The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

But the report also identified a number of obstacles, including an entrenched prison culture, managers who mostly react to crises, and a recent administrative reorganization that placed juvenile institutions under control of a corrections bureaucracy that is geared toward adults.

For years, the state's juvenile system has been criticized as unsafe and poorly run. A Mercury News series in 2004 found that wards receive little of the education or treatment required by state law. Instead, they are housed in prison-like dorms or cell blocks, where violent gangs and guards vie for the upper hand.

Still, the state's top juvenile official said the new report was cause for optimism. It includes recommendation on issues such as staffing levels, housing wards according to their risk of violence, and assigning managers to develop new policies and procedures.

``Can we do it? The answer is yes,'' said Bernard Warner, chief of the state correction agency's Division of Juvenile Justice, formerly known as the California Youth Authority. He stressed that the effort will need cooperation from the Legislature and others, including reform groups.

But attorney Don Specter of the non-profit Prison Law Office said success will depend heavily on the state's commitment to recruiting managers and staff who will focus on helping troubled youths change their behavior, rather than simply acting as guards.

Officials commissioned the report after Specter complained that earlier plans, which the state produced under a legal settlement with his office, were too vague.

While Specter called the new report an improvement, he said he wasn't sure if the administration has budgeted enough money to follow its recommendations. Warner said his agency will seek more funds in next year's budget, on top of $55 million the administration has already proposed to hire hundreds of new staffers and begin reducing the size of living groups, to provide more individualized treatment.

Meanwhile, one outspoken legislator dismissed the new report as a ``half-fix'' because it did not address the prospect of putting juvenile facilities under the management of the state health department or some other agency.

``It's a promising blueprint, but it doesn't go to the bigger fixes that I believe are needed,'' said state Sen. Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who has scheduled a hearing on the state's plans later this month.

State officials have argued that it makes more sense to keep the juvenile and adult institutions under a single correctional agency. But the expert panel, led by consultant Christopher Murray of Olympia, Wash., reported that most states have separated the two.

Most juvenile-justice experts say young offenders have different needs and will respond differently to rehabilitation programs than adults.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/nort
hern_california/14258618.htm

Murray's report offered some evidence the system can improve. It said violence has dropped recently at the notorious N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton, after officials began reducing the size of living groups there.