CALIFORNIA

Youth prisons: A better plan

Some of the best minds in the science of penal methodology are telling California to shut down its prisons for youthful offenders. They recommend moving teen inmates into so-called "living centers" when they can be better rehabilitated, perhaps at less cost to taxpayers.

It sounds at first to be a preposterous notion — turning nearly 4,000 young criminals back into the communities where the crimes were committed. If the kids committed offenses serious enough to put them behind bars, some skeptics argue, why not just keep them there?

That's a good question even at the adult prison level. In California's case, the prison system is the fastest-growing "industry" in the state, but one that has virtually no gross domestic product. In fact, this state's prison system is a lumbering dinosaur that is costing taxpayers a bundle - and still a high percentage of inmates who serve their time end up back in prison within two years.

The problem, according to prison experts, is that California's system is based on a 19th century model of punishment, which virtually ignores the potential for actually rehabilitating one-time criminals to become productive members of society, once their debt to society has been paid.

And that's an especially acute problem with regard to inmates in the grasp of the California Youth Authority, which operates eight facilities statewide, many of which have been involved in one kind of scandal or another in recent years.

And it's expensive. Whereas housing an adult prisoner costs about $30,000 a year, the cost for juveniles runs upwards of $80,000 for each young male, and $130,000 for each female.

You'd think spending that much to house a feed a young person would pay some dividends in terms of rehabilitation. It usually doesn't. More than half of the kids released after serving their sentence are returned to prison within 24 months.

Those national experts say the state and its taxpayers would be better served by transferring kids out of prisons and placing them in the smaller living centers, where they could receive more individual attention to some of their core problems, such as substance abuse and illiteracy. We can't reasonably expect young people to stay away from crime with those kinds of unresolved issues.

The experts suggest as many as half the youth inmates could be better served in community based programs. Society and taxpayers might be better served by such a change, too.
 

http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2004/10/05/sections/opinion/100504a.txt

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