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| Scathing report on California Youth Authority |
| By Mercury News |
| Published: 02/02/2004 |
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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." |
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