“J” is a prisoner in the largest juvenile-justice system in the world – the California Youth Authority, a teen gulag with 9,000 inmates in 11 training schools, including the Nelles School, and four conservation camps. CYA is the last stop for a select few of the 250,000 youth offenders arrested in California each year – the kids who commit crimes like murder, rape and armed robbery and who, in the words of a lobbyist for the California Correctional Peace Officers Union, are “the cream of the crud.”
Once famous for its innovative approaches to rehabilitation, CYA today is overcrowded, underfunded and trapped between society’s ambivalent attitudes about juvenile crime. Rehabilitation is still a goal, and CYA officials say they’re proud that 47 percent of their “graduates” stay out of the system for at least two years. But the agency’s primary mission now is public safety, and that means most CYA facilities are run like adult prisons. “California violates just about anyone’s standards for what to do with kids,” says Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. “It runs a chaotic system that is reeling out of control.”
Take the Youth Training School at Chino, better known as YTS. With its tree-lined driveway and neat landscaping, YTS looks like a model youth facility. But it houses 1,672 young men between the ages of 18 and 25, almost all of whom were convicted as juveniles. About 25 percent were convicted of homicide, and many are members of street gangs like L.A.’s infamous Crips and Bloods. Although gang insignia are forbidden, YTS inmates display their gang affiliation on their necks with homemade tattoos. Fights between the gangs are commonplace, and YTS has a security squad that uses large aerosol foggers to spray pepper gas or Mace in these melees. “A lot of the kids who used to come here were right out of Father Flanagan’s Boys Town,” says counselor Leonard Gomez. “Now they’re murderers, rapists [and] serious drug dealers.”
“It’s not a pleasant place,” says Adrian McCovy, 21, a model “ward” at YTS. “The majority of guys are here on gang-related crimes. If you’re weak, they’ll prey on you. Fights happen all the time, and at every fight [the counselors] use the gas. The particles stick to your face and you can’t even open your eyes.” McCovy was sent to YTS for attempted murder after two street toughs tried to steal his car – a crime he still believes was unavoidable. He is now enrolled in a college program but, like other inmates, says he has learned crime as well. “I know how to steal a car and I know how to sell drugs. I never knew how to do that before,” he says. “Most guys here won’t get rehabilitated. They’re getting ready to go out and commit another crime.”
CYA’s many troubles reflect the national crime debate in miniature. Is rehabilitation still the goal, or is society now bent on keeping criminals – even very young criminals – off the streets and punishing them? CYA offers a wide variety of training programs, but funding cuts and overcrowding have made the waiting lists longer and longer. California, meanwhile, is struggling to contain a sharp increase in violent youth crime, and that means getting tough. L.A. District Attorney Gil Garcetti and other officials are pushing for a complete overhaul of the state’s juvenile system, but no one knows how to balance rehabilitation with the get-tough mentality. “Rehabilitation is a nice thing to talk about,” says state Assemblyman Chuck Quackenbush, author of a bill that would allow 14-year-olds to be tried as adults. “But I’m not interested in the killer’s welfare. I’m interested in putting them in jail and protecting society. And if that means crowded prisons, so be it.”
The result is a system of kiddie jails that are surrounded by razor wire, dominated by gang warfare and regulated (if that is the word) by pepper gas – and in which some inmates are as young as 12. Is this the way to reach kids who get into trouble? And if it is, what will they be like when they get out?
