CYA Leader Plans Broad Reforms for Youth Prison

The new California Youth Authority director said Tuesday he is imposing broad reform on the troubled Ventura School juvenile prison to restore confidence in its leadership and end sexual misconduct by employees.

“We have some wrongdoers who have been and are being identified,” said Gregorio Zermeno, appointed this month by Gov. Gray Davis. “Our emphasis is to focus on the wrongdoers and hold them responsible, both administratively and criminally.”

In April, Zermeno plans to deploy a team of top corrections investigators to wrap up separate inquiries started last year by the youth authority and the state inspector general’s office.

The youth authority has presented its criminal cases against eight past and present Ventura School employees to county prosecutors, who in January charged a former teacher with having oral sex with two 17-year-old female inmates.

“There may or may not be more cases that require referral to the district attorney’s office,” Zermeno said.

The goal is to clean house quickly and move forward, he said.

In office for less than a month, Zermeno has already appointed a new school superintendent, two new assistant superintendents and a new chief of security.

“They’ll use that very sophisticated mechanism called walking around and talking to people,” Zermeno said. “That’s the best management tool we have.”

The point man for reform, new Supt. Gregory Lowe, said Tuesday that the Camarillo facility he inherited needed some fixing. Employees didn’t trust their bosses, inmates helped run security systems and employees had too much freedom in choosing inmates for special tasks in isolated areas, he said.

Then there was the sexual misconduct. From now on, it will be punished swiftly and surely, he said.

“I think it was outrageous, and the staff I’ve talked to were equally offended,” he said. “They were embarrassed to say where they worked, particularly the male staff, because they felt they [were put] in kind of the same class as a child abuser.”

But only a small fraction of employees are guilty of misconduct, Lowe insisted.

“What the bulk of the staff needs right now is a pat on the back,” he said. “What’s reflected in the newspaper doesn’t speak to the 95% to 98% that do an excellent job.”

Lowe said he wants to repaint the portrait of Ventura School as a prison rife with problems--a picture sketched last month by an inspector general’s report.

In a scathing analysis, then-Inspector General Lloyd Wood reported that Ventura School, the only coed facility in the California Youth Authority System, had “a systemic problem” of lax management that allowed sexual misconduct by employees and inmates to continue, and resulted in unfair treatment and sexual harassment of women employees.

He noted “a climate of fear among employees,” a system slow to react to chronic problems and an extraordinary 64 misconduct investigations by internal affairs in 1998 alone.

Yet, Lowe said, Ventura School always has had a good reputation within the 15-prison youth authority system--and may have been more a victim of its own complacency than anything else.

Need to Develop Trust

He said the biggest change needed is for school administrators to open their doors to the rank and file.

“What we’re looking at initially is to develop some trust between the administration and the folks working in the institution,” Lowe said, “and eliminating the perception that we’re operating under the fear of retaliation.”

One change is Lowe’s plan to hold monthly meetings with representatives from all parts of the prison. The youth authority has even set up an Internet site where employees can file complaints anonymously, he said.

As for security, inmates will no longer be involved in maintaining security fences and alarm systems, he said.

The inspector general found security so poor at the youth prison that a state investigator identified himself as a customer for a prison dog-grooming business and was admitted to the facility even though his ID did not match the name under which he had booked the appointment. Nor did guards question why a Northern Californian would travel to Camarillo for dog grooming.

“That part of the report caught my attention real fast,” Lowe said. “We’ve set up a new system of double-checking identification.”

Youth authority critics, including state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), maintain that female school employees have been sexually harassed and then punished when they have complained.

Lowe said he is sensitive to the issue. He does not think the problem is widespread or he would have steered his daughter, who is training to be a youth authority counselor, away from a career with the department.

The inspector general also focused on the ease with which employees and wards selected for maintenance and vocational training could separate themselves from the rest of the institution.

In particular, the prison’s maintenance managers--civil staffers not trained to control prisoners--would select wards for work outside the prison without clearing the task with correctional officers.

That won’t happen again, Lowe said.

A system he introduced now requires screening of all inmate assignments. And for some tasks, inmates must undergo psychological exams, he said.

In recommending additional employee training, the inspector general found a lack of education so profound that some employees--and their bosses--didn’t even know that manuals existed outlining how they were supposed to do their jobs.

Training Found to Be Substandard

For example, employees chosen to investigate employee misconduct were so poorly trained they botched several investigations, resulting in the dropping of cases against employees who should have been fired, Wood said.

“Historically, training was the first thing that was eliminated when budget times were lean,” Lowe acknowledged. But since October all correctional officers have been required to take 52 hours of additional training each year, he said.

Substandard investigational techniques also resulted in polygraph tests indicating that female inmates lied when they complained of sexual misconduct by employees. Investigations later confirmed the girls’ truthfulness, according to the inspector general.

As a result, Lowe said, the youth authority may stop using consultants and hire its own polygraph expert to conduct the tests at all institutions so it can be confident of the results.

Zermeno and Lowe said the future of former Ventura School Assistant Supt. Chuck Kubasek and security chief James J. McDuffy is still in doubt. They have been replaced at Ventura School but are still on paid suspension pending a personnel review.

Former School Supt. Mary Herrera has been transferred to another youth facility and demoted to assistant superintendent.

The Ventura School has been a center of controversy since 1997, when Wright and other state lawmakers accused the youth authority of covering up inmate rapes by guards. Three officers were later fired or forced out.

The current turmoil has led to the firing or forced resignations of nine school employees, authorities said.

Though still a coed institution, the youth authority separated the school by gender in January 1998--prohibiting any contact between male and female inmates.

A 16-foot fence is planned for construction this fall to make that separation complete.

Currently, the school houses 415 male wards and 317 female wards between the ages of 13 and 25. Most were imprisoned for violent crimes.