scathing report on California Youth Authority

Scathing report on Youth Authority
ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE BEING INVESTIGATED
By Karen de Sá
Mercury News

Juveniles sentenced to California Youth Authority facilities for serious
crimes are regularly locked in cages, over-medicated and denied
essential psychiatric treatment, according to a report commissioned by
the state Attorney General's Office.

The report, obtained Tuesday by the Mercury News, found that the nine
institutions examined were more like prisons than facilities designed to
reform and rehabilitate youthful offenders, and that conditions there
worsened the problems of wards who suffered from mental health disorders
and substance abuse problems.

``The vast majority of youths who have mental health needs are made
worse instead of improved by the correctional environment,'' according
to authors of the report, University of Washington child psychologist
Eric Trupin and forensic psychiatrist Raymond Patterson of Washington,
D.C.

Teenagers, both male and female, are sent to CYA for serious and violent
crimes. But unlike adult prisons, CYA institutions are legally required
to reform and rehabilitate.

Word of conditions at Youth Authority facilities, specifically the
high-security Chaderjian facility in Stockton, has reached federal
investigators. The U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division is
investigating abuse in that facility, a department spokesman said
Tuesday.

The scrutiny of juvenile institutions comes at a time when California's
adult prisons are under intense pressure over their failure to police
abuses by prison staff. The report is yet another challenge for the
Schwarzenegger administration and for Walter Allen, the new director of
the CYA. Lawmakers plan to examine the CYA in hearings Feb. 28.

``It's going to get worse unless we have the courage to look at this,''
said Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Rosemead, who has been co-chairing hearings
on problems in the state's correctional facilities. ``It's fair to say
CYA has a crisis.''

Experts sent in

Last year, in response to legislators' inquiries and a lawsuit filed by
the Prison Law Office, the Attorney General's Office sent national
experts into the sprawling network of CYA facilities, which house 4,421
young people up to age 25 and cost the state $450 million a year to run.
At least six reports are expected, the first of which is reaching
legislators now and focuses on mental health and substance abuse
treatment in CYA facilities.

``Rehabilitation is impossible when the classroom is a cage and wards
live in constant fear of physical and sexual violence from CYA staff and
other wards,'' said court documents filed by the San Francisco-based
non-profit Prison Law Office.

As many as 65 percent of the wards suffer from mental disorders, and 85
percent battle drug and alcohol addictions, studies show.

In the facilities, guards used highly potent pepper spray on
recalcitrant youths, and treatment staff members were inconsistent in
prescribing and overseeing powerful psychotropic medications.

The report states some youths received three to eight different
psychotropic drugs without ``adequate justification,'' while others were
given no medicine when they needed it. Nighttime medications were not
available in some facilities, a practice the report states is
``especially egregious because needy youths are deprived of appropriate
care.''

The authors singled out a few CYA practices for praise. The CYA
regularly provided information on the risks of medication and followed
guidelines on obtaining informed consent from minors. The authors found
the substance abuse program at Dewitt Nelson exemplary.

But the authors added that this program was ``the exception, rather than
the rule.''

Officials with the Attorney General's Office and the Youth Authority did
not dispute the findings.

Findings confirmed

``The observations of the state experts in these areas are substantially
correct, and our department is reviewing each of these reports to
develop a plan to correct the issues raised,'' Youth Authority
spokeswoman Sarah Ludeman said.

Deputy Attorney General Steve Acquisto, one of the lawyers defending the
Youth Authority in the lawsuit, said: ``To the extent problems have been
identified, the YA is working diligently to address those problems, and
to the extent that the solutions require additional financing, we're
going to be working to get that.''

The December report was followed quickly by a tragic example of the need
to act quickly. On Jan. 19, two teens, 17 and 18, were found hanging in
their rooms in Ironwood Lodge at the Preston facility in Ione.

Ironwood came under special scrutiny in the December 2003 report, with
investigators determining that guards using pepper spray were
``exacerbating symptoms of mental illness'' and youths were kept
``isolated and away from staff observation or interaction.'' Ironwood
houses youths in a 60- to 90-day Special Management Program where they
receive only an hour a day of education outside their cells.

>From December 2001 to June 2003, statewide, 56 young people attempted
but did not succeed in committing suicide, because of staff
intervention.

The experts found CYA failing in 21 of the 22 measures posed in question
form by the Attorney General's Office. The report states that there was
no evidence that the punitive strategies brought about a desired change
in a youth's behavior.

Other specific problems:

• Inconsistent and substandard practices on the use of psychotropic
medications, including little measurement of the effects.

• Inappropriate use of punitive strategies, lack of staff skill in
de-escalation techniques and overuse of chemical restraints.

• Psychiatric histories that are not comprehensive and do not include
developmental or family information.

• Inadequate coordination of mental health professionals and routine
lack of involvement of families in treatment plans, making it virtually
impossible for the youths to re-enter society.

Even with word now getting out, Laura Belmont, a Folsom mother, said
she's skeptical that things will ever change at CYA.

``These are throwaway kids, out of sight out of mind,'' said Belmont,
who described her 20-year-old son as ``destroyed'' by three years at CYA
facilities. ``He went in 17 years old with his whole life ahead of him,
and he came out without one shred of self-esteem or self-worth,''
Belmont said.

But Senate leader John Burton, D-San Francisco, said he would act on the
reports, which he called devastating.

``It sort of paints the picture of a department incapable of
straightening itself out despite years of legislative oversight and
scrutiny,'' Burton said. ``We'll probably have to do it for them one way
or another.


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Mercury News Staff Writer Mark Gladstone contributed to this report.
Contact Karen de Sá at kdesa [at] mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5781.