This article is an introduction to the closing of The Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), previously called the California Youth Authority (CYA), which played a vital role in the lives of many of California's youth. It provided them with guidance, support, and rehabilitation opportunities. The YA also created a world where some wards or inmates learned to be more dangerous criminals than before entering the YA.
The CYA was more than a prison system, with concrete buildings and barbed wire fencing, housing violent individuals with guard dogs. It was never viewed as a boarding school, even though it started as a system to help every young person who entered its walls. In the early days, the CYA gave direction and aligned wards and staff toward common goals, such as reducing punishment as a treatment tool. However, half the ward population views YA staff as corrupt, calling them "cops or K9s." The department attempted to encourage staff "to provide growth opportunities" to those they supervised. It was a complex system, and like many other juvenile agencies, it lost its way over time. The closure was about a system designed to rehabilitate but was marred by scandal and corruption, with increasing violence, sexual abuse, and death.
For many of the staff in the CYA, their work was a part of their identity; for others, it was only about their selfish desires and willingness to destroy those who did not show them loyalty. Once the department employed officers and administrators who misused their power for personal gain or revenge, it was on the road to destruction. The department became a system of incompetence where staff and inmates died without the department leaders making any needed or effective changes to ensure these things did not occur again. The Directors and superintendents of these institutions did what they could to hide their incompetence. Their corruption involved concealing illicit activities, deliberate negligence, conspiracy, or intentional failure to fulfill responsibilities.
One reason for the closure was that juvenile prisons have high operational costs, with the California system's expenses ranging from $150,000 to $300,000 per inmate. This cost was more the reason for the closure than all the scandals. These costs were due to the increased emphasis on restorative justice practices and community-based interventions to address the underlying causes of delinquency and support the reintegration of young offenders into society. The department's failure to address the inmate's wanting to be gang members for life or the change in the mental makeup of the inmate population helped to close its doors. The CYA failed to resolve the increase in violent behavior, causing the cost to rise. Even with the high cost, the closing of any juvenile system starts with those entrusted to make it work.
The problems at one of the department's most effective facilities, Ventura School for Girls, stretch back nearly four decades. Critics of co-ed youth prisons, like Ventura, have raised concerns regarding safety, security, gender-specific needs, staff training, privacy, and rehabilitation outcomes. The department's closure was also due to Ventura's failure because no other co-ed facilities exist in the United States that have problems like Ventura's, for example, officers becoming pregnant by inmates and inmates by officers. The department had inmates suspected of killing their roommates and charged with covering up. In one institution, an officer was murdered and later discovered at the city dump. Very little was done to prevent these things from happening again.
The department investigations became a joke. After creating the Internal Affairs Unit (IA), the department had nearly 61 investigations in two years at Ventura alone. Staff were terminated for misconduct, with most getting their jobs back. The department regularly prosecuted officers for excessive use of force but rarely were inmates charged or prosecuted for attacks on staff. Almost every allegation made by an inmate was treated as true, ending with the staff termination. The IA unit never charged wards for giving false evidence or lying to investigators. Because of this practice, the wards knew they had the power to end a staff's career by merely making an allegation.
The department could have overcome these issues if it had trained its staff and managers to handle the changing environment in which they had to work. DJJ's leadership in the twenty-some years before its closure protected a system that needed improvement instead of praise. The department needed to stop housing those under eighteen who wanted to change their life with adult criminals and career gang members.
Even after the closure, there is no evidence that the new Office of Youth and Community Restoration (OYCR) differs from the DJJ. It does not have a system to ensure direct auditing of its programs to ensure success. They do not address how the system in these local facilities will manage violence or prevent contraband from entering their facilities any differently than those existing systems are handling them now. They have not addressed or included a system to prevent inappropriate staff and ward relationships. Their system does not mention using experienced staff, such as role models and mentoring programs, or how to use them to improve the system.
To better understand the department's closure, read my book "Behind the Closed Doors of the California Youth Authority." It is more than a narrative on the DJJ's closing; it confronts the uncomfortable truths about our youth justice system.
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