Kid Row

Isolated, abused and lacking mental health care, do juvenile offenders leave state custody in worse shape than when they went in?

Comments (0) By Amy Silverman Thursday, Jul 5 2001

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"But I think people have to realize that we are getting these kids after society has failed them in every other way. Some of them are the worst of the worst."

That is not enough for some concerned ADJC employees, like the three-year supervisor watching the agency slide farther away from rehabilitation every day.

Steve Granitz/Rogers & Cowan

Dan Huff

A boy in his cell at Adobe Mountain.

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"I think a kid might potentially get killed. A kid might get seriously hurt," he says. "We are going to lose control of an institution because what we're doing is we're not treating kids, we're simply trying to keep a handle on behavior, kind of like the adult system does."

Steve Meissner wraps up his tour of Adobe and Black Canyon with a poignant anecdote about the late Richard Bilby, the U.S. District Court judge who oversaw the ADJC federal order. Shortly before the order expired, Bilby toured the Encanto unit -- ADJC's cottage devoted to mentally ill boys -- and, turning to line staff, told them, "You're doing the Lord's work."

"But not necessarily in the way God would," responds Jan Christian, who, as executive director of the task force that implemented the federal order, spent years in close contact with ADJC. She's had almost none since 1998, until reviewing information given to her by New Times for this story.

"They're playing God, there's no doubt about that," Christian says. She's more than disappointed in the ultimate outcome of years of work and millions of dollars.

"Nothing short of going out and closing those gates is going to change that institutional culture."

Read more stories in the Slammed special report.