IONE, Calif. — Marcos Alvarez peers out the 8-inch window of his steel cell door, straining to catch a glimpse of the world beyond. There's not much to see -- another door, an empty concrete hallway -- but it helps pass the time.
Alvarez, 19, spends about 23 hours a day in Cell No. 29 -- just him, a toilet, a sink and a narrow bunk. He does push-ups. He writes letters. He stares at a beaded cross. He thinks, "in my head, real quiet-like." And he watches the food slot in that thick steel door, waiting for the next meal to arrive.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday February 18, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 47 words Type of Material: Correction
California Youth Authority -- The caption for a photo with Tuesday's Section A article on the California Youth Authority mistakenly stated that a juvenile was taking instruction while locked in a cage. He was in fact being held in a waiting cell, before a meeting with someone.
A wiry teenager who joined a gang at age 9, Alvarez lives in a special isolation cell, where he was sent after joining a fight in his regular housing unit at a state juvenile prison here in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento. It's hard time, but Alvarez says he has learned to cope with the harsh conditions. Others apparently have not.
Last month, two inmates were found hanging by bedsheets in their cell just a few doors down from Alvarez. Staff members said they had no reason to think the youths -- one 17, the other 18 -- might take their own lives. Their parents plan to sue, contending that the state failed to properly watch over them.
The deaths tragically highlighted a new series of reports by state-hired experts that hammered California's youth penal system as a place where rehabilitation -- its stated mission -- is all but impossible, impeded by violence, gangs, poor mental health care and many other problems.
The result, the experts said, is that many juveniles leave the California Youth Authority worse off than when they entered. At least half of those paroled will be back.
Visits by The Times to three youth prisons -- and interviews with dozens of inmates and staff members -- reveal a beleaguered system struggling to cope with the toughest fraction of California's young offenders, from serial burglars to rapists and murderers.
Success stories exist, and are celebrated. But even the most devoted youth counselors say today's juveniles enter the CYA so scarred by shattered families, mental illness or drugs -- and so ensnared by gangs -- that optimism is elusive.
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A Climate of Violence
When German Carranza arrived at Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino five years ago, he worried about being stabbed. Carranza doesn't worry anymore. He's been stabbed several times.
