Jeffery Coats was 14 when he was pulled out of the ninth grade at Fairview Junior High in Silverdale to face a 20-year sentence in adult prison. After a few brief stopovers, he was sent three years ago to the remote Clallam Bay Corrections Center. There he was, and still is, housed with inmates two and three times his age. One of only a handful of inmates under 18 in the state's adult system at the time, he immediately became a target. "Some guys are hard guys," says Coats. "It was rough being in here with guys who had been down 15 or 20 years." Not long after his arrival, he says, "I got beat up pretty bad and went to the hospital outside the prison. It was a nice ambulance ride."
Normally, an offender as young as Coats would have served his time in a juvenile facility geared more toward rehabilitating those not yet fully hardened. But as part of this state's trend toward getting tough on juveniles—particularly violent juveniles—he found himself at Clallam Bay. The facility had no special programming for teens and didn't even have a high school education program, as required by the Washington Constitution. Coats, hungry for knowledge, took nearly every class the prison had to offer in order to get his GED and a prison job. But he continually pressed officials about developing a high school program so he could earn a degree. Coats didn't want to wind up just another guy released from prison without skills or a chance for success, as predicted by statistics—according to a May report by the Department of Corrections (DOC) and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), only one in five state prison inmates under 21 has either a high school diploma or a GED. One-third have completed ninth grade or less.
Coats' requests went nowhere. So last November, he and seven other inmates filed a class-action lawsuit against the DOC, the OSPI, and various school districts around the state. Filed in Thurston County Superior Court, the lawsuit demands that the state provide a school program for all inmates under the age of 21, equivalent to that afforded non-incarcerated children. It also demands special-education programs for those under 22 and "compensatory educational services" for those over the age limits who were denied education during confinement. In part because of the suit, two state prisons are now offering high school programs—though only for inmates under 18. The Washington Corrections Center for Women started classes in April, and Clallam Bay will kick off its program in September.
"The most important thing about this lawsuit," says Coats' attorney, David Fathi of Columbia Legal Services, "is to get the services for inmates who want them and need them. We hear every day how important education is for leading a productive life. Aside from the fact that it's their right, it's a good idea for all of us who live in this society to provide an education to these people." More than half of the inmates represented by the lawsuit will be released within two years, and Fathi asks, "Do we want them to come out being able to read and write, with basic knowledge and skills, or not?" He relays the comments of one plaintiff: "All of my dreams have been crushed. School is my only chance to build new ones."
With the number of young prisoners booming, education for juvenile inmates has lately become a hot issue in DOC circles. There now are close to 90 inmates under 18 in the state system, up from only a few two years ago, and state officials project approximately 240 by next year. The increase is due to a 1997 law, HB 3900, which designates a series of crimes—first-degree robbery, first-degree rape of a child, drive-by shooting, first-degree burglary (with prior offenses), and any violent offense with a gun—as automatically warranting trial in adult court. "We have as a society long believed that young people are redeemable," says Fathi, "and the whole idea behind having a separate system is that we'll treat them differently and that they can be diverted from a life of crime and brought back to lead a law-abiding life. It's discouraging to see that philosophy abandoned and more and more juveniles written off and put in adult prison."
Adult prisons—almost completely devoid of rehabilitative services—are notoriously hard on children. In a speech before Congress a few years ago, Michael E. Saucier, then national chair of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, noted that juveniles in adult facilities are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as likely to be beaten by staff, and 50 percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon than those in juvenile facilities. "The most revealing research," he said, "is three different studies conducted over a 10-year period that show significantly higher recidivism rates for youths tried in adult courts compared to those tried in juvenile courts for the same offenses and with similar personal profiles."
Perhaps the Legislature considered some of these issues when, as part of HB 3900, it mandated that adult facilities house juveniles and adults separately and provide a comprehensive high school education program. A year earlier, the DOC had started pooling male inmates under 18 at the Washington Corrections Center at Shelton, already the most overcrowded prison in the state. But the facility was unprepared for the new regulations and the resulting busloads of youngsters showing up at its doorstep. According to Jerry Tauscher, Shelton's acting associate superintendent, who headed the prison's youthful offender program, finding a place to keep youths separate from adults wasn't easy at the squeezed facility. He says there's still crossover: "They pass adult inmates when they're being moved, but they're escorted. It's not the most ideal thing, but we're overcrowded as it is. We didn't have time to build another building. The implementation date of the legislation was immediate."
