'Benign neglect' leaves youth inmates in squalor, review finds

California's youngest inmates are living in squalid conditions that endanger guards and youths, while managers operate in daily crisis because of a lack of funding, according to reports obtained by The Associated Press. Shower doors at some youth prisons are so rusty that wards can break off pieces of metal to use as weapons. Two-way radios and personal alarms worn by employees only work intermittently. And there are holes in dorm walls and perimeter fences.

“Benign neglect ... appears to permeate” the Division of Juvenile Justice, a special security team found after touring four of the state's eight youth facilities last summer.

Efforts to shutter the most notorious youth prisons and replace punishment with rehabilitation may have backfired, according to reports that were withheld for five months while prison officials prepared a response.

Corrections Secretary Roderick Hickman ordered the first-in-the-nation reviews at each of California's eight youth and 32 adult prisons after the slaying of a prison guard in Chino a year ago. Hickman was tapped by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to reform a prison system under fire from state lawmakers, experts and federal judges for providing substandard care to youths and adults.

“This is truly the shame of the nation when we look at juvenile systems,” said Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who planned a hearing Thursday on the corrections system. “It's intentional neglect, and it's been this way for years and years and years, and it has not gotten any better.”

Review teams found roaches and rodents prowling kitchens. Leaky pipes left puddles on floors while toilets, urinals, showers and washbasins either didn't work or ran constantly. Temperatures and tempers soared in the overheated buildings.

Youth division Director Bernard Warner said Wednesday that he wants permanent fixes instead of more stopgap measures, even as the division studies whether outdated structures should be replaced.

“There hasn't been that investment over the last 10 to 20 years in keeping these facilities in the working order they need to be,” Warner said.

Inspection teams included representatives from adult and youth prison systems and the state's Corrections Standards Authority who evaluated prisons based on standards developed by experts.

They found burned out lights in living units and along the fence surrounding three youth prisons clustered at a Stockton facility. The fence gate itself didn't work – and neither did many of the cell door locks at the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility, the most notorious youth prison.

“Managers said they operate in crisis mode on a day-to-day basis,” the review team reported after interviewing Chaderjian officials. “The group said that due to budget constraints, they are unable to adequately manage the facility.”

Critics have urged the closing of Chaderjian in particular and youth prisons in general, saying the young wards could be better served in community programs.

Chaderjian is where guards were videotaped two years ago beating and pepper-spraying two wards who didn't resist. It is clustered with the O.H. Close and DeWitt Nelson youth correctional facilities, which house less troublesome youths.

While youth division directors vowed to end punishments that included locking wards in tiny cages or in their rooms for weeks on end, those reform efforts may have swung too far, the review said.

The population is increasingly violent and influenced by drugs and gangs. Many wards are ages 17 to 25, and some have served time in adult prisons before being returned to serve out youth sentences. Many openly mock employees and the cumbersome discipline process.

“In a praiseworthy effort to return to the rehabilitative mission of the DJJ, it appears that staff have lost the authority or ability to discipline wards in a meaningful manner,” the review found.

Prisons such as Chaderjian are necessary so the worst youth offenders can be housed in single cells instead of the dormitories common to other youth facilities, the review team said.

It recommended reopening 64 single rooms in Tamarack Lodge at Preston Youth Correctional Facility in Ione. Assaults more than tripled at Preston after Tamarack was closed in March 2004.

Preston opened in 1894 as a reform school and needs major upgrades, with smaller living units replacing its ancient buildings, the team said.

Preston is where two 18-year-old roommates were found hanged in their cells two years ago. Their deaths and a series of scathing national experts' reports triggered promises of reform.

Warner said the division needs a mix of single rooms and dormitories, though there are no plans to reopen Tamarack for that purpose. Nor should the division return to harsher discipline, he said.

“It's a cultural shift to see how can we reinforce positive behavior rather than always using the hammer,” Warner said.

Jakada Imani, field director of the reform group Books not Bars, said the answer is to shutter the “big, falling-apart warehouses” in favor of more rehabilitation in smaller, community-based facilities.

“It doesn't make sense to throw good money after bad,” Imani said. “Locking young people in cells simply isn't rehabilitation.”

Fixing the most serious problems will take an unspecified amount of money the division doesn't have, Warner said.

Increasing staff training is awaiting more study, but the faulty communications systems are being replaced and more safety equipment is on order, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in its plan to correct the problems. More employees will guard fewer wards, and officials are working with experts to reduce violence, drugs and gang influence under a lawsuit settlement.

Don Thompson
1 February 2006

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20060201-1858-ca-californiaprisons.html

home / Previous feature