Burning Down the House : The End of Juvenile Prison (9781595589668) (38 page)

No dice. A kid involved in a more serious infraction—a fistfight, for example—might still be subdued with pepper spray and put in what was now called a “cool-down” room under the new way of doing things, but that was just a preliminary: now he had to
talk
about it when he got out—talk to the kid he fought with, the guard who sprayed him, and the rest of the guys on the unit, all of whom, he was told, were affected by his actions (during a fight, wards have to “get down” on their bunks, their only private space, until the conflict is over and the unit has been declared cleared). Most kids, I was told, were quick to apologize—unsurprising, given that it took a verbal commitment, or sometimes a No Violence Contract, just to get out of the “cool-down” room.

Those familiar with the history of the California Youth Authority see no small irony in the “new” rehabilitative mandates the litigation sparked. Founded in 1941 with the express purpose of rehabilitation, the California
Youth Authority was for decades seen as a model nationally and internationally. According to historians, the California system “is often cited as a turning point in American juvenile correctional history. . . . Radically breaking with traditional thinking and practice in juvenile corrections, it proposed a model of juvenile justice based on rehabilitation instead of retributive punishment and called for state-level coordination of services. The passage of the California Youth Correction Authority Act of 1941 represents the first time an elected legislative body declared that the purpose of juvenile corrections was rehabilitation rather than punishment.”

That law defined the mandate of the California Youth Authority as “to protect society by substituting training and treatment for retributive punishment of young persons found guilty of public offenses.” For decades, the Youth Authority relied on educators, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to assess and devise treatment plans for each youth in its care. In the decades that followed, the Youth Authority became famous for its pioneering efforts to use therapeutic approaches to improve the life chances of those in its care. The “change” that current staffers were finding so hard, in other words, was merely a return to what had once been common practice.

When the national pendulum swung back toward a punitive mentality in the 1980s and 1990s, California took the lead once again, locking up growing numbers of young people under ever-harsher conditions.
At its apex, the California Youth Authority held more than ten thousand youths in inhumane conditions, operating for a time at double its capacity.

Despite protests, it seemed an untouchable monolith, backed by a uniquely powerful guards' union known for handing out seven-figure contributions on both sides of the aisle. The staff called themselves “counselors,” but not only did they act more like prison guards; they were dues-paying members of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the mighty guards' lobby that represented guards at the state's adult prisons as well and that was known for backing harsh sentencing laws and opposing reforms that would stem the flow of bodies into custody.

Then the pendulum swung once again. In 2004, the Prison Law Office won a sweeping settlement in a lawsuit (
Farrell v. Cate
) that described a
system that was failing by every measure, including respecting young people's basic human rights. As the Prison Law Office put it, “Rehabilitation cannot succeed when the classroom is a cage and wards live in constant fear of physical and sexual violence from CYA staff and other wards.”

The post-
Farrell
years saw the Youth Authority, under attack from multiple directions, enter what appeared to be its death throes, with fewer than a thousand youths in its care, and all but three of its facilities shuttered. Governor Jerry Brown called for the agency to be abolished entirely, with responsibility for its remaining wards handed over to the counties. Meanwhile, staff accustomed to ruling with brute force with little outside oversight are discovering that . . . well, change is hard.

The generation of staffers hired during the “tough on crime” years and trained in the “custody and control” ethos of the time are now being told that their role is that of not guards but adjunct therapists. Many are resistant, and, even if they are not, the kids have a hard time making the conceptual shift required to entrust their deepest traumas to someone who may have pepper sprayed them in the past, or might tomorrow.

If change is proving particularly hard in California, that may have to do with how very far the state has come to reach an environment that meets even minimal safety standards, much less is therapeutic. A 1999 investigation by the California Inspector General's office unearthed practices including “sealing rooms and spraying youth with mace, slamming them into walls, forcing youth into cells with human waste on the floors, or staging ‘Friday night fights' between institutionalized youth.” Many of these actions were taken by guards who apparently felt so little fear of reprimand that they did not even bother stepping out of range of surveillance cameras, which caught many abuses on tape.

The videotaped beatings at the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton; grainy footage of guards setting dogs on unresisting boys; still images of the small steel cages used for “therapy” and “education”—these convey a horror that words cannot quite capture. This effect comes not only from the blunt intensity of the violence captured on film, or the piercing images of teenagers curled up in the fetal position to indicate surrender and to protect their vital organs from the boots and blows of the gangs of men attacking them. The real horror in these images
comes from how clearly they convey, simply by their very existence, the perpetrators' confidence that they need not hide their actions. They knew they were being taped but felt certain enough, apparently, that
these
children did not matter—to the public, to outside authorities, or to prison administrators—that they saw no risk in brutalizing them in full view of the camera.

This is the culture into which outside experts were introduced, with the mandate of creating an environment that was not just humane but therapeutic. Consultants from the University of Cincinnati bent to the task, insisting that staff be trained in Effective Reinforcement; Effective Disapproval; Effective Use of Authority; Quality Interpersonal Relationships; Cognitive Restructuring; Anti-Criminal Modeling; Structured Learning/Skill Building; and Problem Solving Techniques.

Trent, I'd been told, was the “perfect kid” to talk to about the changes that had taken place at O.H. Close and elsewhere in recent years. A husky white twenty-year-old with a blond goatee, Trent had been in various state facilities since the age of sixteen, growing from a boy to a man within the confines of the Youth Authority during a period when that institution was going through rapid changes of its own.

Trent had sampled a buffet of self-improvement offerings: anger management, gang awareness, parenting, healthy living—he has certificates in all of these and more. “This place has really helped me a lot, helped me realize I need to grow up,” he said. “Staff treat us like we're their sons sometimes. They tell us they're here to help, not trying to get over on us.”

These positive connections, however, were counterbalanced by the bottom line: Trent was constrained not only by bars and gates but also by the unspoken codes still in place despite official reforms. “You can't show somebody fear,” he said, describing the rigorous emotional blankness Jared had dubbed the
machine down
mentality. “If you show fear or kindness, that's going to be taken as weakness . . . and then they're gonna try and use that against you.”

“Basically, I am institutionalized, a little bit,” Trent added. “Like, we're used to getting everything on time, not later. I'm used to getting my clothes on a certain time. I'm used to waking up on a certain time. I'm
used to going outside on a certain time. . . . When I get out, [reality] is just going to smack me in the face.”

More than any program, Trent said, what motivated him to shed his gang affiliations and stay on the straight and narrow was his young son, born not long after he was arrested. “I'm just trying to change my life around for my son,” he insisted. “That's my world. My girlfriend and my son, that's what makes me keep going. . . . I actually got someone I can say, that's mine, you know?”

Trent's young family may have been his great love and motivation, but that did not mean he was able to see them. In fact, he had not seen his son since the boy was an infant, because the trip from Southern California is too long and too costly for his girlfriend to manage.

As another young man at O.H. Close put it, “I'm supposed to be in a ‘family-focused' program, but my family is three hundred miles away. What's up with that?”

As I spoke to more of the wards at O.H. Close, it became clear to me why my hosts had described Trent as the “perfect” interview. Others, it seemed, were running into more difficulties under the new regime.

As states close down facilities, young people are often moved from one to the next. In California, a large state where—as elsewhere—most facilities were in remote rural areas, this has made keeping in touch with family nearly impossible for many. For those whose families were in Southern California, O.H. Close was a six- or seven-hour drive.

Danny and Connor were both on the sex offender unit, where, I was told, the treatment program was particularly well established. But everywhere I turned, it seemed, “institutional safety” seemed to collide with treatment goals. The logistical challenges of life on a locked unit also made therapeutic aims such as trust and positive relationships appear difficult, if not impossible, to reach.

The open dorm layout was one example. Following correctional protocol, the boys had to be “down” several times throughout the day, they explained—for count, during shift changes, during snack, and while other groups were showering. Because they had no other personal space, in all, they estimated, they spent between two and four waking hours each day prone on their bunks.

Connor, seventeen, was walking on eggshells. Arrested at thirteen, he
was slated to be released at eighteen but had an adult “hold” hanging over him. “If I get into any trouble while I'm here,” he translated. “I'll be put into an adult system until I'm twenty-three.”

That made any conflict—no matter how peripheral—potentially devastating. “When problems go on, you get jittery, like you want to just get out of the way. You don't want to get in trouble because you know you have a chance of going home.”

“Right,” Danny interjected. “And then when the chances actually blow up in your face, you just feel like giving up.”

Danny, like others I met, chose not to discuss the details of the charges against him. But he did describe the particular risks and stresses he faced as a nineteen-year-old convicted sex offender required to bunk with minors in a mixed-age dorm. Were one of the younger residents to make an allegation against him, no matter how brazen a lie it might be, he believed he could lose his chance to go home. This put him in an especially vulnerable position in an environment that remains very much power oriented. “All that fourteen-year-old [has to say is] ‘I don't want this guy touching me' and I'll get in trouble for that.
Big
trouble.”

Like others at O.H. Close, Danny was also struggling with the distance from his family. Until he was transferred several months ago, Danny had been close enough to home that his family had been able to visit every weekend. Since the transfer, he had not seen his family once. “It makes a big impact, because without family support, how are you able to move on?”

“I miss my mom,” he said. “Basically, I lost everything.”

Connor is fortunate in this regard: his family has committed to visiting him every other weekend, despite the distance. “They're a support system,” he said. “You need one. . . . [It] gives you something to hold on to.”

Distance was not the only obstacle to staying in touch with family. The coercive aspects of the therapeutic program were another barrier. If a boy is deemed not to be participating fully, Connor said, he may get a write-up for “program failure.” Potential consequences include no visits, sometimes for as long as ninety days.

The irony of this was not lost on the youths. “The new program they've
just introduced to us, it's basically all family oriented,” Danny explained. “They want you to do phone calls and phone call meetings. Like, they'll put you on speakerphone with your family . . . and the doctor and you'll have like a family group with the doctor.”

Family involvement, in other words, is mandatory, because it is considered central to successful treatment, but those deemed to be doing
poorly
in treatment can, as a consequence, be denied contact with their families. “That's why I say there's a whole lot of game with a little action,” Danny concluded.

Nevertheless, Danny did feel he had benefited from the programming he had received. “It matures you and it helps you think out of what's in the box. It helps you think, ‘All right, man, I did make a mistake, but
why
did I do it? What was the reason I was angry?' ”

Most crucially, he developed a strong connection with a particular staff member. “I remember when I first came to the system, one staff told me, ‘Believe it or not, but there's going to be one person you can open to and trust them, and when you find this person everything is going to be easier because you can express your feelings to that person.' ”