A Letter Writing Campaign Helped Close California's Youth Prisons
Youths in solitary wrote letters to save their lives in late '90s & early 2000's
On June 30th, California became the fourth US State (Connecticut, North Dakota and Vermont) to close it's youth prison system. At one time, the California Youth Authority (CYA) was the largest system in the nation, holding over 10,000 juveniles at it's peak in the late 90's & early 2000's. The conditions of CYA facilities during those years was so inhumane that over one 18-month stretch in 2004, 56 teens attempted suicide.
Despite several reports of abuse and cruel and inhumane treatment, as well as protests of parents, advocates and other concerned citizens, prosecutors and judges continued to send tens of thousands of young people, some as young as 12, to the California Youth Authority’s warehouses. Serving indeterminate sentences, with “time-adds” for even minor infractions like getting in fights, some young people were held in prison cells for 23 hours a day or assaulted by guards. Punishments included being forced to attend high school classes in telephone booth-sized metal cages arranged in a semicircle. Larger cages the shape and size of shipping containers were used for individual exercise sessions.
Along with those protests, another form of protest came to the attention of advocates. A letter-writing campaign inside the state’s youth prisons in the late 1990s and early 2000s is among the little-known contributions to this historic closure.
In 1999, San Francisco attorney Sue Burrell, with the Youth Law Center, began receiving envelopes filled with letters from juveniles detained at the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton, California. Each letter was dated March 1, indicating a coordinated effort. The letter writers had been locked in cells for 23 hours a day, but somehow, they began a letter-writing campaign, hoping to reach the outside world.
The story "The Darkest Part of the Tunnel," featured on the website of The Appeal, highlights that letter writing campaign and the part it played in shutting down the CYA.
Excerpts from some of the letters Burrell received:
“The boys are stripped down to their boxer shorts, hands cuffed behind their backs, and they lie on the gym floor, head turned only in one direction. The pain is unbearable quickly and if they move, they are placed on their knees, nose to the brick wall, hands cuffed behind them, and left like this for hours.”
“They have helmets, which are football helmets. They strap these helmets on the heads of those wards who are trying to beat their heads on the floor to knock themselves out. This is common. The wards lie on the floor and dream of revenge.”
One young person on suicide watch had “his hands battered repeatedly by a baton.” After “hours of banging and pleading” to leave his cell, another had been “forced to kneel in a puddle of urine fully nude in the middle of the hallway.”
“I continue to see the same stuff happen with no change but only for the worst. We need our rights protected and the only way is through some outside help and through the court system. I truly hope you can help.”
Read the full story "The Darkest Part of the Tunnel", at the website for The Appeal, a nonprofit newsroom that exposes the harms of the U.S. criminal legal system and elevates solutions that keep all people safe.
