LOS ANGELES — The California Youth Authority, under fire for allegedly brutalizing prisoners, is preparing to adopt a sweeping set of reforms governing everything from the way inmates are restrained to the way they are kept clean. The proposed reforms are contained in a four-inch thick report compiled by the state Board of Corrections with the help of more than 100 law enforcement experts inside and outside of government, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
CYA Director Jerry L. Harper was out of town and unavailable to comment on the report. But his spokeswoman, Sarah Ludeman, said the agency welcomes the reforms and is moving quickly to put them in place.
"We look at this as something that will help us do our job better," she said, adding some changes would take effect immediately while others require the passage of legislation.
The report was ordered last February after allegations surfaced of abuses at some of the CYA's 15 camps and prisons, including charges of prisoners being handcuffed and made to kneel for hours, sometimes in urine-soaked clothing.
Other allegations involved prisoners being housed in metal cages and subjected to excessive force.
The California Youth Authority houses about 7,400 juveniles on a budget of $436 million a year.
Disciplinary standards vary drastically from facility to facility, according to the panel, which recommended that strict, uniform regulations be adopted.
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It recommended that those regulations include a ban on straitjackets and hogtying, as well as limiting the use of any restraints to cases where a prisoner presents a danger to himself or others.
The panel also called for a uniform policy on the use of force, as well as new policies regulating such things as meals, the control of head lice and the lighting of CYA dorms
State Senate leader John Burton, D-San Francisco, said the reforms are "long overdue."
"We want these kids, when they come out, to not be worse than they were when they went in," Burton said, adding he would push for an increase in the CYA's budget.
The legislative analyst's office has estimated that the agency will need $25 million more just to provide enough beds for mental health, drug abuse and sex offender treatment.
Gov. Gray Davis has failed to support such increases in the past. Legislators put $6.4 million extra in this year's CYA budget for mental health care and other services, for example, but Davis vetoed it, saying it wasn't clear it was needed.
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