable mental disorders. An overwhelming majority were sexually or physically abused. While experts say it's in the public interest to treat those problems, the Youth Authority offers formal treatment to a fraction of those who need it. Treatment usually comes in group sessions, which generally are not run by trained therapists. Mental health professionals complain they are often overruled by the correctional staff.
� Sentencing: Youth Authority wards all committed their crimes as juveniles, but many remain incarcerated into their early 20s. The average length of stay has grown by a third in the past 15 years. Many youth offenders spend more time in the Youth Authority than adult prisoners serve for similar offenses. This adds to the overall cost of incarceration, and gives wards less incentive to reform.
� Parole: Once they are released from the Youth Authority, most wards return to the communities in which they committed their original crimes. Yet they often receive minimal help with the crucial challenge of fitting into society. The Youth Authority's regional parole offices are overworked and underfunded; in the San Jose regional office, for example, agents manage an average of 52 cases each, which is twice what critics say it should be. Parole agents focus on drug tests and rules infractions and are less able to help with housing or job counseling, which could make the difference between building a new life or falling back into crime.
� Alternatives: By continuing to house juvenile offenders in large prisonlike settings, California has followed a model used for adult criminals. Yet other states have had more success at less cost by offering intensive treatment in small residential settings. In Missouri, whose approach is being widely studied, youth offenders live in cottages, choose their own clothing and receive comparatively more hours of therapy and classroom instruction every day. The state boasts one of the lowest recidivism rates in the nation.
A turning point
� Lawsuits, new chief offer opportunity
Today, the Youth Authority is at a turning point. Some juvenile justice advocates and agency staff members say circumstances have never been better for reform.
A lawsuit by the nonprofit Prison Law Office has forced state officials to acknowledge sweeping problems, and prompted settlement talks that would commit them to extensive improvements. Already, a new director has begun shaking up management ranks, banned the use of metal cages in classrooms and hired outside consultants to develop plans for dealing with gangs and dangerous offenders.
Walter Allen, who was appointed director by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in December, says he recognizes the agency's shortcomings and is determined to turn things around. The governor has promised major changes in the state's correctional system.
Allen has vowed to make the Youth Authority into a model for rehabilitating young offenders, although he has not yet said how he will pay for the improvements. And while Allen says most Youth Authority employees want to make the agency better, Schwarzenegger has had mixed success so far in challenging the politically powerful prison guards union, which many believe has a stake in the status quo.
Experts say rehabilitation will remain elusive unless changes to the system are deep and extensive.
The Youth Authority is distinct in the nation, both for the sheer size of its sprawling, violence-plagued facilities and for the characteristics of its inmate population.
The 3,900 wards have either committed the most serious crimes or failed numerous alternative programs for lesser offenses, or both. They also are older, on average, than wards in other states. Although Youth Authority wards commit their crimes as minors, three of four are 18 or older -- legally adults. California, which has wards as young as 12, is one of just four states that keeps youth offenders in custody up to age 25.
Over the past decade, a dramatic drop in juvenile crime, in California and nationwide, has helped to lower the Youth Authority population from its high of 10,000 in 1996. But rather than using the opportunity to reduce the population at each facility, officials have responded by closing facilities and concentrating most of the remaining inmates in eight large institutions, all but one with about 300 to 900 wards. The Ventura County facility is reserved for females, who make up less than 5 percent of the Youth Authority population.
The average living unit houses 50 wards -- twice the standard for juvenile facilities recommended in an independent state report. And even though the system's population has fallen, there are still 16 to 25 wards per Youth Authority staff member on a given shift -- a ratio that is two to three times more than those in other states.
Despite a decade of critical reports and lawsuits, there has been little public interest in changing the Youth Authority. In Sacramento, until recently, the only powerful voice on issues affecting the agency has been the correctional officers union, which has amassed political influence in part by handing out lavish campaign contributions.
That clout has given the guards a major say in how the state's prisons and youth facilities are run. Under the current contract, for example, 70 percent of all jobs must be assigned by seniority, instead of allowing managers the discretion to choose the most qualified staff members for key positions or for work with the most troubled youths.
With prison guards wielding more influence than teachers or counselors, critics say, the goal of rehabilitation has been eclipsed by a punitive environment strikingly similar to the state's toughest adult prisons.
In the past 12 months, for example, guards used tear gas and pepper spray on Youth Authority wards 2,658 times. In other recent reports, officials said 10 percent to 12 percent of wards were being held in isolation cells on any given day, for almost the whole day, which is more than twice the percentage held in isolation in the state's adult prisons.
Officials now say they are changing their policies on the use of chemicals and isolation cells. But juvenile justice experts say those are only the first steps toward fixing a system that is dominated by warehouse-like institutions and an entrenched prison culture.
Others are calling for more drastic change.
``Tinkering will never get us where we need to be,'' said state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, an outspoken critic who chairs a legislative committee on prison reform. California's system has become infamous around the nation, she said, adding that it needs ``a major overhaul -- and that's putting it lightly.''
Hopes meet reality
� First stop holds some harsh lessons
The day after Raya entered the Northern California intake center in Ione, Buddy Murphy, a 20-year-old who was incarcerated for child molestation, left for a more permanent placement, the next stage in his Youth Authority career.
Despite the climate of gangs and violence, 18-year-old Raya had high hopes of finding a new path while in the Youth Authority. But after two months in the intake center, Murphy's hope of receiving treatment for his problems seemed dim.
Both entered the Youth Authority at the Preston Youth Correctional Facility in the remote gold country of Amador County, where a crumbling but fearsome brick castle -- the state's first home for delinquent boys in 1894 -- looms over the grounds. In January, two Preston cellmates committed suicide by hanging themselves with bedsheets.
Raya's first stops at the intake center include five-minute interviews with a psychiatrist and a correctional officer, whose uniform still carries the acrid smell of tear gas used to break up a fight that morning. Both determine he is at low risk to harm himself.
A third interview focuses on Raya's tattoos: his hometown, Ceres, and his area code, 209, emblazoned in blue down the backs of his thick arms. Eric Contreras, Preston's gang coordinator, knows these are commonly used as gang insignia and asks whether Raya will clash with members of other groups.
A witness to Raya's October 2003 crime said he shouted ``Norte!'' before firing six shots at a rival gang member. Raya insists he is not a gang member, although he admits to ``kicking it'' or hanging around with Norte�os. But officials say there's convincing evidence of Raya's gang involvement.
Whether he's a formal member or not, gang affiliations are a major factor in the Youth Authority. Even a casual association will affect how staff members and other wards view Raya. In the Youth Authority's social order, violent rivalries and shifting alliances can determine where an inmate is housed or whether he will go to school on a particular day. Wards are often segregated by gang affiliation -- despite the fact that many experts say this only strengthens gang ties.
Contreras lays out the reality of Youth Authority life: He tells Raya to stay out of fights but advises that he is entitled to defend himself when attacked.
In turn, Raya promises to stay out of trouble.
``That's what I'm going to do -- do good so I can get out on parole,'' he said.
After a quick medical exam from a nurse, a guard escorts Raya to Fir Lodge, a concrete-and-steel dormitory where new arrivals are housed. There, the environment will test his promise in the coming weeks.
Moments after he is escorted into the dorm, a guard in a green SWAT-style jumpsuit descended from a glassed-in control room, handcuffs and Mace dangling from her belt.
Institution lags behind in tracking, treating population
Correctional officer Shelly Gilliland was tired after working back-to-back shifts the previous day. There were three fights to break up during her watch, plus three more after she went home that night and another three the next morning before she arrived back at work.
Her first concern was to identify the new ward and which gang he claims as his own. Raya may be sincere about his intention to stay away from gangs, but rival groups are not segregated at Fir Lodge, so Gilliland will have to watch how Raya interacts.
``What's your name?'' she demanded. ``What do you claim?''
All newcomers from Northern California spend their first two or three months in Fir Lodge, working through a battery of tests and learning the ground rules of institutional life. A state consultant recently reported that each new ward is given an impressive range of psychological, social and educational assessments. But the consultant found little evidence that the results are subsequently seen or used by staff members who interact with the wards on a daily basis.
Fir Lodge is a place where arsonists, rapists and killers from every gang and territory in the northern half of the state mix together. The 100 or so new wards are separated only by age: those under 18 in one wing, adults in another. On each side, they mill about in open day rooms and sleep in rows of steel-framed beds.
Anxious and scared, they are pumped up with youthful adrenaline and the advice of older homeboys, who tell them the only way to survive the Youth Authority is to fight.
Correctional officers say they use an array of tools to keep the peace -- granting privileges for good behavior, revoking them when fights break out. If that fails, they have pepper spray and tear gas grenades.
And they tacitly acknowledge the power of the gangs: Guards sometimes rely on senior gang members to negotiate truces and advise newcomers against launching indiscriminate attacks that can lead to widespread retaliation.
After two months in Fir Lodge, Murphy had some of these lessons behind him.
The boyish-looking Murphy said he has been trying not to fight. A member of the Wintu Indian Tribe in Shasta County, he was sent to the Youth Authority after molesting a girl at his grandmother's reservation home. He wants to learn how to control the impulses that led to his crime.
Murphy's story, like that of most wards, is one of victim and victimizer, set against a background of family chaos and abuse.
His mother drank heavily and fought violently with Murphy's father when he was not in prison. Murphy himself was molested when he was 5 -- the same age as the girl he molested when he was 16. He reads at a fifth- or sixth-grade level, and has dyslexia and a speech impediment.
After his arrest, a judge sentenced Murphy to 90 days in juvenile hall and three years on probation. But he landed in the Youth Authority after violating probation seven times. He flunked two county treatment programs because he broke a 10 p.m. curfew, missed therapy appointments and failed to document his Internet use.
Shortly after he arrived at Fir Lodge, inmates stole cookies and chips that Murphy had purchased from the canteen, then jumped him for reporting the theft to guards. His mattress was pulled from beneath him one night as he lay sleeping, amid shouts of: ``Rush him, fight him!''
Later, someone socked him in the face while he was watching television.
The violence in the dorm ``made me madder and madder,'' Murphy said. ``It started making me get more violent.''
A model no more
� Institution once admired worldwide
If Raya and Murphy had landed in the Youth Authority 30 years ago, they would have found themselves in an institution with an international reputation for model programs and treatment services.
Under the leadership of former director Allen Breed, from 1967 to 1977, visitors from across the United States, Japan, the Philippines and New Zealand flocked to view Youth Authority operations first-hand.
Breed used 30 years' experience working with troubled youths to create an institution that saw its role as understanding and treating the roots of juvenile delinquency. He fostered close relationships with legislators and wasn't afraid to fire staff members who violated the agency's mission.
While today, some wards are locked in isolation cells for months, Breed limited lockdowns to no more than 24 hours.
In the 1970s, solid research backed the Youth Authority's efforts. Comparable studies of recidivism at the time found rates ranging between 55 percent and 65 percent, said Joan Petersilia, a professor of criminology and law at the University of California-Irvine.
``They weren't afraid to look critically at their programs,'' she said. ``They had a vision to work creatively with wards and they had the ability to document that.''
But after Breed retired, several factors pushed the Youth Authority in a different direction.
First, in response to a nationwide spike in youth crime in the 1980s, lawmakers, prosecutors, judges and parole boards sought stiffer penalties for a variety of offenses. Youth Authority officials today acknowledge they turned away from rehabilitation as they struggled to accommodate a burgeoning population.
``When our numbers got so large, we just began warehousing kids, and with that we lost all the intent of what this department was about,'' said Richard Kai, a recently retired top Youth Authority official.
With more inmates came more guards. The Youth Authority has two primary categories of staff: correctional officers who provide security, and correctional counselors who oversee daily activities and lead some treatment sessions. Despite the title, the counselors have limited training in psychology or adolescent development; both groups are represented by the same union as adult prison guards.
Lawmakers encouraged counties to develop alternative programs for juveniles who committed lesser crimes. The most serious offenders continued to go to the Youth Authority, which gave it a higher proportion of violent and disturbed inmates, who were more likely to assault one another as well as the staff.
All of these changes led to an increasingly punitive approach. Isolation cells, handcuffs and Mace -- control methods typical of adult prisons -- became routine tools.
A prominent example involves the use of cages during school. In the course of a lawsuit filed in the late 1990s, the non-profit Youth Law Center complained that too many young inmates were being locked in isolation cells and kept out of class. The Youth Authority responded -- by bringing wards into classrooms and locking them into individual metal cages, something no other state has done.
Joan Lucraft, who administers mental health programs for the Youth Authority, said the problems grew out of the way the agency was managed: ``If we had trained our staff all along in how to de-escalate violence, would we have gotten to the point where we needed cages?''
By the time former Los Angeles County Undersheriff Jerry Harper became director in 2000, he found no uniform policies on the use of force or isolation cells, as well as a ``complete absence'' of information on wards in custody, including no central database on such basic facts as age, mental health problems or how many were on suicide watch.
``And the worst thing was, there was no appreciation for the fact that management needed that kind of information,'' said Harper, who was replaced when the Schwarzenegger administration took over and named its own team. ``Nobody wanted to know.''
In a report commissioned by state authorities last year, juvenile justice expert Barry Krisberg of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency found the Youth Authority did a poor job of tracking violence in its institutions. After reviewing records from six facilities, Krisberg counted 4,300 incidents of wards physically assaulting one another in 2002 -- more than 10 a day.
Officials acknowledged their reporting procedures were unreliable, and in recent months they have adopted new methods of tracking ward assaults and use of force by guards.
Using the new reporting system, an agency spokeswoman said there were 2,679 incidents of wards assaulting one another during the nine months from September 2003 through June -- a rate of violence somewhat lower than Krisberg's count.
Among other conclusions, Krisberg wrote that the extensive use of isolation cells leads to psychological deterioration, increases wards' anger and ``makes violence worse.''
Even when they are not in isolation, most young men spend long stretches every day sitting on bunks or in cells with nothing to do -- not studying or working -- a perfect environment for bickering to escalate into full-scale brawls, and for the mentally ill to spiral deeper into distress.
Struggle to succeed
� Obstacles include violence, lack of aid
Two months after his arrival in the Youth Authority, Raya was still trying to prove he could stay out of trouble.
Although some wards attend high school classes at Preston, Raya had already earned his General Education Development certificate. So he spent most of his time playing dominoes in the day room, while hoping to earn a coveted assignment at one of the Youth Authority's three ``fire camps'' -- where wards with records showing good behavior can work outdoors and train to fight forest fires.
But in his second month, Raya was ``written up'' -- a guard filed a formal report that implicated him in a melee among members of rival gangs.
Raya denied involvement, insisting he was only standing in the area when the brawl erupted. An investigator couldn't find anyone who saw him fighting, so the disciplinary case was dropped.
A few days later, Raya drew a second citation, for allegedly trading punches with a Sure�o. Once again Raya denied it. He blamed both write-ups on a guard whom he accused of trying to frame him. A Preston official said the second citation also was dropped after an investigation.
By the end of the summer, Raya had won a transfer to a fire camp, where he hopes to stay until he is paroled.
Meanwhile, Murphy had settled into the DeWitt Nelson Youth Correctional Facility near Stockton, where he was assigned to an ``informal'' sex offender treatment dorm.
The Youth Authority has formal treatment slots for only 207 of its roughly 1,000 sex offenders. ``Informal'' programs have fewer clinical professionals and therapy hours.
In a state-commissioned review of special programs, investigators found a hodgepodge of sex offender programs that lacked uniform methods of treatment and evaluation and failed to meet ``currently recognized standards in the field.''
Murphy seemed optimistic when he first arrived at the 75-bed dormitory called Yosemite. He was cheered by the sight of counselors wearing plain clothes instead of uniforms, and inspirational posters that urged: ``Respect Others'' and ``When you believe in yourself, anything is possible.''
``I do want to get help,'' Murphy said, adding that he regrets what he did to his victim. ``She has to live with that all her life, like I did. Just because it happened to me, it shouldn't happen to someone else.''
After a month at Yosemite, Murphy had received no professional help and may not get any. Although there were fewer fights than at Fir Lodge and he had been subjected to tear gas only once, Murphy was spending five hours a day woodworking, while receiving little treatment for his offense.
The majority of correctional counselors at the dorm learn on the job: Three have had some training in working with sex offenders but are not licensed mental health professionals. Murphy's counselor, Lynn Leatherdale, runs a group session once a week for an hour, in which she discusses victims and the wards' offenses.
Although Murphy is scheduled to participate in more groups next year, they also will be run by correctional counselors rather than trained mental health workers. At DeWitt Nelson, there is one psychiatrist responsible for 450 wards.
Veteran staff members say that's not enough. Correctional counselor Teresa Tomlinson-Barth recently told a legislative committee that if the Youth Authority wants to get serious about rehabilitating wards, then it must hire more staff members -- including more mental health professionals -- and give correctional counselors better training.
``People keep expecting miracles to happen without giving us the tools we need to do it,'' she complained, adding that her training as a counselor focused on the mundane parts of case management rather than treatment techniques.
For the rest of his time in the Youth Authority, Murphy is unlikely to speak to a psychologist, psychiatrist or other mental health professional unless he asks for help with a specific emotional crisis. But Ana Diaz, the parole agent assigned to track Murphy's progress while he's in Yosemite, assures him that she's on his case, even though she monitors more than 100 wards.
``As far as your sex offender treatment, just because you're not in the group, doesn't mean that you're not expected to be working on it,'' she reminded Murphy at his first case conference, a month after he arrived at the dorm. ``I may just walk in the dorm and say, `Hey Buddy, have you been thinking about (her) today?' ''
Afterward, Murphy insisted again that he wants to ``learn how to stop my wrong-way thinking, my negative thoughts.''
Does he still have those thoughts?
``Yes,'' he answered immediately. ``All the time.''