Rehabilitation Programs

Facing mounting debts and a foreclosure sale of its two properties, a Bellflower clinic that served the county's Native American community for nearly three decades seems certain to fold by the end of the year, staff and county officials said. The American Indian Clinic, the county's only free clinic that targeted Native Americans, owes creditors hundreds of thousands of dollars, and its finances are in disarray.

Girding for a showdown next week over cuts in the state prison system, Republican lawmakers said Wednesday that there is enough fat in the corrections budget to avert any early release of prisoners from state lockups. The Legislature agreed recently to cut prison spending by $1.2 billion but deferred a decision on how to do it until this month. Lawmakers will return to work Monday following their summer break. Republicans said a plan by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Democratic support, to reduce the prison population by 37,000 inmates is unnecessary and would send thousands of offenders into neighborhoods before their sentences were completed.

Envisioning what he called a much-needed sanctuary for Ventura County's troubled youth, Justice Steven Z. Perren helped break ground Friday on a $65-million juvenile hall and treatment complex that will bear his name. "Some may see this as a children's jail, but it is much more than that," said Perren, the former Ventura County juvenile court judge who conceived of the integrated center, which will include rehabilitation programs, courtrooms and classrooms.

Plagued by charges of brutality and other abuses, the California Youth Authority is poised to adopt sweeping reforms covering everything from its use of force to the nutritional content of the meals it serves. Critics hope the new regulations, drafted by a panel of experts who conducted an exhaustive review of the authority, will help turn around a tainted agency once considered a national leader in rehabilitating young offenders.

For a few hundred dollars, parents pushed to the edge by teens' defiant and destructive behavior can hire "escorts" to rouse their children in the middle of the night and haul them away--in handcuffs if needed. Such "teen escort services" are part of a growing industry that offers to turn troubled teens around by taking them out of familiar surroundings and putting them in a strictly ordered program where they earn freedom by improving their behavior and attitudes.

Former Vice President Al Gore's son pleaded guilty Monday to possessing marijuana and other drugs when he was caught speeding this month in south Orange County. The entire case could be dismissed once he completes a drug rehabilitation program offered to first-time offenders. Al Gore III, who has been receiving treatment for his addictions at an undisclosed location since his arrest, had not been scheduled to be arraigned until Wednesday.

As the U.S. ratchets up security on cargo packages and digs deeper into the plot to send bombs from Yemen, officials are concerned that a number of high-ranking members of Al Qaeda in Yemen were released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a Saudi rehabilitation program for militants. The No. 2 leader for the group in Yemen is Saudi national Said Shihri, who was captured by the U.S. in Afghanistan in 2001 and released from Guantanamo in 2007 to the Saudi program. He was featured in a 2009 video announcing the merger of the Saudi Arabian and Yemeni branches of Al Qaeda.

The daughter of Irvine Mayor Christina L. Shea pleaded guilty Thursday to using methamphetamine and agreed to enter a rehabilitation program. Since Stephanie Shea's arrest Aug. 10, her mother has come to her defense, saying the drugs were not for her daughter and voicing concerns about police handling of the case. On Thursday, however, the 49-year-old mayor acknowledged that her daughter "wronged" but remained critical of the way the police handled the incident.

Orange County has quietly settled a federal lawsuit involving a housing rehabilitation scandal and may have to spend as much as $3 million to repair shoddy work on hundreds of homes, officials confirmed Tuesday. The suit, filed in April 1998, involved more than 200 claimants, most of them homeowners who enrolled in a county-sponsored program to rehabilitate low-income housing.

Investigators found cocaine in the clothing of a 35-year-old man suspected of driving under the influence of drugs when he collided with another motorist and her two young children, police said Monday. The children, ages 4 and 6, remained in critical condition Monday, and both drivers were hospitalized with internal injuries. Investigators said they found a gram of cocaine inside the pants worn by Steven Wayne Arndt of Cypress and a crack pipe in his car, Police Sgt. David Birozy said.