California Division of Juvenile Justice - Conditions

Conditions

On non-school days, maximum security inmates are locked in their cells for 23 hours a day. A spokesman for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's prisons department said lengthy lockdowns at DJJ facilities were no longer used as punishment, but were sometimes necessary to maintain order. One of the justifications for such treatment is gang affiliation and the threat of corresponding violence.

Many of the Youthful Offenders at some DJJ facilities arrive on or are placed on psychotropic medications, a matter that has triggered protests and litigation.

The threat of violence is a constant distraction at DJJ facilities. In 2004, a six-month investigation by the San Jose Mercury News uncovered deep systemic flaws, concluding that violence was predominant, gangs ruled, and fear was pervasive. The Mercury News reported that, at any given time, dozens of young men are held in isolation cells for fighting or other offenses at the state's two maximum security facilities, and that wards sometimes threw human waste, blood or semen through the slots in their cell doors.

Experts who have studied the prisons have declared them the most violent in the nation, and there have been six suicides in California's juvenile jails between 2000 and 2005.

In January 2005, Chief Deputy Inspector General Brett Morgan issued a report calling for the elimination of 23 hour a day incarceration policies for wards placed in administrative segregation and criticized the DJJ for failing to end the practice. The inspector general's report outlines Maldonado's history and offers a portrait of Chaderjian as a violent lockup where gang leaders seem to have more clout than the Youth Correctional Officers.