SACRAMENTO — State investigators said Thursday that inhumane conditions and incompetence at a Stockton youth correctional facility may have contributed to the suicide of an 18-year-old inmate who was locked in his room alone nearly 24 hours a day for two months.
In a blistering report, the state Office of the Inspector General admonished prison officials for denying the mentally unstable ward the ability to see family, meet with mental health counselors or take a walk while in lockdown.
The report said officials at N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility put the ward in an impossible situation: Either renounce a violent prison gang -- making himself vulnerable to beatings by inmates -- or remain alone in his room around the clock.
The ward, who has been identified as Joseph Maldonado, eventually hanged himself with a bedsheet. And despite signs that something was wrong in Maldonado's cell -- the inmate had covered the windows and was unresponsive -- prison officials did not check on him for nearly 40 minutes, investigators said.
The latest findings come amid continued calls by activists to shut down Chaderjian, the most controversial of the state's youth prisons.
Maldonado, whom state investigators said was denied access to mental health counselors despite repeated requests, was one of three wards to die at the prison over a two-year span.
His death came after the inspector general's office had issued two reports earlier in the year that called for the facility to stop putting wards in nearly 24-hour lockdowns for months at a time.
"What's so tragic about this is that the issues that contributed to this young man's suicide are the ones we have been talking about for at least five years," said Sue Burrell, a staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Youth Law Center, which has sued the prison system over various issues.
State prison officials said they have since stopped the practice of locking down prisoners for extended periods.
"While we are continuing to investigate this incident, this report is an indictment of the violent and tense conditions that existed at the facility at a particular time," said Bernard Warner, chief deputy secretary for juvenile justice at the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. (Until a name change earlier this year, the agency was known as the California Youth Authority.)
Warner said his department was committed to moving "beyond incarceration to a more rehabilitative model."
