California's Juvenile Prison System A Snake Pit

by Will Roy

(PNS) -- Over the past couple of weeks, media people have bombarded me. The California Youth Authority (CYA) has suddenly become a hot topic.

"You've been in the California Youth Authority. Can you describe the injustices that went on in there? Describe the 'cages.' Explain the pain. Dig deep into your soul and muster up all those horrific experiences."

Words like these spread through my ears like a disease when I sit down in an office chair and let another stranger pry into my life. But I'll keep telling my story, because there are thousands of people like me who can't tell their own.

It took two suicides in the same Preston, California, facility in January of this year for professionals to finally take a peek at the California Youth Authority's (CYA) faults.

What they found were inhumane cages, unjust conditions and an institutional conspiracy to punish and not rehabilitate. What were these professional researchers who give their lives to statistics doing when they saw CYA's recidivism rate at 90 percent?

And even now that they're aware of what's going on, why are the voices of youths who have experienced these hardships constantly overshadowed by those of professional advocates?

I would ask these advocates to ask us how CYA should be reformed.

In 1997, I was arrested and the police threw me into the maximum-security unit of San Francisco's Youth Guidance Center (YGC). I was 16. It was the first time I was ever locked up, so I wasn't suspicious when my public defender told me to plead guilty.

After I plead guilty, I was quickly sent to the Youth Authority in December of '97. At first, I was housed in O.H. Close, and they labeled me as a member of a gang called "The Bay," which doesn't even exist on the outside. They justified it by saying it was a way to categorize me for safety and security reasons. But the fights I got into wouldn't have occurred if I didn't have this label forced on me. And those fights got my time in there doubled.

After one of these fights, I was sprayed with a river of mace and thrown into solitary confinement. I spent 23 hours a day in a cell by myself for a month. The hour I didn't spend in my cell, I showered and sat in a cage by myself with nothing to do but stare into space. This was what they called "recreation." When my mother came to see me I was put in a fluorescent orange jumpsuit and wore handcuffs and shackles. The "peace officers" used to joke and call it jailhouse jewelry.

After my stay at O.H. Close, I went to fire camp. When I got there it was summer time, and I was fighting fires as soon as I found out where my bed was going to be. We would fight the most colossal infernos, and it was strenuous work. But it gave me a very real sense of accomplishment. I only stayed at fire camp for a month, though, because my falsely labeled gang membership caught up with me. I got into a fight and the camp quickly moved me out of there.

They shipped me to N.A. Chaderjian, and this is where I did my hardest time. I slept three feet away from my toilet, so the smell of feces and urine became my closest neighbors. I could hear brutal beatings, sexual assaults and violent threats through the vents of adjacent cells. I had to lay face down on a two-inch mattress -- which was on top of a block of concrete -- with my hands behind my back, just to get a tray of rancid mystery meatloaf put in my cell.

The education system in there was so bad that I've seen people unable to go to school for years because a member of their gang got into a fight. The medical services were worse. I tore two ligaments in my left knee and didn't get any medical attention for eight months. It took me a year of writing grievances to finally have surgery done on my knee.

The California Youth Authority needs to be destroyed before any productivity can occur. You can't build something effective on top of something rotten. After we've done that, we need to use all of the resources it took to keep CYA afloat and put them into local programs across the state. How can you teach a child how to live in his community by taking him out of his community? Lastly, follow up with these programs to make sure they're meeting the standards required to really rehabilitate their youth. It would be better for the youth, society, their communities and even the state budget.

We've given the California Youth Authority too many chances to reform. For too long, Y.A. and its wrongdoings were hidden behind those gleaming barbed-wire fences. But with two suicides in the same week, policy makers have finally seen the light. Now that Y.A. is no mystery, let's shut the whole operation down.