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| CYA prison fails youths, audit says |
| By New York Times |
| Published: 05/30/2005 |
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The state prison housing some of California's most difficult young felons is a dangerous place that fails to provide the education, counseling and other help inmates need to straighten out their lives, the state's Office of the Inspector General said last Tuesday. During a six-month investigation, Inspector General Matthew Cate found that staff members at the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton were either ill-trained or too consumed with security tasks to counsel youths as required by law. Inmates on medication for mental disorders are not consistently monitored, the audit said, and prison high school classes are canceled more than a third of the time, mostly because teachers don't show up. Cate also criticized prison managers for not following suicide prevention protocols, noting that two teenagers killed themselves in a state lockup last year. The audit is the latest gloomy assessment of the CYA, which houses more than 3,200 convicts, ages 12 to 25, in eight prisons and two camps. Critics say it is outrageous that, given the level of attention on the system, basic problems remain unfixed. Meanwhile, the CYA's director said short-term fixes are underway, though he did not dispute the audit's findings. Sue Burrell of the nonprofit Youth Law Center, which has sued the CYA over specific problems over the last few decades, agreed. "I say bring in the bulldozers, because they obviously can't fix it themselves," Burrell said. |
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