National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript #30-05 The Juvenile Injustice System
July 27, 2005

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2005/3005.html

Beck: This week on “Making Contact”...

Brewer: They’re supposed to be rehabilitating kids… where I thought my son was safe at, he wasn’t. It would have been better for him being on the streets, getting shot at by bullets.

Beck: There’s an old saying that goes: “Children are the Future.” If that’s true, then a startling portion of our future is locked up in prisons. In the United States and around the world, a growing number of groups are fighting to redirect public resources away from punishment and toward opportunity for young people.

On this edition, we’ll hear about the scandal-ridden California Youth Authority, abuses inside one of Brazil’s juvenile detention centers, as well as alternative approaches to helping troubled kids.

I'm Justin Beck, your host this week on “Making Contact”, a program creating connections between people, vital ideas, and important information.

Beck: Throughout the 1990’s, physical abuse and lack of medical treatment were endemic to Louisiana's youth-prison system. One facility in particular, known as “Tallulah,” gained a national reputation for cruelty. Parents, lawyers and advocates came together with an ambitious goal: to close Tallulah and use the money saved for community-based alternatives. And in 2000 they succeeded. The closure of Tallulah paved the way for a radical restructuring of Louisiana’s juvenile justice system, and opened the door for reform in other states, like California.

It used to be that California was a leader in youth advocacy and rehabilitation. Today the state leads the nation in a very different way. Decades of tough on crime legislation in the state have led to a massive increase in the incarceration of young people. California’s youth prison system has been rocked by a series of scandals, including a videotaped beating of inmates by prison guards, as well as a number of deaths.

Youth advocacy and prison reform groups are campaigning to shut down the state’s outdated youth prisons, And as correspondent Tim Kingston reports, the campaign has a chance of succeeding. In the meantime, many mothers have endured a loss that no parent should have to deal with.

Brewer: On September the 5 th of 2004, they came to my mom’s house and told me my son was dead, and they didn’t bring a picture of him or anything. It was like, “he’s dead and you can go identify his body.”

Kingston: And that’s how Connie Brewer, of Oakland, California, found out her son Dyron had died in the custody of the California Youth Authority, the state’s juvenile justice system.

Brewer: When we got there they told me that I shouldn’t have came because he was property of them and they identified his body, and I told them, “no, that was my child, and I had all the rights in the world to identify him because I wanted to make sure that was my child.” 20, 30 minutes passed by, about 15 guards came out with two pictures and they showed us the pictures and wouldn’t let us touch them and grabbed them back.

And then I just broke down and cried because that was my child! And I told them that they had killed my child because he had a black eye. They did something to my child and they’re not gonna know what happened to him. And they wouldn’t tell me anything.

Kingston: But there is one thing that the prison authorities did tell her.

Brewer: They said he died from natural cause. How can you be 24 years old and you go to sleep and when they come by your cell they see you in a police position with your face down and your hands behind your head? Something’s not right. He was 24 years old. He was healthy. He did not lay there and die on his own.

Kingston: Dyron was one of 4 young prisoners who died in the custody of the California Youth Authority, or CYA, in 2004, along with Durrel Feaster, Deon Whitfield, and Roberto Lombana. Their deaths came after the Prison Law Office, based in Marin, California, fought a massive lawsuit against the state in late 2003.

The suit alleged widespread violence, medical and mental healthcare neglect, educational failures, and ill treatment of the system’s youthful wards. That perfect storm of scandal and lawsuit has sparked a shakeup of the youth prison system resulting in the reforms that are currently under way.

The California Youth Authority is a prison complex that houses more than three thousand young inmates in eight different institutions. California has one of the nation’s worst youth recidivism rates. Critics say that 9 out of 10 young people released by the CYA wind up back in custody. Activists and criminal justice experts both charge that the very design of the buildings is part of what leads to violence and depression among staff and inmates. The youth authority’s mission statement says it is dedicated to rehabilitating young offenders. But the reality of the CYA has proved to be very different, says Lenore Anderson; program director of the Oakland based group Books Not Bars, which is campaigning to shut down California’s eight troubled youth prisons.

Anderson: Young people aren’t dying in systems that provide real rehabilitation and support. Young people are dying inside the California Youth Authority.

Beyond that, you have a videotaped beating, aired nationally, that showed guards beating two prone CYA youth 28 times, several of those hits in the head. So, you’ve got 4 young people who’ve died in one year, a videotaped beating aired nationally showing CYA guards beating two CYA youth, and then you have expert reports released last year that document intense levels of violence -- so much so that the experts themselves call the CYA the most violent youth system in the nation.

Kingston: Those experts include not just youth inmate advocates, but also those from national groups such as the Commonweal Institute and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and California’s Little Hoover Commission. Anderson says that the crisis within the CYA has opened a window of opportunity for real reform.

Anderson: The year 2004 was both a year of scandal for the California Youth Authority and a year of transformation. Never before have you seen top to bottom agreement that the system is a total failure.

Everyone from the Governor’s office to some of the staff who even work in these facilities, to the parents of young people locked in these facilities have agreed that you can no longer justify the kind of violence, abuse and neglect young people inside the CYA are experiencing.

Kingston: Lawmakers in Sacramento are pushing for reform. The legislature and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger have signed off on a roadmap designed to institute clearer lines of command and responsibility, to improve medical, mental health and disability services, to eliminate the use of unnecessary force by staff, and finally, to improve educational opportunities by increasing the number of teachers inside the CYA.

In addition, and much to the astonishment of inmate advocates, the state settled that massive lawsuit filed by the Prison Law Office in 2003 instead of fighting it, as has always been the case in the past. State prison officials for the first time acknowledged in their words, that the system was in need of repair.

Sarah Lungren is a spokeswoman for the CYA.

Lungren: We are committed to bringing about positive change in this department, implementing a vision, getting back to a therapeutic environment for the rehabilitation of wards. We all agree on that. The lawsuit was a jump-off point – settling that was saying, “We are going forward and we are going to get back to being - to delivering the best rehabilitative services for our wards.”

We have gotten rid of what was called “the SPAs”, which were Special Program Areas, which we used to deliver education, but they were more of a cage that protected the teacher, protected the ward from gang involvement. But those we’re not using anymore.

We’ve emphasized the need to reduce violence in all of our facilities; we’ve done more training on the use of force, so that our staff are equipped with using force only as a last resort. We’ve closed some of the more archaic living units that were not conducive to a therapeutic environment.

Griswold: From our perspective, this plan is a major step in the right direction, but we still have a very long way to go.

Kingston: That’s Belinda Griswold, of Books Not Bars.

Griswold: And the only way to really implement the vision of this plan, which is a very strong, good vision, that’s actually leading us in the right direction, is to actually close these facilities. Without closing them we can’t deliver on the promises of this plan, we can’t actually follow through with the promises of real lasting reform within the youth authority.

Kingston: There are places in the United States where similar reforms are already under way. One of them is Missouri, which shut down its only statewide prison institution three decades ago, replacing it with college dorm-style facilities that emphasize education and treatment over punishment.

It seems to work, because officials in Missouri say their state’s recidivism rate is much lower than that of California’s. In Missouri, which closed its youth prison in 1983, state officials say their overall rate of recidivism is just 8 percent -- much lower than in the California Youth Authority, where 70 percent of boys and nearly half the girls wind up back in the state system after they’re released. Lenore Anderson of Books Not Bombs says Missouri’s juvenile justice system also costs much less to operate than the C-Y-A.

Anderson: And most importantly the young people come out of those programs and have opportunities to succeed, get employment, get housing, go on to college, reunite with their families positively. It’s just a completely different story in Missouri.

There are other states across the nation that have followed a similar path. I think about one in five states across the nation have chosen to close their youth prisons or some of their youth prisons in order to make their juvenile justice systems more effective. So across the nation, when state governments really look seriously at what does it mean to provide rehabilitation to youth in trouble, the conclusion is you don’t do it through abusive prisons run by prison guards. You do it through positive programming.

Kingston: Barbara Jackson is one relative who could do with some positivity. Her grandson has been in the CYA for about eight years. She traveled to Missouri recently to see for herself how juvenile justice could be done differently.

Jackson: They have a totally different system. Everybody who went there left in tears and so full of shame. I was ashamed to be a Californian, because the way the treat the children who are getting into trouble is they have a help not hurt program.

Their children are there not more than 2 years because they actually believe that if they have not helped you in two years then it is something that they are doing wrong. I mean they have [laughs] smiley faces for bedspreads, they have stuffed animals. They have a complete, all day long educational program. The kids get up at 7. They go from class to class like they would do on a regular school ground. They put these children in a setting like they were—children!

Kingston: Jackson’s grandson has been in the CYA since he got in a schoolyard fight as a young boy.

He is now 20 and serving time as an adult. Jackson wants to make sure the violence, retaliation and neglect that has dogged her grandson and many others does not continue. Over the years she has talked frequently with her grandson about the violence he witnessed inside the CYA.

Jackson: He said, “Grandma, there is a fight every hour, every hour. There is never any letting up.” He’s actually in jail now and he said it is sad that he is more comfortable in a prison setting than in a CYA setting. That is a sad statement to make.

CYA should be closed down.

Kingston: Inmates, parents, advocates, experts, legislators and even some CYA officials are waiting to see if the promised reforms really materialize or if the system does what it has done so well in the past, which is to hunker down, make promises, and once the storm has passed, go back to its old ways. Groups like Books Not Bars are determined not to let that happen, as are the 300 parents who are working with the group on behalf of their children.

For Making Contact, this is Tim Kingston.  

Music/break  

Beck: Many young people inside of juvenile detention halls have suffered abuse outside of prison as well – they’ve led troubled lives, and are fighting to be heard and helped. The following is an excerpt from a group poem, entitled, “Just Listen,” composed by girls from the Center for Young Women’s Development.

Girl One: Take a moment and just listen as I speak from my heart – everything that I’ve been through is for a reason and it was hard. Just listen for a moment, it’s what I really needed you to do, but also at the same time, I coulda, I shoulda, just listened to you. Just listen, just listen, just listen… See- it’s not that hard. I don’t know why I was trippin’ from the start. Just listen as my struggle and your struggle play the role. Get together and make it happen cuz we getting’ way too old. Way too old, way too old, way too old. Us women – young women, old women, baby girls, let’s hold hands, keep them locked and just listen to the world.

Girl Two: Cuz no one really understands I hurt, scream, kick and fight because I can’t cry. Hey fool, depressional substance blew up my internal insides, suppose the safety net of regurgitation in which the oppressed corpse lie. Cuz no one really understands I am the filling in the stomach when you eat your last meal. I’m that broke-ness in your pocket, internal suicide against your own will. Why cry over milk that’s been spilled when the mop that cleans up my mess defines you being real. Cuz no one really understands I, understands me, to want, to need, to persevere, to struggle, to win, to lose, to die, to live catastrophically.

Girl Three: Had a baby too young, and my baby daddy sold me a dream. Now I’m struggling. Took on the role of head of household and became isolated in the process. Now I’m struggling. Bills need to be paid, with no money to pay them. Now I’m struggling. Started to feel like my family was doubting me and now me and my brother aren’t close anymore. Now I’m struggling. I wake up every day mad at myself because my life isn’t where I want it to be. Now I’m struggling.

Beck: We’ll have more about young people in prison in a few moments. You’re listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project, if you’d like a free listener packet on youth and prisons or for a cassette or CD copies of this program, call 800-529-5736. You can also download programs or get our podcast at radioproject.org. We rely on your input and support.

Music/break

Beck: At any given time in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, some 4,000 juveniles are passing through the state’s juvenile justice system. Most of the kids get warnings, fines or community service.

But, for what are considered the most serious offenses, like drug use, assault and violent crime, prison is the most likely punishment.

And as correspondent Alex Goldmark found out, many of the kids, some as young as twelve, are doing hard time.

(background talking)

Marcelo: (Portugese, translated)Go in. Eat dinner. Eat lunch

Go to school, go back to the cell. Drink chocolate milk. [Laugh]

Eat everything they give us. Ehhhh. Day to day, everyday, that’s it.

Goldmark: 16 year old Marcelo has been in the Padre Severino Youth Detention Center, here in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, for just 38 days of his three year sentence.

He has a shaved head and wears blue shorts, just like the other 264 boys here. Though stout and upbeat, Marcelo is short with his answers while a guard looks on.

Marcelo: Uhh. The food is good. It’s good.

Goldmark: Marcelo isn’t his real name. For their own protection, all names of the kids in this report have been changed.

Padre Severino could be a model rehabilitation center for 12 to 18 year old boys. There’s a 50 meter swimming pool, a soccer field, even a nice, shaded garden.

But the kids rarely get to enjoy any of these amenities. Marcelo spends two hours in school each day, followed by some recreation time in a large concrete room, they call the patio. Showers are limited to one or two per week.

On this day, dozens of young, somber faces peer out of tiny windows looking at the knee high weeds covering the soccer field.

Marcelo : After dinner we have to stay in the cell so we keep calm. To sit there thinking about your family,... to think about what we did, so that we think twice before we do something like this again after we get out of here.

Goldmark: Right now the center is short-staffed and running at almost twice its capacity. Sometimes, there are only five guards, to watch over more than 250 kids.

Padre Severino’s Director of Security says, sadly, they just can’t let the boys out to play, or to take vocational courses, or to do really much of anything without risking escapes.

Goldmark: Dona Rafaela’s 15 year old son just got out of Padre Severino. He told her everything about what went on inside.

Rafaela: Really, I haven’t seen rehabilitation in Padre Severino, only mistreatment.

Goldmark: Dona Rafaela is part of a support group called Project Muleke – or simply, Project Kid – where today about a dozen mothers and one father share their experiences about parenting a child in detention.

Rafaela: When my son got there, there were only 20 in the cell. Sleeping one to each bed. He didn’t have a blanket. When someone left he took theirs. When it was cold, what he did was sleep with another friend, together with him like they were married.

You can’t sleep on the floor -- if you do, the rats get you.

Goldmark: Dona Rafaela’s son was sent to the Padre Severino detention center after being arrested for an attempted car jacking. She says mistreatment there is common and systematic.

Rafaela: You can’t complain. It is “Yes Sir! No Sir!”

Hands behind your back, head down. Raise your head, get hit in the face.

Goldmark: She calls many of the prison’s rules dehumanizing.

Rafaela: They are called by number. There they don’t have names, their names are their numbers.

They don’t change their clothes. They take a shower but they can’t change their clothes. They can only change their clothes on Saturday, on visiting day. On visiting day, on Saturday, they can brush their teeth. A whole week without brushing their teeth!

And, I saw a boy, during a visit, he had a misunderstanding with another boy and that boy beat him in front of all of us. In front of his mother and the mothers that were there. Then, he got hit with two big smacks on the back from a guard. And when we were leaving we could hear that he was screaming because he was being beaten, but we couldn’t do anything. Because if we defended him, our sons will be beaten too.

Goldmark: Dr. Simone Moreira de Souza is the public defender for youth. She says beatings in Rio’s juvenile detention system are common.

Souza: Because here in Rio state, the guards aren’t prepared to deal specifically with these adolescents, so they still employ fear as a part of their educational vision. It is the only method they learned to demonstrate their authority.

Goldmark: In a busy government building, people wait in line to see the public defender.

98% of all minors arrested in the State are represented by the public defender, who also investigates abuse within the detention centers.

Souza: In Rio de Janeiro no official body has ever condemned a guard for torture.

Goldmark: Dr. Souza’s office has not been able to get a single conviction on an abuse case, even though it has found what she calls, instruments of torture.

Souza: For example, a piece of wood approximately 1.5 meters long, really heavy, like a baseball bat, with ‘Human Rights’ written on one side, and ‘Statute of the Child and Adolescent’ on the other.

Goldmark: The Statute of the Child and Adolescent is the 1990 child protection law that governs juvenile justice in Brazil.

Souza: The law is excellent; it’s a first world law. Based on international conventions. It is so good that it was copied by other countries. What happens, unfortunately, is that the law is not properly interpreted, it’s just not applied how it should be.

Goldmark: Under the law, young offenders are not seen as criminals; they just make mistakes. The law mandates that detention centers focus on rehabilitation rather than on punishment, and that they offer classes, counseling, and leisure time.

Dr Souza says, this doesn’t happen in practice.

Souza: It is rare to find a center nowadays in Brazil that runs a school. And much more rare to find centers that have vocational courses. Or that have social services or someone tracking the cases within the detention center.

Soares: The system does not re-socialize kids right now.

Goldmark: Fernando Campos Soares was a guard in Rio’s juvenile detention system for two years.

Soares: I guarantee 100 percent can be rehabilitated!

Soares: People say there are cases where can’t be rehabilitated, but I don’t know of one. Show me one that can’t be, “Oh because he went and killed someone.” I got tired of seeing the ones who’ve killed … I saw several crying. That isn’t how an adult who kills in cold blood behaves.

Goldmark: Soares lost his job shortly after speaking out against other guards for what he considered abuse.

On New Years Eve 2001, he was called to a detention center to help deal with a rebellion.

Soares: When I got there, there wasn’t a really a rebellion. It was just that the adolescents had set fire to all the mattresses in the cell and were there asking to be let out so that when the doors opened, they could try to escape.

Goldmark: Soares says he urged the other guards to open the cells so no that one would suffocate.

Soares: But before they opened the cells, they formed a corridor, called a Polish Corridor, where each guard had a nightstick in their hand. The kids passed through that corridor, all the way to the bathroom on the other side … and the guards hit them, they hit them a lot.

Goldmark: Soares says he aggravated his coworkers by reprimanding them on the spot for the violence.

Soares: They came up to me and accused me of undermining their authority [laughs] because I complained in front of the kids. I should do that afterward, they said. After what? After they break something, or kill one of the kids?

Goldmark: He took his complaints to the guards’ union and prison authorities. The other guards were suspended, then reassigned. Several months later Soares was let go.

Despite his personal experience, Soares says most of the guards are good people, trying to do a difficult job, under difficult circumstances.

He says many of the adolescent detainees also appreciate the good work that the guards do.

Soares: They like it when we give them limits … because many of them never had dads… and they see the guards as father figures, in many cases, really.

When he sees that you are doing this because you like him, not because you don’t like him, he respects you.

Goldmark: 18 year old Arnaldo spent a year and a half in different detention centers for being an accomplice to drug sales. Dressed in a sweater vest, and still with a shaved head, today, Arnaldo is in downtown Rio with his Mom, hoping to find a job through an acquaintance of hers.

He admits that the harsh treatment in detention is what made him want to turn his life around.

But, he says, he wouldn’t wish the same thing on anyone else.

Arnaldo: Nobody on this earth, not a kid, not an adult, should go through that, because staying in there, inside, is no kind of life for nobody. In there... it’s where sons cry and their mothers don’t see.

Nobody deserves that place there. If you go there, you are just being crazy. Insane! I never want to go back there to that place. And today, look! I am here. I want to get a job. I am going to see this woman here who is going to help arrange a job for me.

 Goldmark: Back in the Padre Severino detention center, overcrowding is still a problem that leads to many other problems.

Sergio Novo, Director of the agency in charge of Rio’s detention centers, and the person theoretically responsible for hiring more guards, did not return a request for an interview, and declined to speak on microphone.

Still, his agency is making improvements. An open call for new guards is underway, but the Brazilian government’s hiring process can take months, or even years.

Several buildings have been remodeled already – and work on others is being planned. The most hopeful sign of all, though, is the decline in detainee rebellions over poor conditions. They used to be frequent, three or four each year, now they are rare. There has only been one in the past four years. And reports of abuse, though still common, are less widespread.

The true solution to overcrowding and the other problems in the prison system, is keeping kids from committing crimes in the first place, for instance, by giving them opportunities to earn money legally. And that challenge, unfortunately, is a problem much bigger than the prison system.

Marcelo is looking to get out early for good behavior. After that though, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

Marcelo: What do I want to do with my life? God knows what I am going to do. I am not going to say to you [uses different voice] I am going to change, I am going to stop, because maybe I’ll say it and then outside I’ll keep doing what I was doing… God knows what he is doing.

Goldmark: For Making Contact, I am Alex Goldmark in Rio de Janeiro.

Theme Music

Beck: That's it for this edition of “Making Contact.” Thanks for listening. Special thanks to Sandra Lupien, Charles Ball, Eric Klein, Van Ferrier, and Shiro Kanyugo. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter trio.

“Making Contact” is an independent production, funded primarily by generous gifts from people in the community. We are committed to providing a unique forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you'd like to support our work ///or ///if you have ideas for future programs, we'd love to hear from you. For a cassette or C-D copy of program number 30-05, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. That's 800-529-5736. You can also visit our web site at radioproject-dot-org. Please contact us if you’d like a free listener packet on youth and prisons.

Lisa Rudman is our Executive Director, Pauline Bartolone, Associate Producer, Dorian Taylor, Communications Manager; Esther Manilla, Outreach Coordinator; Tom Evans, Development Associate .

And, I'm your host and Associate Producer, Justin Beck.