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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Criminal Not Happy with Youth Prison |
| 2004-02-14 |
| A 21-year-old recently released ward from the California Youth Authority spoke to KCRA 3’s Mike TeSelle Friday. He and his mother wanted their identities withheld for fear of retaliation. "I don’t want any other young man to go through what I had to. It’s terrible. My whole time there was hell," the 21-year-old said. (Gee Kids prison was NOT a Country Club?) "They actually told him, ’The only thing worse than you is a cold-blooded murderer,’" said the 21-year-old’s mother. Four years ago, when he was 17, he was caught kissing and touching a 13-year-old girl. Because of a previous unrelated misdemeanor conviction, the teenager agreed to plead guilty to a charge of lewd and lascivious conduct. (Anyone believe that story? [crickets]) He was sentenced to three years in the California Youth Authority, including Ione’s Preston Youth Facility. The 21-year-old characterized his time in the Youth Authority as "terrible." (Oh My) "It was just a place where they looked at you as scum," the former ward said. (Because maybe young man you ARE SCUM?) He talked of how staff members immediately labeled him a sex offender, and how they called him names for three years. (Kissing and fondling a young defenseless girl makes you by definition a sex offender!) The former ward also said ward-on-ward violence was not only prevalent in the CYA, but that Youth Authority staff often intentionally set it up. "Say a staff member doesn’t like you, and he has another ward under his wing, he’ll bring him in food or weed or cigarettes," the 21-year-old said. "Yes, (he) brings drugs in to wards, and wards will repay him by fighting with another ward and beating somebody up." (Everything the left wing nuts here want to hear) The former ward said the drugs included prescription medication, marijuana and crack cocaine. The 21-year-old said the CYA barely resembles what it was set up to be. The Youth Authority was established to rehabilitate and educate youthful offenders. But he said wards are, instead, subjected to constant verbal abuse from staff and emotional torment from the punishment of special lockup, which removes the wards from the CYA population and puts them in a cell, where -- just last month -- two Preston Youth Facility wards committed suicide. "All you know, right now, in that room is darkness, cold, walls covered in blood or feces, urine all over the floor, gang writings on the walls, people yelling out doors, telling them they’re going to get stabbed. So, really, it’s a huge risk to be in lockup," the former ward said. The former ward said being released from the CYA was a pretty hard thing because he still feels that the CYA system has embedded some sort of criminal attitude. "I shouldn’t have to know what these lifetime criminals are going through every day. But they taught me that. CYA taught me how to be a convict," said the 21-year-old. I am sure that being in Youth Lockup is not a picnic, but it supposed to be hard. You don’t go to CYA on the first offense or even the third. You have to show a pattern of behavior that is a danger to society or yourself. If you think that this young man was just stealing a kiss from a girlfriend then you are VERY naïve. Gee they called him names? I bet they made him go to school everyday (oh the agony). Most of these kiddy criminals aren’t used to authority and when they get some they whine like babies. Do I think they set up some youths for beating to show then a lesson? Possibly. Romeo’s story here sounds fishy to me. You don’t go to jail for four years for some heaving petting and he stories sound like some Hollywood made for TV movie. I am willing to bet you hear from him again, like on the police blotter or the obits. |
| Posted by:Cyber Sarge |
| #1 Note to kid, now "grown up" at 21: "Life is hard. It's a lot harder if you're stupid." Q.E.D. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-2-14 7:43:53 PM |