Crackdown on Youth Camps Seen

SACRAMENTO —  Under a proposed law expected to be enacted within days, California will significantly increase its control and scrutiny of out-of-state juvenile camps where hundreds of the state’s troubled youths are sent from their home counties.

Prompted by the death of a Sacramento boy who was physically abused at a camp in Arizona, legislation designed to prevent such recurrences has passed the state Senate and Assembly.

It awaits the expected signature of Gov. Pete Wilson, and major portions would take effect immediately.

The measure also reaches more broadly into California’s own systems of juvenile justice, requiring state-monitored audits of youth facilities and fingerprinting of workers who supervise young delinquents and victims of abuse.

Taken together, the legislation “represents the widest reform of its kind in California,” said state Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), the bill’s author.

State officials said elements of the legislation will improve conditions for more than 100,000 California youths who have been removed from their homes and placed in foster care--some for committing crimes, some the victims of abuse or neglect.

Foster care encompasses a variety of housing alternatives, including licensed foster homes, group homes and camp settings in California and out of state.

About 640 youths from California are housed at private paramilitary camps in seven other states, mostly in the West, with one in Pennsylvania.

Young offenders from California are sent out of state as a result of decisions made in their home counties, usually by juvenile court judges. According to legislative researchers, the costs to the counties for sending kids to Arizona and elsewhere are far less than in-state alternatives, hence much of their appeal.

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To address the uproar over the brutal treatment and death of 16-year-old Nicholaus Contreraz at the Arizona Boys Ranch on March 2, the legislation imposes powerful leverage over how such camps operate.

They must either observe California state standards for humane treatment or risk losing eligibility to house young, mostly nonviolent offenders from California.

The controls will be enforced by requiring out-of-state camps that accept youths from California to be certified by the California Department of Social Services.

California counties would be denied state and federal foster care funds, and would be prevented from using their own funds, to send their youths to uncertified camps.

The state lacks the authority to simply ban counties from sending juveniles out of state, officials said.

Camps holding youths from California will have one year to meet the state licensing standards and become certified.

Among the requirements:

* No corporal punishment, such as whipping, hitting or punching.

* No lockup conditions preventing youths from leaving a facility--although placement in remote desert camps, critics maintain, is automatically a form of confinement.

* No prohibition from receiving mail or making phone calls.

* With certain exceptions, no preventing visits by parents or other loved ones.

* No denial of other personal rights, such as maintaining cleanliness and dental hygiene.

At the Arizona Boys Ranch where Contreraz died, “we know many of these rights were denied,” said Sidonie Squier, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Social Services.

After a three-month investigation, the social services agency reported that the boy suffered several weeks of abuse by camp supervisors who ignored numerous indications of physical illness and fear-engendered psychological problems.

Contreraz, who was sent from Sacramento to the Arizona camp after stealing a car and failing rehabilitation attempts, was forced to take part in the camp’s rigorous physical training sessions, despite his condition, state investigators found. Camp officials said he was faking ill health.

Among other excesses, the investigators heard accounts of the boy being forced to do push-ups into his own vomit and excrement, Squier said. Similar findings were reported by the Sheriff’s Department in Pinal County, where the camp is located.

The Contreraz case ignited a prolonged outcry for reform, raised questions of abuse at other camps and fomented renewed debate on the wisdom of forcing children into custody at far-off desert camps.

When the boy’s death became known, the state Social Services Department told all California counties that state and federal funds would be cut off for any further youth placements at the Arizona Boys Ranch. On Aug. 1, the department went further and cut funds to cover costs of California youths already at the facility.

With state and federal funds meeting 80% of the $3,700 monthly cost per boy that the ranch charges, counties ordered home 223 California youths. The Oracle, Ariz., camp at which Contreraz died, one of several Arizona Boys Ranch locations, has since been closed.

Officials at the camp acknowledge that “errors were made” with Contreraz, that steps have been taken to prevent another such tragedy and that some staff members were disciplined or fired.

Some judges who have sent delinquent youths to the out-of-state camps argue that the tough, military-like training that would not be allowed in California has been effective in detouring kids from further criminal trouble.

But that argument appears to have lost ground with Contreraz’s gruesome death. Pinal County sheriff’s reports indicate that on the day he died--suffering from strep and staph infections, pneumonia and chronic bronchitis and his lungs surrounded by walls of pus--Contreraz had been once more forced to do strenuous physical training exercises as punishment.

When he collapsed for the last time, witnesses said, he was again ordered to get to his feet. His last word was “no.”

Investigations into the death have been launched by numerous government agencies in California and Arizona, as well as the FBI, which is probing possible violations of Contreraz’s civil rights.

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California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren has responded to an appeal for help from tiny Pinal County, saying the California Department of Justice may be willing to assist overwhelmed local prosecutors.

So far, no charges have been filed.

“We want to help,” said Rob Stutzman, Lungren’s spokesman, possibly by sending investigators to Arizona and by interviewing youths who have since returned to California as potential witnesses.

But first, Stutzman said, Lungren wants to check with other Arizona authorities “before we go treading into another state.”

Contreraz’s death has also created new interest in abuses at other military-style camps for delinquent youths. No one agrees on how many deaths have occurred, or how much blame the camps deserve, but the number nationwide has been reported at 25 to 100.

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Times staff writers Carl Ingram in Sacramento and Julie Cart in Phoenix contributed to this story.