A vague fix for youth prisons
STATE’S NEW PLAN NEEDS MORE SPECIFICS ON REHABILITATING YOUNG OFFENDERS
After a year of work, the state released a plan Wednesday to transform its dreadful juvenile prisons. It contains the right goals and intentions, but lacks the details and cost estimates needed to fulfill the commitment.
Blueprints without specifics create room to waffle, wiggle and delay. Past prison reforms in California have been sabotaged by the prison guards’ union, halfhearted administrators and governors opposed to spending what’s needed to turn failing institutions around.
That’s why reformers are frustrated with the Status Report on Juvenile Justice that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation submitted in Alameda County Superior Court. We are, too.
The report commits to reform principles, plus specific intermediate steps for getting there, such as halving the number of youths per living unit in the existing prisons. The state has agreed to hire six juvenilejustice experts to quicken and refine the process.
The report foresees a transformation from a punishment-based system — locking up defiant wards for up to 23 hours a day — to one grounded in education and therapy. It also would create a parole network with small re-entry facilities near where youths live.
All of the state’s 150 female offenders might be transferred to secure residential programs. The number of offenders in the system would drop from 3,400 to 2,255 in 2015. Such a decline would be monumental and worth applauding — if it happens.
The report also acknowledges that the state’s existing eight facilities may be inadequate, even after remodeling. What it should have said — point blank — is that prisons built as lockups will conflict with rehabilitation goals. They should be torn down, starting immediately with the worst, the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton, to free up money to launch the reforms.
There is now a broad consensus among reformers nationwide that smaller, more personal facilities, staffed by qualified counselors, are the linchpin for effective reform. Simply shrinking existing prisons and staffing them with guards from the present system also fails to meet the goal of rehabilitation.
The state’s report was required as part of the settlement a year ago between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the non-profit Prison Law Office, which sued the state three years ago over intolerable youth-prison conditions. At that time, Schwarzenegger vowed to fix the problem.
This isn’t the only prison reform problem facing the governor. This week, in another court, a federal judge threatened to hold a contempt hearing unless Schwarzenegger provides money to provide adequate medical care for the state’s adult prisoners.
The governor must show leadership on juvenile justice — and be willing to confront the prison system’s ‘‘ no-can-do bureaucratic mindset’’— if he wants to avoid facing another angry judge.