Gov. Jerry Brown calls for a historic shuttering of the state's notorious youth prison system
Source: San Jose Mercury News
Following years of failed attempts to better serve juvenile offenders and the public's safety, California's once-sprawling youth corrections system may soon bow to a final, unprecedented strategy: shutting its locked gates for good.
Budget pressure in a system with annual costs of $200,000 per ward drove Gov. Jerry Brown this week to propose halting all new intakes at the Division Of Juvenile Justice. If approved by state legislators, beginning next year the state's three remaining prisons would then shrink themselves to oblivion, as current inmates complete their terms. Under the plan, county probation departments would assume the custody and treatment of all juvenile offenders -- an expansion from current practice where only the most serious and violent are housed by the state.
But Brown's vision represents far more than just belt-tightening. Already, it's being described by youth crime experts across the country as a historic proposal given the state's size and the notorious history of its youth prisons. Mesh cages, 23-hour cell confinement and brutal staff beatings are all a well-documented part of that legacy.
... California's state system has already reached milestones that youth advocates could only have dreamed of a decade ago. The in-custody population has plunged from more than 10,000 wards in 1996 to just 1,100 today. And for the first time in recent history, conditions inside the youth prisons have finally begun to improve, said the system's longtime chief rival, Donald Specter of the Marin-based Prison Law Office.
Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_19690874