Juveniles sentenced to California Youth Authority facilities for serious crimes are regularly locked in cages, over-medicated and denied essential psychiatric treatment, according to a report commissioned by the state Attorney General's Office.

The report, obtained Tuesday by the Mercury News, found that the nine institutions examined were more like prisons than facilities designed to reform and rehabilitate youthful offenders, and that conditions there worsened the problems of wards who suffered from mental health disorders and substance abuse problems.

``The vast majority of youths who have mental health needs are made worse instead of improved by the correctional environment,'' according to authors of the report, University of Washington child psychologist Eric Trupin and forensic psychiatrist Raymond Patterson of Washington, D.C.

Teenagers, both male and female, are sent to CYA for serious and violent crimes. But unlike adult prisons, CYA institutions are legally required to reform and rehabilitate.

Word of conditions at Youth Authority facilities, specifically the high-security Chaderjian facility in Stockton, has reached federal investigators. The U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division is investigating abuse in that facility, a department spokesman said Tuesday.

The scrutiny of juvenile institutions comes at a time when California's adult prisons are under intense pressure over their failure to police abuses by prison staff. The report is yet another challenge for the Schwarzenegger administration and for Walter Allen, the new director of the CYA. Lawmakers plan to examine the CYA in hearings Feb. 28.

``It's going to get worse unless we have the courage to look at this,'' said Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Rosemead, who has been co-chairing hearings on problems in the state's correctional facilities. ``It's fair to say CYA has a crisis.''

Experts sent in

Last year, in response to legislators' inquiries and a lawsuit filed by the Prison Law Office, the Attorney General's Office sent national experts into the sprawling network of CYA facilities, which house 4,421 young people up to age 25 and cost the state $450 million a year to run. At least six reports are expected, the first of which is reaching legislators now and focuses on mental health and substance abuse treatment in CYA facilities.

``Rehabilitation is impossible when the classroom is a cage and wards live in constant fear of physical and sexual violence from CYA staff and other wards,'' said court documents filed by the San Francisco-based non-profit Prison Law Office.

As many as 65 percent of the wards suffer from mental disorders, and 85 percent battle drug and alcohol addictions, studies show.

In the facilities, guards used highly potent pepper spray on recalcitrant youths, and treatment staff members were inconsistent in prescribing and overseeing powerful psychotropic medications.

The report states some youths received three to eight different psychotropic drugs without ``adequate justification,'' while others were given no medicine when they needed it. Nighttime medications were not available in some facilities, a practice the report states is ``especially egregious because needy youths are deprived of appropriate care.''

The authors singled out a few CYA practices for praise. The CYA regularly provided information on the risks of medication and followed guidelines on obtaining informed consent from minors. The authors found the substance abuse program at Dewitt Nelson exemplary.

But the authors added that this program was ``the exception, rather than the rule.''

Officials with the Attorney General's Office and the Youth Authority did not dispute the findings.

Findings confirmed

``The observations of the state experts in these areas are substantially correct, and our department is reviewing each of these reports to develop a plan to correct the issues raised,'' Youth Authority spokeswoman Sarah Ludeman said.

Deputy Attorney General Steve Acquisto, one of the lawyers defending the Youth Authority in the lawsuit, said: ``To the extent problems have been identified, the YA is working diligently to address those problems, and to the extent that the solutions require additional financing, we're going to be working to get that.''

The December report was followed quickly by a tragic example of the need to act quickly. On Jan. 19, two teens, 17 and 18, were found hanging in their rooms in Ironwood Lodge at the Preston facility in Ione.

Ironwood came under special scrutiny in the December 2003 report, with investigators determining that guards using pepper spray were ``exacerbating symptoms of mental illness'' and youths were kept ``isolated and away from staff observation or interaction.'' Ironwood houses youths in a 60- to 90-day Special Management Program where they receive only an hour a day of education outside their cells.

From December 2001 to June 2003, statewide, 56 young people attempted but did not succeed in committing suicide, because of staff intervention.

The experts found CYA failing in 21 of the 22 measures posed in question form by the Attorney General's Office. The report states that there was no evidence that the punitive strategies brought about a desired change in a youth's behavior.

Other specific problems:

• Inconsistent and substandard practices on the use of psychotropic medications, including little measurement of the effects.

• Inappropriate use of punitive strategies, lack of staff skill in de-escalation techniques and overuse of chemical restraints.

• Psychiatric histories that are not comprehensive and do not include developmental or family information.

• Inadequate coordination of mental health professionals and routine lack of involvement of families in treatment plans, making it virtually impossible for the youths to re-enter society.

Even with word now getting out, Laura Belmont, a Folsom mother, said she's skeptical that things will ever change at CYA.

``These are throwaway kids, out of sight out of mind,'' said Belmont, who described her 20-year-old son as ``destroyed'' by three years at CYA facilities. ``He went in 17 years old with his whole life ahead of him, and he came out without one shred of self-esteem or self-worth,'' Belmont said.

But Senate leader John Burton, D-San Francisco, said he would act on the reports, which he called devastating.

``It sort of paints the picture of a department incapable of straightening itself out despite years of legislative oversight and scrutiny,'' Burton said. ``We'll probably have to do it for them one way or another.

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Mercury News Staff Writer Mark Gladstone contributed to this report.
Contact Karen de Sá at kdesa@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5781.