May 26, 2009
More calls for California to shut down its youth prison system
With California mired in near-catastrophic budget woes, a growing number of researchers are calling for the state to shut down its youth prison system, which they say has become too expensive, too mired in abusive practices, and too ineffective in enhancing public safety.
There are just six remaining prisons for the state's most serious juvenile offenders, and they house the lowest number of inmates ever recorded in modern history. That has left taxpayers in an era of deep cuts to education and social services footing a bill of a quarter-million dollars each year for each of the 1,600 youthful offenders now left in state custody.
In a report headed this week to legislators wrestling with a $21.3 billion budget shortfall, the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice describes a way out: Shut down the state prison system for youthful offenders, and turn the population back to county probation departments that are sitting on empty beds in new and refurbished juvenile halls…
LINK - MercuryNews.com
