June 2005
Question Authority
How the Ella Baker Center Reformed the California Youth Authority
by Tim Kingston
When Barbara Jackson’s grandson came home from four years in the California Youth Authority in 2004, it was the little things he did that broke her heart. “My grandson had a hard time eating my food,” said Jackson sorrowfully. “He told me, ‘You got to let me adjust. I’m used to people poisoning my food.’” She said he used to “love my cooking,” but now only felt safe eating Top Ramen and canned tuna.
Jackson’s grandson — not named at her request for fear of correctional staff retaliation — got entangled in the system after a schoolyard fight when he was 12. He was put in group homes, repeatedly ran away, stole a car and ended up in CYA facilities in Stockton, Ione and Chino from 1999 to 2004. By then he was fully institutionalized. A trip to the mall made him break out in a cold sweat: too many people, too many potential threats. Jackson’s grandson is now 20-years-old and back in jail. “I think he felt compelled to go back in,” said Jackson. “He snatched a purse. That is why the recidivism rate is so high.”
The CYA, which as of February 2005 housed 3,216 youth wards between 12 and 25, acknowledges a 71 percent male and 49 percent female recidivism rate. Critics like the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center’s youth-rights group Books Not Bars (BNB) and San Francisco’s Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) say the total recidivism rate is closer to 91 percent. Either way, California has one of the highest youth recidivism numbers in the country. Even the state’s adult recidivism is lower at 65 to 66 percent. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights has called the CYA “a violent factory of misery and child abuse that leads to more crime than it prevents.”
BNB and other prison justice groups want California to use Missouri as a model for reform. Missouri closed its youth prisons years ago in favor of 10- to 150-bed facilities scattered around the state so wards can be housed near their families. Missouri also provides extensive case management, in stark contrast to California where case management is minimal and youths are often housed hundreds of miles from their families.
“CYA doesn’t just damage the children. They take down whole families,” said Jackson. “I got misery coming from all directions and it is not just me, its everybody with kids in CYA.” At least Jackson’s grandson is still alive. Allen Feaster’s 18-year-old son Durrell and his 17-year-old roommate Deon Whitfield were found dead, hung in their cells, at CYA’s Preston facility in Ione on January 19, 2004. Feaster never saw a suicide note and refuses to believe his adopted son committed suicide. He and Whitfield’s parents are suing the CYA for damages and violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act — his son had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The CYA declined comment because the suit is ongoing.
Violence is endemic in the system’s eight institutions located in Stockton, Chino, Ione, Norwalk and Ventura. The largest, Stark in Chino, holds more than 1,000 while the smallest, O.H. Close in Stockton, holds 365. “They don’t treat, they incarcerate,” said Katrina Allen another parent whose son has ADHD. “Our children sit in warehouses and they fester and feed on each other.”
Books Not Bars
Lenore Anderson, director of BNB has a personal interest in the juvenile justice system. As a teenager, she said, “I used to get in quite a bit of trouble.” Anderson “barely, barely” made it out of high school, but “being white and middle class,” she got therapy and other help “that I don’t see youth of color getting.” When she made it to New York University Law School, Anderson was angered by the treatment poor youth of color got for doing exactly what she had done: “I ended up in law school and these young people end up locked up and on track for adult prison.”
That experience predisposed Anderson to juvenile justice issues and she wound up at BNB. The group first got involved with CYA issues during their 2001 campaign to prevent Alameda County from building a ‘Super Jail’ for youth. Soon she started hearing horror stories from parents whose children had been moved from Alameda County to the custody of the CYA. She could barely believe her ears: medical neglect, harassment, retaliation, youth serving five years for what started out as six-month sentences and more.
“The stark difference in stories from parents with kids in the county and state systems was just outrageous,” said Anderson, noting said she would get calls from parents terrified for their child’s life. “I was taken aback and uncovered whole layers of deep and intensive problems.” She heard stories of kids showing up for visiting hours with bruises over their bodies. Relatives told Anderson their kids were traumatized and emotionally shut down. “One parent said their child went through spiritual death.”
But Anderson found it incredibly difficult to get policymakers, politicians or the media to pay attention. All that changed in late 2003, when the Prison Law Office (PLO) dumped the largest lawsuit in the CYA’s history in the lap of the agency’s new director. The lawsuit alleged a smorgasbord of misdeeds, including a failure of youth care, institutional breakdown and unremitting internal violence. Finally, people started paying attention.
By then, BNB had a statewide network ready to take advantage of the spotlight shining on the CYA. Their 300-member parents organization swung into action lobbying state legislators, releasing detailed reports, holding vigils and badgering reporters to cover the issue. Last January, on the anniversary of the death of Durrell Feaster and Deon Whitfield, BNB organized a State Capitol screening of the group’s video, System Failure, which dramatized the plight of youth in the CYA system. Some credit the screening with prompting State Senator Gloria Romero to author SB609, a bill demanding CYA reform and closure of the CYA’s large institutions.
“We need to get serious about investing in the future well-being of inmates, their families, and our community,” said Assembly member Mark Leno, Chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, a co-author of SB 609. “Helping an inmate learn to read is not coddling a criminal, it is investing in California’s future.”
Abu Ghraib in California?
2004 was a rough year for the CYA. Four youths died in custody and, on April 1, every TV news show in the state broadcast a security cam videotape of CYA staff beating two wards. One youth was hit in the head at least 15 times after he was thrown to the ground. Six guards face dismissal for their involvement or lying about the incident. Subsequent investigations revealed that some wards had been held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. While attending classes, other wards sat at desks entirely enclosed by a custom-built metal cages — classrooms filled with cages. By year’s end, San Francisco and ten other counties had imposed a moratorium on sending any of their youth to CYA facilities.
When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Walter Allen III CYA Director in December 2003, he knew the agency was troubled. He soon found out just how troubled. The PLO lawsuit was filed on the very day of Allen’s swearing-in. He soon received independent reports on the CYA detailing excessive use of mace, verbal and physical abuse and limited educational programs.
Asked if the CYA were broken, Allen replied: “Yes, it was a system in need of repair…. [The reports detailed] deficiencies in conditions of confinement, mental health care, medical, health, sex offender treatment — the list went on and on.”
Allen says he is committed to reforming the system and points to his elimination of individual cages for wards in their classrooms in April 2004 as proof that he means business and keeps his promises.
All this was happening in an institution legally mandated to rehabilitate, not punish; an institution that had once been viewed as a relatively enlightened system — until the tough-on-crime climate took hold in the 1980’s.
“This was as close to government meltdown as possible,” stated Jim Mayer, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state government research organization long critical of the state prison system. In previous prison scandals, however, standard practice by state officials was to hunker down, grudgingly acknowledge there may be a problem, then wait for the storm clouds to blow away so they could safely do absolutely nothing. “In this case, they did the exact opposite,” said Mayer. “Schwarzenegger said, ‘I will fix this.’”
The Road to Reform
“The CYA that we know is going to die,” declared Dr. Barry Krisberg, President of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. “We are going to see a new CYA…. Right now there is a tremendous movement for positive reform.”
This is the first time in decades that California’s youth advocates, prison reform activists, the Governor, the legislature, juvenile justice experts, the CYA, and even the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), all agree on the need for CYA reform.
“We mean business,” said Allen. “We have a governor and a director who really want to make changes.” Because the governor has more business support than God and plays a strongman in the movies, he has no need to prove he is tough on crime. Nor is he in the pocket of the CCPOA like Former Governor Gray Davis.
In late 2004, Allen and Schwarzenegger startled observers by settling, rather than fighting, the PLO suit. In January 2005, the CYA and the governor set timelines to transform the agency. They pledged to eliminate the use of unnecessary force, train staff in “nonviolent offender management techniques,” and improve educational opportunities by increasing the number of credentialed teachers. As part of the settlement, the state has pledged to develope programs to ensure “rehabilitation and success in the community” by placing youth in “safe and supportive environments” near their homes. The programs will be tailored to their age, risk and individual needs.
Sara Norman, the PLO attorney who filed suit against the CYA, remains a bit stunned: “We won on every single thing: Medical care, mental health care, safety, disability…. They have agreed to completely transform the system to a rehabilitation model based on a therapeutic environment.”
Under the Governor’s prison reorganization plan, the CYA will be kept separate from the adult prison system.
The Missouri Model
BNB and CJCJ want the prisons closed as ten states have already done or are pledged to do. They want programs based on a rehabilitative model because, as Anderson said, the CYA’s current “design fosters violence and depression among the youth and staff.”
The CYA budget is $400.2 million, yet the State Legislative Analyst’s office reported that the facilities need $270 million in repairs. The SLA estimated that the state could save $69 million just by closing three of the institutions. “It is not worth it to maintain these facilities, which are money pits for the state when you can build small centers that are built for rehabilitation from the ground up,” said Anderson. The soulless institutional design of the buildings themselves creates “an environment that is virtually guaranteed to fail the youth,” he adds.
State officials and the CCPOA claim that there is no money to build new, more humane facilities. “At this point,” said CYA Director Allen, “we are using existing facilities to move ahead with reforms.”
But CYA critics say that good programs are not necessarily expensive. Missouri’s successful program was begun 36 years ago using surplus state property. Instead of a prison-like environment, wards in Missouri were treated like people, they lived in college dorm environments and received extensive care and counseling. “It is a culture of caring for the kids,” said Mark Steward, director of Missouri’s Division of Youth Services. “What you have is a real therapeutic environment.”
The proof of the pudding is the fact that Missouri’s 7-8 percent youth recidivism rate is much lower than California’s. The CYA contends that Missouri’s recidivism rate is closer to 30 percent, but that is still significantly better than the Golden State. Although CYA officials may debate the figures, they are clearly now reform-minded. As BNB’s Media Director Belinda Griswold put it, “They went to Missouri, found God and saw how it could be done in other states.” It is rare to see prison reform activists this optimistic, but they are also realistic about the gargantuan task ahead.
“There is a window of opportunity,” explained Anderson. “This is part of a national trend. One in five states have closed their state youth prisons and replaced them with regional rehabilitation [centers]. This gives California an opportunity to catch up with the rest of the country.”
Oakland-based freelancer Tim Kingston is a frequent contributor to CG and writes our monthly Non-Profit News column in Dock of the Bay.
For More Information:
The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
The Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice
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