In the wake of this year’s California Youth Authority controversy, youth advocates and criminal justice experts are beginning to question the effectiveness of the state’s juvenile justice system.

In January, two youths committed suicide at a facility in Ione, Calif. Later that month an anonymous report was released to the Associated Press, accusing staff at the CYA of drugging youth and locking up inmates in cages. Two months later, a video was released showing two wards being punched repeatedly and shot with pepper-spray guns by CYA staff.

The video prompted an investigation by Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who decided not to prosecute the staff members in question due to what he called lack of evidence.

“Everything we read about is nothing new,” said Dan Macallair, a lecturer at SF State and the executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. “It’s the same stories over and over.”

The CYA’s Web site states that their mission is to give offenders education, treatment, and training, while controlling crime and delinquency. Yet some community members question whether CYA can fulfill its mission.

Books Not Bars, a statewide program sponsored by The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, has launched an “Alternatives for Youth” campaign against the CYA.

According to pamphlets released to the public, Books Not Bars endorses the idea that the CYA is too violent and that it is an outdated organization unable to do the job effectively. The campaign says that the CYA focuses too much on punishment, and not enough on opportunity.

Another organization that is raising awareness about incarcerated youth caught in the system is The Beat Within (www.thebeatwithin.org), a weekly publication featuring the writings and art work from the Juvenile Halls—which includes the CYA.

David Inocencio founded The Beat Within with the help of the Pacific News Service. Inocencio first came up with the idea in 1996 when he was working with juveniles in the public defender’s office.

“I was so moved with what they were sharing with me,” said Inocencio, who sees a lot of depression and a “hunger to connect” in the pieces he publishes – some of which are published by current and former CYA inmates.

“When you’re incarcerated, the institution is only concerned with the detainee being a model detainee,” he said. “They need to figure out how to prepare them for the reality of freedom.”

According to the CYA Web site, juveniles can only be ordered to go to the CYA if they are referred there by a juvenile court, tried as an adult and committed by a criminal court, or if they are an “M-case”—tried as an adult and committed to the California Department of Corrections and then sent to a CYA facility.

As a result, community organizations are saying that CYA inmates—troubled youth who have committed serious crimes – are part of the reason why violence has occurred in detention centers more often.

“Those kids obviously have some kind of mental instability, plus they’re locked up in a cell for twenty-three hours. When they get out for that one hour they don’t know what to do with themselves,” said Sterling Brown, a recent graduate of San Francisco State University.

Other community members who are not as involved have a different point of view.

“You’re going to have people there with issues, and then the people dealing with them are going to bring their own issues,” said Bianca, a senior majoring in fashion merchandising who requested that her last name be withheld.

Bianca said she thought that rather than destroying the CYA and then building a new program, it would be better for the state to look over the current system and change it.

Although the number of juvenile arrests has decreased since 1996, according to the Attorney General’s Report, concern over the nature of the juvenile justice system, and more specifically the CYA, has increased.

There is no denying that there are problems; however, the ways in which they are addressed may depend on how the affected youth in the community decide to react.

BAMMA is a summer journalism camp for high school students coordinated by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism through the journalism department at SF State. For more information or comments on BAMMA, please contact Cristina Azocar.