Dismal California Prisons Hold Juvenile Offenders
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: February 15, 2004
HITTIER, Calif., Feb. 10 — The mission of the California Youth Authority, which runs the state's 10 juvenile prisons, housing 4,600 inmates, is to educate and rehabilitate offenders sentenced by juvenile courts. But state officials and outside experts brought in to study the system say it fails in its most basic tasks, because of antiquated facilities, undertrained employees and violence endemic within the walls.
Youths with psychological problems are ignored or overmedicated, classes are arbitrarily canceled, and inmates or whole institutions are locked down for days or weeks at a time because of recurring gang violence, according to the independent experts, retained by the state after it was sued two years ago in a class action brought on inmates' behalf
Two wards committed suicide at one prison last month, and dozens more try to kill themselves every year, officials and parents of wards say. Conditions in many of the institutions were described by the experts as "deplorable," with blood, mucus and dried feces on the walls of many high-security cells.
Youths in solitary confinement are often fed what officials call "blender meals," in which a bologna sandwich, an apple and a carton of milk are pulverized and fed to the inmate by straw through a slit in the cell door.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/national/15JUVE.html?hp