State's youth prisons mired in hopelessness

[Joanne98]

First of Two Parts
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/07/MNGNEPMD7K1.DTL
Despite long-standing promises of reform and huge increases in spending, California's network of youth prisons for the state's most violent and incorrigible offenders remains a bleak backwater, plagued by inadequate rehabilitation programs and extraordinary levels of violence.

A Chronicle analysis and numerous studies detail how little the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has accomplished in correcting these severe problems, even as the juvenile prison population has tumbled and local jurisdictions have scored important successes in improving treatment programs for offenders.

The state's prisons for youthful offenders represent a critical tier in the system for handling juveniles who get in trouble with the law. Most are arrested, adjudicated and treated at the local level, and county prosecutors and judges have wide discretion on how to handle the offenders. Only the worst are incarcerated in the eight state-run juvenile prisons; of the 219,000 juveniles arrested in California in 2005, the last year for which complete figures are available, only 636 were imprisoned at state-run institutions.

In fact, the number of juvenile offenders sent to the state prisons has been declining every year for the past decade. Because of the abusive conditions and lack of rehabilitation efforts in those prisons, counties are increasingly reluctant to send young criminals to the facilities, arguing that they often return even more of a threat to public safety.

Increasingly, counties are treating youthful offenders at home, employing successful new techniques that are reducing recidivism rates at a time when juvenile crime rates have declined sharply. By contrast, the conditions in the state-run youth prisons, by nearly every assessment, are grim despite the fact that California operates one of the most expensive juvenile justice systems in the country.

The state is spending almost $180,000 per youth offender this fiscal year -- five times the cost of keeping inmates in the adult prisons -- and the governor projects that figure will rise to $216,000 next year. The Division of Juvenile Justice's budget this year totals $530 million. State officials say new programs are being implemented, under pressure from the courts, but in a marked change from the past, some key lawmakers say they have lost hope in the Schwarzenegger administration.

"Today, I am very skeptical that they're going to be able to do what they've said they would," said Sen. Michael Machado, D-Linden (San Joaquin County), a supporter of prison reform. "They are doomed to failure. There is a tremendous lack of concern for getting results. Nothing has happened."

Some members of the Legislature are so frustrated that they are urging a step that at one time would have been unthinkable -- dismantling the juvenile prison system.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/07/MNGNEPMD7K1.DTL