California Youth Authority :: essays research papers

The California Youth Authority or the CYA as it is to a greater extent commonly known, is an institution which provides a range of education, discourse, and training services for vernal offenders committed by courts. This system has been plagued by multitudes of problems for some years that carry to be fixed.      The California Youth Authority is responsible for the protection of friendship form the criminal and delinquent behavior of young people(Hill, Legislative Analyst). This is reached principally through custodial control of these juveniles and the implementation of vocational, education, health, and mental health treatment services.      As of now, CYA uses large, remote, high-security facilities. They may be called "schools," but with about 400 kids in each one, they are more like warehouses, storing wards until they are ready for release. For decades, experts and officials befuddle dismissed this model as incapable of meeting the juvenile legal expert systems goal of rehabilitating youth.     The CYA is clearly not working the musical mode the way that it was designed to run. For instance, three out of four wards who end up in the California Youth Authority are arrested on cutting criminal charges within three years of their release, which proves the institutions failure to rehabilitate the states close troubled juvenile offenders. Experts say the high number does not credit how much California could gain from approaches used in other states (like Mississippi) such(prenominal) as housing wards in smaller facilities, providing intensive treatment programs, and oblation more supervision and assistance after a ward is released. In smaller, rehabilitation centers, youth would be under the supervision of trained companionable workers and mental health experts not prison guards.(LAO Report, pg. 7). This would allow the offenders to be in closer contact with their families, a s well as a florilegium of services.      The average age of a CYA institution is 43 years old. This direction the there are many maintenance and repair needs and, at some point, many buildings will have to be replaced. Also, the population that many of the institutions were designed for 40 or 50 years ago is diametric than todays youthful offender. Finally, the ward population has decreased from a high of over 10,000 in 1996 to its current level of 4,300. This decline has resulted in overcapacity and presents an opportunity to consider closure(Lao Report, pg. 11). Closing some institutions would save the state money, and modify the state to implement programs to lower recidivism rates.