Dennis Claxton writes cheerily:
`` I'll bet you were headed for Eastlake... 1605 Eastlake Ave...''
----------
I looked it up. This address is behind USC Med Center, which I think used to be called L.A. County General Hospital---which is were I was born. My kid did an medical internship there about five years ago. I described going there as a kid for shots and so forth. It still had the same black and white linoleum floors with pale green walls on some of the floors.
Web searching yesterday at work, I found out that there is a current bill pending in the Cal State Legislature to completely dismantle the whole state juvenial justice system. Earlier this year it was the subject of a class action lawsuit:
``This new effort to reform California's troubled juvenile justice system follows on the heels of the successful landmark litigation against the California Youth Authority (CYA). That litigation forced the state to sign a consent decree agreeing to transform the CYA into the kind of rehabilitative model that has dramatically lowered recidivism rates in states such as Washington and Texas.
During the CYA litigation, advocates learned that conditions in many California county juvenile halls are as bad as those in the CYA. Moreover, as the appalling conditions in the CYA were revealed, state and county officials shifted much of the juvenile population from the state (CYA) facilities to the county juvenile halls. Today, more than 10,800 youth are confined in county juvenile halls, camps and ranches....'' (from Latham & Watkins, attornies in the suit)
Of course I don't buy a word of it. If Texas is cited as a model, fuck it. Nothing is going to change.
Among the charges are 23 hour a day lock down mostly on weekends, but in some locations months on end, severe overcrowding, over use of psychotropic medications, and the usual beatings, injuries, crimes, HIV, drugs, rapes, blah, blah, blah. Anybody interested go here for precise details on the `rules':
http://www.topjuveniledefender.com/eastlake.html
This is an information site for parents.
I also found out that several of the California adult prisons are under US DOJ management or oversight because of their terrible conditions. With the Gonzales in charge, that isn't very reassuring...
CG