Judge has qualms on youth prisons

California's youth prisons are getting smaller by the week. But a judge said there are still big questions about how effectively the state is managing the diminishing population and that he's thinking about appointing a receiver to run what's left of it.

Alameda Superior Court Judge Jon S. Tigar ordered the state's Division of Juvenile Justice last week to show him why he shouldn't appoint a receiver. The threat is coming three years after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a consent decree to overhaul the state's youth correctional system, where it now costs $199,000 a year to house a single ward.

In court papers filed last Wednesday in Oakland, Tigar signaled he was thinking about having the monitor run the entire division. Short of that, Tigar said in his order, he is considering the appointment of a receiver whose scope would be restricted to four key areas of operation that he said have broken down and are holding up plans for progress.

"These failures are acute not only because of the distance between the current level of compliance and the compliance required by the court's orders, but also because these four areas are foundational to the reforms envisioned by the consent decree and the remedial plans," Tigar wrote in his five-page order.

The state, he said, "has not provided the court with sufficiently specific information regarding how and when it will address these systemic barriers."

Plaintiffs lawyers from the San Rafael-based Prison Law Office said the Division of Juvenile Justice has fallen down by allowing too many vacancies at the headquarters level, not issuing contracts to complete some of the remedial plans, failing to write new policies to ensure that the court's directives are followed and delaying installation of a new computer system to track the ward population and the needs they present.

"They're very unsexy categories," said Prison Law Office attorney Sara Norman. "But we want a receiver to cut through the bureaucratic red tape and the failure to lay the foundation for reform."

The division's director, Bernard Warner, said "it's a bit premature to pass judgment in terms of what the judge may or may not do." He acknowledged that his department had been operating with "a lack of administrative capacity" to respond to the court's orders, but said that it is now beginning to put people in place to enact reform.

"I think we're making a lot of progress," Warner said. "It's important to recognize we're only in the second year of funding for reforms under the lawsuit. It's a very complex case."

Schwarzenegger signed the consent decree in November 2004 to settle a lawsuit that accused what was then called the California Youth Authority of mismanaging a system rife with inmate suicides, staff abuse of wards and gang violence and lacking effective rehabilitation programs. In some instances, wards were attending classrooms sitting individually in cages the size of telephone booths. Youths in the most volatile institutions were being kept in their cells 23 hours a day.

Under the decree, the state promised to put in place six remedial plans covering safety and welfare, mental health care, medical care, education, sex offender treatment and wards with disabilities. In the ensuing years, plaintiffs' lawyers and a special master monitoring the case for the courts have repeatedly filed papers documenting the state's failure to live up to the agreement, culminating in the request for the receiver filed Oct. 26.

The call for the receiver comes barely three months after the Republican governor and a Legislature controlled by Democrats agreed on a plan to systematically reduce the division's population to only the most dangerous and seriously troubled youths. The division currently houses 2,300 wards, down from about 10,000 a decade ago, and is hoping to reduce the number to 1,500 within two years. The state is planning to pay counties to keep less-serious offenders closer to home.

Sue Burrell, an attorney with the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, termed the reduction of the division's population "an expression of the governor's frustration with the slow pace of reform."

"Why should we put all this money into a system that just isn't moving forward the way it needs to be?" said Burrell, who is not a party to the suit. "That's a huge expense for the state."

Norman, the plaintiffs' lawyer, said the four failures of operation represent a "bottleneck" that has slowed a systemwide fix.

"They're stopping anything from happening," Norman said.

The hearing on the judge's order is scheduled for March 10 in Oakland.

About the writer:

• Call Andy Furillo, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1141.