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Three employees at a youth prison in Stockton are fighting suspensions imposed after the suicide last year of an 18-year-old ward who was isolated in his room for two months, the corrections department said in responding to a public records request from The Associated Press.
The employees at the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility served their 10-day, five-day and two-day suspensions but are appealing their loss of pay, said spokeswoman Sarah Ludeman.
She would not say why the lengths of the suspensions varied or give other details, citing privacy rules.
Employees took 38 minutes to enter Joseph Daniel Maldonado's room Aug. 31, 2005, after they discovered he had covered his windows and was not responding, the prison system's inspector general said in a December report. There they found the short, slim teenager hanging from a bedsheet. He had been serving a sentence for stealing a car in Sacramento County.
The inspector general's report blamed poor oversight for his death. In addition, the inspector general said employees failed to allow Maldonado counseling, visitors or exercise and missed several signs that he needed mental health treatment.
The juvenile justice reform group Books Not Bars held a memorial service in Sacramento Thursday on the anniversary of Maldonado's death.
Ben Wyskida, a spokesman for the Oakland-based group, said the short suspensions aren't enough.
"If it can even be considered a punishment, it's appalling," he said Saturday. "If these guards are in any way responsible for his death, they shouldn't be working there."
The department released the limited disciplinary information this week in response to more than eight months of requests by The AP, including a formal Public Records Act request filed nearly three months ago.
Wyskida decried "the snail's pace of reform" since Maldonado's death.
A year later, the department still has not issued a corrective action plan, Ludeman said in response to another portion of The AP's records request. The plan remains under review, she said.
However, she said the department now does mental health reviews and has more management oversight when youths are locked in their cells for extended periods. She said there have since been no lock-downs of the duration of the one at Chaderjian, where wards were isolated for eight weeks after gang members assaulted three prison staff members.
Employees have since been trained in suicide prevention and risk assessment, and there is a new observation policy for wards considered suicide risks, she said. Sick call procedures now allow for requesting mental health treatment. And the department has clarified what steps employees are to take when wards cover their windows.
"I think they are small but important steps," Wyskida said, noting that many had been required by lawsuit settlements regardless of Maldonado's death. Maldonado's family sued the department in January.
Reform groups and some state lawmakers have called for closing large institutions like Chaderjian, where a security camera captured video of two wards being beaten by six correctional employees in 2004.
The department is proposing, as part of a lawsuit settlement over conditions at youth facilities, to turn Chaderjian into a specialized treatment facility for sexual offenders and those with substance abuse or mental health problems.
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