CALIFORNIA

Therapy and education focus of Governor's CYA rehabilitation plan

The Schwarzenegger administration filed papers in Alameda County Superior Court on Monday outlining a plan that would center California's youth penal system on rehabilitation rather than punishment and isolation.
The plan would use counseling and education to rehabilitate wards. The changes are part of a settlement to an amended class action lawsuit originally filed in 2002. The California Youth Authority was charged with isolating a young offender for seven months and feeding him solid food liquified in a blender. Last year's highly-publicized videotaped beating of a ward by two correctional officers also played a role in the settlement.

The corrections team charged with formulating a new direction for CYA visited youth penal systems in Missouri, Texas, Colorado, Florida and Washington where there have been some successes in rehabilitation. Missouri, for example, has seen a significant reduction in its recidivism rate.
The Schwarzenegger plan would replace the current institutional-style living arrangements which put up to 75 wards in a single living unit with smaller units housing no more than 35. Wards would receive intensive counseling and therapy. Each offender would have a case manager to work with them throughout their incarceration. Also, senior wards would be part of the rehabilitation process, serving as role models and leaders.
“We're trying to get the wards out of the cells and into either classroom programs, counseling programs or drug rehabilitation programs that they need instead of keeping them locked in cells or locked into cages,” said Youth and Adult Correctional Agency spokesperson J.P. Tremblay. The Youth and Correctional Agency becomes the umbrella state agency incorporating the California Youth Authority on July 1.

Reform proponents said change should start with a clean slate by shuttering the existing youth detention facilities. “The only way to actually put this plan into action is to actually close these prisons,” said Jakada Imani of Books Not Bars, a non-profit youth criminal justice advocacy group. “Our young people have suffered enough.” His group hand-delivered 3,400 postcards of protest to the governor's office Monday.
Paying for the changes is a big question mark. The governor's May revised budget targeted $3.1 million for juvenile corrections system reform. It will be used to study how to change the eight facilities and two conservation camps that hold 3,300 young offenders. “We can't just go out and say we need this without really knowing what it is that we need,” Tremblay said.
Officials of the Schwarzenegger administration will return to court with a more detailed rehabilitation blueprint in November.

California reportedly spends about $71,000 per male ward each year and twice that on female offenders.

16 May 2005

http://www.news10.net/storyfull1.asp?id=10937

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