Pizza parties. Movie nights. Staff who smoke weed with inmates and ignore tips about riots. And blow jobs. Blow jobs!
What disrespecting, young male scofflaw wouldn't beat down a warden's door to serve time in this teenage Club Fed?
Juxtaposed against Summit View Youth Correctional Center's ascetic veneer—a fortress of steel and thick brick circled by barbed wire; to the north lies restricted Nellis Air Force Base land—is the reality of its past: Inmates, with the help of complicit staff, ran the asylum. And not just any inmates—Nevada's most violent and dangerous male juveniles. Three years ago, 19 of them led a rooftop uprising that trained global attention on the privately-run, 96-bed facility in a cul-de-sac in a desert patch of northeast North Las Vegas.
Months of feverish work by state officials to close wide-ranging gaps in Youth Services International's program, from tracking allegations of mistreatment to escape procedures to staff training, the Florida-based company opted out of its $4.3 million annual contract in September 2001, closing the facility and displacing an already hard-to-place population.
Two months later, before District Judge Joseph Bonaventure, Gloria Kim—one of two female employees given probation for performing oral sex on inmates—explained why so much went unchecked at Summit View: "It was poorly run."
On Monday, the prison is slated to reopen. This time, under state rule (all state juvenile correctional centers are under the auspices of the state Department of Human Resources' Division of Child and Family Services). At the helm will be Superintendent Robert McLellan, tapped from the Montana Department of Corrections, who's indicated he'll not use the past as a guide. He neither knows much about the riots and oral sex, nor does he care.
"I'm not familiar with what occurred down to the details," says McLellan. Prior to becoming assistant superintendent at the Pine Hills Youth Correctional Facility in Miles City, Montana, he worked in enforcement. "This is an entire new operation. It'll be completely different."
The first 24 inmates are scheduled to arrive on Monday, with the facility expected to be fully operational, all 96 beds filled and 86 staffers hired, by year's end.
Big Difference No. 1 between YSI and McLellan: Under YSI, employees routinely took on assignments without being properly trained. McLellan's workforce will undergo 160 to 170 hours of instruction set to American Correctional Association Standards. "You absolutely have to screen and hire the best staff to supervise the youth."
Big Difference No. 2: Inmates' entire days will be structured, from wake-up to bedtime, chow time to exercise—the facility's central portion has soccer fields, volleyball and basketball courts and a gym.
Also in place will be a "cognitive behavioral restructuring model." It delineates levels of behavior and rewards inmates for obeying rules. Via the Clark County School District, inmates can take continuing education courses, vocational and GED classes or, McLellan says, sign up for life-skills programs.
McLellan is in the process of identifying the inmates; there's no plan to accept youth from other states. The typical stay will range from nine to 12 months. Given the caliber of his future clientele—chronic offenders (they've committed large number of crimes), serious offenders convicted of assault, weapons and drug-related crimes) and parole violators—McLellan doesn't expect a trouble-free ride.
"Every juvenile facility has the potential to have problems. We have already planned for a variety of things," he notes, neglecting to say if that includes weed-smoking parties between inmates and staff and the occasional act of oral sex meant to deflate an unruly prisoner. "We're prepared for problems if they do happen."