The Old Way vs. The “Missouri Model”

Members of the Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County standing by one of the raised beds they taught youth at Murial Wright to maintain outside a classroom of the residential facility.

I recently had the opportunity to tour two very different juvenile justice facilities with the Youth Law Center that personify ongoing divisions in the field about how we should deal with youth in trouble with the law. While both the California Department of Juvenile Justice’s Youth Correctional Facilities in Stockton and the Muriel Wright Residential Center in San Jose detain youth after sentencing, the differences are stark.

The temperatures outside of the DJJ facilities were hot, but the inside of its N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility held an emotional coldness that was hard to escape. The floors of the facility for young men over 18 were hard cement, punctuated by red boundary lines the “wards” could not cross. The doors had huge lock mechanisms almost as big as the small window just above them.

The cells were mostly bare boxes with few possessions signaling that someone was calling it home. The tour itself was coolly professional, with an entourage of a half dozen administrative officials trailing us and introducing supervisors of dorms in the facility. Some appeared to wear bullet-proof vests and all carried a utility belt that included pepper spray, a walkie-talkie and handcuffs. Inside each dorm, dozens of youth were joking around, playing ping-pong, or watching TV, but as our group walked through the facility, our guides seemed to treat the “wards” as an attraction.

“These wards are part of the substance abuse program,” said one supervisor as she grinned, sweeping her arm to encompass a few dozen young men in the building. As she continued to explain the program, it was hard to hear her constantly differentiate the “wards” – who at times were standing right next to her. We help them; they are our concern. It felt almost like the “wards” were viewed like animals in a zoo, to be paternalistically cared for by the supervisors who always knew better. The attitude of some of the supervisors was shocking to see, and the chasm between supervisor and “wards” was no where more apparent than when we toured the facility’s school.

In one classroom, it was painful to watch as several young men were described in the most blunt and insensitive manner by the director of the school as they sat listening. “Their literacy is poor . . .” “This one is at a sixth grade level . . .” “We want to improve their math skills.” What was strangest of all to me was that the classroom itself seemed like an every day high school classroom. Shelves were full of books, a blackboard had instructions on it and even a manual pencil sharpener was attached to the wall. If not for the director talking about the so-called woefully uneducated students in the room, this could have been my classroom.

This begs the question: Does this school prepare these young men for a future outside of the facility? It was difficult to say, really – activity in the classrooms came to a halt whenever we walked in. The vocational and trade classes were bustling with activity, with wards working on cars, computers and copy machines. The youth were obviously learning some skills, but it just didn’t seem to be enough. For example, one of the people on the tour asked a shop teacher if the youth would be licensed to work with machinery once they completed the class. The teacher said they would be “accredited,” but never gave a direct answer to further questions about whether that is enough for employment.

Security, order and discipline ruled all at Chad. At our orientation, buzzers kept going off but no one seemed to notice or care. We later learned this was a personal alarm attached to those who worked among the youth and would sound every time the person leaned back further than a certain angle. During our tour of the schools, a bell sounded, at which point all the youth left the classrooms and slowly meandered back to their dorms. Each youth went through a checkpoint on their way out of the school and each was shaken down before they entered the dorm. Even pencils weren’t allowed, a supervisor told us as she smiled . . . and patted down the next youth to enter the dorm.

Inside, the youth grimly got in line to get their lunch, and then waited quietly by their cell doors as the supervisor slowly unlocked each one individually and watched as the young man got the materials he needed for later in the day, like textbooks. As our tour ended and we began to leave, this emphasis on security was drilled into us as we exchanged our temporary passes for the driver’s licenses we had left behind at a checkpoint, and then were asked to show our ID’s again as we drove out of the parking lot. It was jarring to see that this facility had more security than a NASA laboratory I had toured previously.

Considering the fact that states spend about $5.7 billion each year imprisoning youth, even though the majority are held for nonviolent offenses and could be managed safely for cheaper in the community, this did not seem like a cost-effective policy.

By contrast, the Muriel Wright camp, which is based on the Missouri model of a humane and “least restrictive” environment had almost no security. An automated gate slowly opened for our car. A lone guard watched as a group of boys played volleyball in a fenced off court…and continued to watch as one boy sauntered to the gate, opened it, and ran outside to grab a ball that had gone over the fence. The back door led out to a hill with a set of stairs that led down into a series of hiking trails. The manager of the center, an energetic woman who wore a dress – sans utility belt – came out to greet us.

Here, the rehabilitation of 300 boys and girls rather than detention, was emphasized by the manager. In fact, our introduction at the beginning of the tour was interrupted by a yoga instructor who needed to set up for class in the large room. Inside the dorms, carpeting covered most of the floors and finished jigsaw puzzles, posters and goals written by the youth covered the walls. One thing the manager was most proud of was the fact that none of the rooms were locked. The cells were more brightly lit than the Chad facility and had unbarred windows that looked out toward the mountains of the nature preserve the camp was located within. We learned that the staff to “ward” ratio was a mere 1 to 6, and that the same staff members led the same children through the duration of each day, and though their six to eight month sentence in the program.

Perhaps the starkest contrast and most telling difference were the gardens. One of the first things we saw at Chad was a small garden surrounded by concrete pavement where youth could plant and grow vegetables. It was small, but seemed like a nice idea. At Muriel Wright, the gardens were in the backyards of dorms and were teeming with plants. All around Muriel Wright, flowers planted and cared for by the youth were blooming. The manager told us an anecdote about the youth playing football on the grass, essentially trampling and uprooting it. Some staff members were upset, but the manager said she reminded them the goal of this facility was to rehabilitate, not to maintain a pristine lawn. It was an odd thing to hear considering that officials at Chaderjian spent quite some time outlining their policy concerning the use of force and the director of the adjacent O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility (for youth under 18) made it clear that only youth who attained a certain “level” through good behavior could participate in such fun activities.

This is not to say that Muriel Wright is some idyllic resort where young boys and girls in trouble with the law take vacations. Like OH Close, Muriel Wright also has a level system where youth must earn higher levels – and therefore freedom or benefits – based on good behavior. Their days were planned out to the minute and they all wore the same clothing. Youth were grouped by the dozen by their dorm assignment and stayed in their groups through the day. But it was clear that the manager of Muriel Wright cared about the youth, not just as wards needing rehabilitation, but as children who are growing up.

“Most of our kids have experienced trauma at an early age – abuse, sexual abuse and violence, parents in jail or prison…everything you read is true.” she said. “They’re seen as throwaways. But they’re the kids we think we can make a difference with.”

The camp’s recidivism rate is low, only about 25 percent in the first six months after release. I also believe Muriel Wright’s model is a much more humane and effective one, based upon a model philosophy in which “it is the responsibility of the agency to provide a healthy, therapeutic, and nonjudgmental environment within which change may take place.” Young men and women should not be locked in a cold, emotionless facility in the desert. They should be placed in centers that address their personal needs on a daily basis, with caretakers that spend time with them and know them.

Yet, after touring both facilities, I came away with some nagging criticisms. The biggest concern to me was that officials at both facilities seemed to be isolated. They seemingly took care of their business the best they could, but a lot of their answers to questions or their descriptions of policy seemed to put the blame elsewhere: The Mental Health Department didn’t do this. The Probation Department did this so now we have to deal with it. We do what we can do within the system. It occurred to me while touring Muriel Wright that correctional facilities, for better or for worse, are the most direct connection between so-called delinquent youth and the legal system, and for officials at both institutions to regard themselves as isolated from the government was astounding.

How can these juvenile justice officials, who see and control the lives of these children in need of help every day, consider themselves so powerless?

But criticism and finger pointing can only take you so far. This post isn’t a critique of youth correctional facilities or the entire juvenile justice system – my colleagues who are far more educated and experienced than I can tell you all about that. And this isn’t a criticism of people who I’ve met on these tours, facility officials or otherwise. This is simply a plea, from an intern who is younger than some of the wards at Chaderjian, to the directors, officials, supervisors, managers, department heads, and politicians: Work together. Educate yourselves. End your cynical and outmoded beliefs about other departments and people and reach out to them.

It is appalling that there is not a single, unifying board or committee which brings together all of the department heads who are separately responsible for rehabilitating our children. The only such model is the stakeholder collaboratives that the Burns Institute sets up in the jurisdictions it work with, which is a highly effective process. It would be fascinating to see implemented across the country – with unified groups of representatives from each sectors of government related to the juvenile justice system, community representatives, parents and youth.

Only by uniting and working together can people truly understand each other, and these huge, invisible walls that separate agencies and departments block that from happening. No more is this felt than when an official realizes their facility can’t treat youths with mental and neurological disabilities, but can only complain from afar when the Mental Health Department closes the only facility in the county.

By bringing together varying stakeholders into the same room, perhaps we can begin to eliminate the problems and disconnects occurring throughout a system that regularly fails our youth. Youth correctional facilities should be the centerpiece and leader of reform, not the subject of it. I do believe that it is within the youth correctional system that significant and meaningful change can begin to happen.

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Thomas Lee is a graduate of UC Berkeley and is currently attending Harvard Law School. He is a summer intern at the W. Haywood Burns Institute.