01/11/05

LC050111

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

This is where we send troubled kids to be rehabilitated, but is California's juvenile prison system beyond reform?

Sylvester Tellez>> Chad was called gladiator school and it's like -- I mean, it's like hard-core criminals right there and everything. It's like another step toward, you know I mean, prison.

Val>> And then, what's in a name? Well, would you eat something called Lumberjack Chicken? A tongue-in-cheek primer on all things Pollo.

All straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> The reports are disturbing. Inmates in cages, unprovoked beatings, twenty-three hours a day in a cell and even death. I'm not talking about a prisoner of war detention facility. I'm talking about the California Youth Authority, the institution that's supposed to be rehabilitating California's toughest teen criminals. The CYA has been under harsh attack for the past few years and now Governor Schwarzenegger has vowed to reform it. But as Kevin Smith tells us, some critics say it's beyond reform.

Kevin Smith>> This California Youth Authority facility in Chino looks pretty calm on a bright sunny day as some of the nine hundred young inmates, or wards as they're politely called, stroll from classes back to their living units. But there's a darker side to what goes on here and at seven other CYA facilities that often resemble adult prisons beset by violence and documented abuses. State Senator Gloria Romero chairs the Select Committee on Corrections.

Gloria Romero>> The California Youth Authority facilities have unprecedented levels of violence. Not only ward against ward, but staff against ward and ward against staff. It is something out of a Charles Dickens novel.

Kevin Smith>> Shocking proof came last year. This security camera videotaped from the notorious Chad facility outside Stockton shows guards pummeling young wards lying prone on the floor. The guards have been fired.

Gloria Romero>> I was appalled. When you take a look at that video and you see a correctional officer, a counselor, kicking, beating a ward who is not moving, that is not rehabilitation. That is pure violence.

Walter Allen>> We have three living unit complexes.

Kevin Smith>> In this politically charged hornet's nest steps Walter Allen, a congenial former law enforcement officer and former mayor of Covina. Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Allen last year to head the troubled Authority. Allen's mandate: make CYA facilities less like prisons with more emphasis on rehabilitating the 3,500 young offenders.

Walter Allen>> We owe it to the community, we owe it to society, to make every effort we can make to provide them the best treatment services possible so they don't continue to victimize society when they get out and they don't wind up going through the adult system.

Kevin Smith>> The Youth Justice Coalition, a group that claims CYA should just be completely dismantled, recently held a rally to commemorate four deaths of teenage wards in the past year, two by reported suicide, two from unknown causes.

Noe Orgaz>> You're in a place that's supposed to be safe for you. You're supposed to be there to be rehabilitated, but yet these four young people lost their lives.

Kevin Smith>> Sylvester Tellez who now works for the Youth Justice Coalition spent three years as a ward in CYA facilities, including Chad, for gang-related drug activity.

Sylvester Tellez>> Chad was called gladiator school and it's like -- I mean, it's like hard-core criminals right there and everything. It's like another step towards, you know what I mean, prison.

Walter Allen>> The gladiator school is in our communities. We get these young people that are really, really entrenched in gang behavior. They come to us with the racial violence, with the gang behavior.

Kevin Smith>> Sylvester says the facilities where he did time were a hotbed of violence and abusive authority, such as guards betting on fights between wards. He made drawings like this while locked up in isolation twenty-three hours a day in a tiny cell for disobedience.

Sylvester Tellez>> They gave you a twenty-three hour lockdown and it makes you feel like you might as well be in Pelican Bay, you know.

Kevin Smith>> A statewide audit just reported that nearly ten percent of all wards were still confined in their small cells twenty-three hours a day, many for more than thirty days in a row, a practice the audit called "ineffective and dehumanizing".

Walter Allen>> We do not have the appropriate staffing right now to be able to get some of those young people out for more than an hour or two hours a day. That's just the way it is.

Kevin Smith>> Critics say this further highlights CYA's glaring failures. Seventy percent of the wards wind up back here after committing more crimes.

Gloria Romero>> We have got to move to a model of rehabilitation and, to do that, it does mean a culture change within the organization. Right now if you go into any CYA facility, you'll find bars, you'll find cages, you'll find uniforms, you'll find mace, you'll find dogs, you'll find that essentially these facilities are not rehabilitative centers.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger>> "You cannot pick up a newspaper without reading about a youth dying in prison."

Kevin Smith>> Even critics of CYA applaud Governor Schwarzenegger for admitting the system's faults. Last fall, the state settled a major lawsuit and promised big changes. Director Allen has already made his mark. He's abolished cages that were used to contain more violent wards while they attended classes.

At Chino, better-behaved wards have been placed into this model living unit with a lounge area and access to computers for school work. Some of the units in this facility house as many as one hundred twenty to one hundred thirty wards. This particular experimental unit has sixty-six. The Youth Authority agrees with many of its critics, but the goal is to reduce that number much further.

Walter Allen>> The smaller the living units and the more treatment-oriented services you provide, you do make an impact on some of these young people that come to us.

Kevin Smith>> German Carranza and Fred Lam are both housed in the model unit. German is twenty-four and has been in CYA facilities since he was fifteen for a gang-related murder. Chino is his second stop in the system and he says there was nonstop fighting when he first got here.

German Carranza>> Wards against wards. At that time, wards against staff or whatever.

Kevin Smith>> German will be released next year when he's twenty-five, the maximum age for CYA wards. Fred will be here until at least 2008.

Fred Lam>> It's not as bad as everybody says it is. For the most part, it's really up to the person to make it how it is, you know. I'm going to school, college at night, training during the day. I'm trying to get my certificate for computer repair and such.

Kevin Smith>> Both agree that separating violent from non-violent wards is essential.

German Carranza>> If you have people that are divided, some people are still trying to prove themselves to other people trying to do good. There's always going to be that conflict.

Kevin Smith>> Director Allen says that's high on his list of proposed reforms. He and Senator Romero are also looking to programs in other states like Missouri which gets praise for its success in rehabilitating young criminals.

Walter Allen>> And we're looking at adopting a project here in California in the coming months that wouldn't have uniforms, that the ward could be addressed by their first name, to do more intensive treatment. There'd be a better ward to staff ratio.

Kevin Smith>> But can the CYA itself be rehabilitated? Organizations like the Youth Justice Coalition say no. They want to shut down the facilities completely and have the money turned over to counties for community base programs.

Gloria Romero>> Many have said that CYA will never be totally dismantled and that may well be the case, but it certainly can be whittled away to a bare, bare necessity of existence and the rest of the youth truly should go into programs that meet the law and the spirit of California, which is rehabilitation.

Kevin Smith>> Still, if promised reforms don't come quickly enough or prove too costly, the remaining youth correction facilities could soon bear an eerie resemblance to others that have already been sentenced to close. I'm Kevin Smith for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val>> When you think of commuter marriages, you usually think of a young husband and wife getting their careers off the ground. But these days, things are changing. A recent issue of AARP Magazine reports that more commuter couples are in their fifties. Why the change? And how are older marriages handling the distance? That's what I asked the West Coast editor of AARP Magazine, Nancy Griffin. I met her at her home in Venice. Nancy Griffin, with AARP Magazine, thank you for joining us again.

Nancy Griffin>> Good to be here.

Val>> There's a new pattern, especially among older marriages, of commuter marriages, the husband and wife living often far away in different cities.

Nancy Griffin>> Yes, that's right. There are now three million Americans who are living in separate cities, married Americans.

Val>> And more and more of them are older?

Nancy Griffin>> Yes, an increasing number. Since 2001, the number of people over fifty who are married who live separately has tripled.

Val>> So why are we seeing an increase in commuter marriages among people fifty years and older?

Nancy Griffin>> Well, in the past few years, there's been a lot of downsizing and displacement of people over fifty. A lot of people over fifty are getting laid off. They can't find another job in the city they live in. They find a job in a city far away and the couple feels they need their two incomes and so they separate.

Val>> So when they separate, what kind of strain or what effect does that have on the marriage?

Nancy Griffin>> Well, I think it's very difficult. You have the exhaustion of commuting. Very often, a husband or a wife will come home every other weekend, so it's constantly traveling back and forth. Some couples say they like it. They like the distance and the solitude that they get and they say that it makes their relationship more romantic, that the time they do spend together is very highly-charged and they really appreciate each other more because they're not together all the time.

Val>> So do they find that there are more divorces or fewer divorces among commuter couples?

Nancy Griffin>> They haven't been able to study this phenomenon for very long. There is no indication that there is any greater incidence of divorce among commuting couples. However, couples do say that they think about the possibility of infidelity more often. It doesn't mean that they actually act on it, but they think about the possibility.

Val>> So they're often more worried about it.

Nancy Griffin>> Yes, exactly.

Val>> Now between the younger couple, the wife might move with the husband to a new city. How is that not necessarily the case with older couples?

Nancy Griffin>> Wives don't automatically move anymore for a variety of reasons. First of all, the wife might be working. She might like her job or not feel she could get the same job in the city if she moved. Also, I think sometimes the family doesn't want to take the kids out of school, the kids and the mother are rooted in the city they're in, and very often the new job that the husband has gotten might not seem so secure that it's worth uprooting the whole family.

Val>> So for commuter marriages, whether they be young marriages or older marriages, are there ways that the stress can be relieved and the marriage can be kept strong?

Nancy Griffin>> Yes. I think one of the most important things is couples say they set a time limit on the separation of maybe three years, maybe five years. They say to each other, okay, we can stand it for this long, but after that, we need to be together.

Val>> So what did you sense? Do you think that the number of commuter marriages, especially among older couples, will increase in the future or will it go down?

Nancy Griffin>> I think the number is probably going to increase. It doesn't look like the economy is going to improve or employment is going to improve drastically in the future and most couples feel that both husband and wife need to work. So I'm afraid that means that some of them are going to live apart.

Val>> Nancy Griffin with AARP Magazine, thank you very much.

Nancy Griffin>> Thank you, Val.

Val>> To step inside St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church is like stepping into a cathedral in Rome or Florence, but you're not in Italy. You're in the Latino neighborhood of Pico Union. Vicki Curry takes us inside this magnificent cathedral that was enhanced by a little Hollywood know-how.

Vicki Curry>> It's a working class neighborhood just west of downtown Los Angeles. It's changed over the years with each new wave of immigrants, but standing unchanged at the corner of Pico and Normandie is something you wouldn't expect in an area like this: St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Driving by, you might notice the domed church, but the fairly simple façade gives no hint of what you'll find inside.

[Film Clip]

Father John Bakas>> The idea for us to have a spiritual experience is to leave the common, the everyday, behind and come to a higher level.

Vicki Curry>> Father John Bakas is Dean of St. Sophia, one of the most ornate and impressive churches in Southern California.

Father John Bakas>> So through the use of art, through the use of light, through the use of stained glass, you really enter from a secular space to a really holy space.

Vicki Curry>> Father Bakas was born in Greece, but immigrated to New Mexico as a child where he learned English and Spanish. He's been at St. Sophia for ten years.

Father John Bakas>> Through the use of space and the alter and through the use of all of this iconography, it shows us the destination to go beyond the curtain of this world, the shadows of this world, into the eventual world of the life to come.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Greek Orthodox is the major Christian church in Eastern Europe in the Middle East and dates back to the earliest followers of Jesus, so how did a cathedral like this end up in Los Angeles? It was the dream of a movie theatre mogul who saw his Greek community outgrow its small downtown church.

Father John Bakas>> Mr. Skouras had an inspiration that Los Angeles and the community here should really have a cathedral, something that really justified their forefathers.

Vicki Curry>> Charles Skouras was a Greek immigrant who made his fortune as head of the Fox-West Coast theatre chain in the 1930's and 1940's. He was personally involved in building many of the country's grand movie palaces.

Father John Bakas>> Many of the craftsmen that worked on his theatres were the same ones brought to work here in the cathedral. So there is some relationship between his own particular theatrical style and this cathedral. In addition, Mr. Skouras put in his own little touches which would be, if I can say, "Hollywood-esque". He loved lighting, so for 1952 standards, he put in huge infrastructure of electrical equipment so that there are shades and there are dimmers and there are color lights in here, hundreds literally, that would not have been a part of what you would have thought of a church in those days.

Vicki Curry>> Skouras and his designers researched ancient Eastern churches for inspiration. They envisioned a cathedral just as grand, but also new and unique.

Father John Bakas>> He based this particular cathedral on the old cathedral built in 537 A.D. in Constantinople by The Emperor Justinian. It's a basilica form, but in a more Byzantine tradition with a dome. You don't find columns in the church that would obstruct any particular visual element in the cathedral. Whereas, in the old churches, you had a lot of columns to hold up ceilings. You won't find that here. It was a very nice blend of the ancient style with modern building techniques and yet modern aesthetics.

Vicki Curry>> After three years of construction, St. Sophia was consecrated on September 28, 1952. There are twenty-one custom-made chandeliers from Czechoslovakia, leaded glass from Belgium, England and Germany, marble from Greece and Italy, and gold leaf worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Father John Bakas>> The use of gold leaf is intended to reflect light. Light is a very important element in the church.

Vicki Curry>> Almost every inch of the walls is decorated with drawings, mosaics or stained glass.

Father John Bakas>> The whole story of early Christianity is here for us. Through stained glass windows are the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. There are scenes in between the stained glass windows that connect to certain other personalities in scripture. Saints and martyrs, scenes from the life of Christ. The artist who did this did not use abstract Byzantine forms. He actually used different faces. He would find someone like you and say, you know, you look like someone whose face I can use for a particular thing, so he had people pose in the community at the time of the founding of this cathedral. I even know the woman whose face is used in the icon of the Virgin Mary on the screen there.

Vicki Curry>> And these, they've dubbed "Charlie's Angels" because Charles Skouras raised money for the cathedral by offering donors the opportunity to have their child's face immortalized in St. Sophia. Now let me ask you about this amazing dome above us.

Father John Bakas>> In the Orthodox church, we believe that Christ is present with us at all times, so we express that by seeing the Christ in the form of a magnificent mural looking down upon us. Everything here has a message and it can keep you occupied even when I'm boring during my sermon (laughter). During liturgy, people can look around the walls and get their own sermon.

Vicki Curry>> But Father Bakas is doing more than sermonizing in a beautiful building. In recent years, St. Sophia has been instrumental in tackling neighborhood problems.

Father John Bakas>> We saw the neighborhood had really deteriorated. We realized that we had to do something to be involved. You know, if you look at the major cities in Europe, great churches and great cathedrals have always played a role in city development.

Vicki Curry>> The area is now officially called the Byzantine-Latino Quarter. Its symbol is two angels, each with one wing.

Father John Bakas>> And the motto, if you notice outside, says "We are each of us angels with one wing and we can only fly embracing each other." I think this is really the biography of Los Angeles.

Vicki Curry>> I'm Vicki Curry for Life and Times.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

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Val>> You've heard the phrase "A chicken in every pot". Well, these days it seems there's a chicken on every corner, as documented by our lighthearted commentator, Cris Franco.

Cris Franco>> I'm amazed by the number of Pollo places that are popping up all over town. Pollo is Spanish for chicken and I like it because it's protein-rich brain food. You don't keep this powerhouse running on Crystal Light and rice cakes, I'll tell you that (laughter). Pollo fanatics often need every brain cell they've got to figure out many of these restaurants' quirky Spanish names.

As Life and Times unofficial self-appointed cultural ambassador, we're going to show you some pictures of these local Pollo places and I'll translate their names for your dining education. First up, El Pollo Necio, or the Stubborn Chicken. The Stubborn Chicken? That's right. Can I get that with a side of intractable rice and hard-headed beans? The place is always packed full of stubborn people who want their stubborn chicken.

If stubborn chicken doesn't get your Pollo palate salivating, then how about Pollo Bravo? This isn't bravo as in bravo, bravo, applause. Oh, thank you, thank you. No, here Bravo means great. Hum, do I want to eat a brave bird? If we can smell victory, then why can't we taste bravery? I'll order two.

Super Pollo needs no translation. It means Super Chicken and I think it's a super title for a Super Pollo eatery because it gets me thinking, does Super Pollo have any like super powers, like can he lay eggs with the chorizo right in them?

And can Super Pollo possibly be any stronger than El Pollo Amigo, or Friendly chicken? And from the looks of this logo, I think that Friendly chicken should be called El Pollo (inaudible). He wants to pump you up.

El Pollo Gordo is already pumped up. He is a fat chicken. Hey, I think I know how Pollo Gordo got all gordo. The same way we all got gordo by eating so much and not exercising and driving around in our Pollo Gordo mobiles.

We should stay in shape like El Pollo Campion. That's Champion Chicken. Pollo Grande may mean Big chicken, but no way is it as big as the chicken atop A-1 Pollo. Oh, it's Chickzilla, it's Chickzilla. If you like your Pollo rare, then this is the Pollo for you because A-1 only serves the type that's still clucking and attacking.

Oh, and here's a live one. It's Pollo Lenador, Lumberjack Chicken. "I am a Lumberjack and I'm okay. I'm a chicken today, I'm a chicken today."

Pollo A La Brasa means flame-broiled chicken, not Pollo in your bra size. But it could because Pollos are female, which brings up this whole misconception of the male Pollo mascot, like Juan Pollo. Friends, Pollos are female, so is Juan Pollo a "hen-maphrodite" or is she just into corn and flour? I think Juan Pollo rocks. It's very hip, very now, very today, very gender-bending, and very delicious.

Oh, there are so many more Pollo places, folks. There's Los Pollos, Pollo Rico and Pollo Nortenito and Pollo Chiapaneco, which means Chicken from Chiapas. Boy, I wonder if they can deliver in a half hour. And, of course, there's the granddaddy of them all, El Pollo Loco, Crazy Chicken. There are so many of them that you go crazy trying to figure out which one to eat it.

If I didn't mention your favorite Pollo place, I'm sorry. I didn't have the time or the tortillas to visit them all. But in the end, it doesn't matter because whether you like your Pollo flame-broiled or fat or friendly or in your bra size, ultimately it all ends up tasting like chicken. Ummm, here's my favorite: rubber chicken, original recipe.

Val>> If there is a Pollo something or other in your neighborhood, why don't you take a digital picture of it and e-mail it to us? We'll send it on to Cris. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

A memorial calls attention to an issue some communities would rather ignore.

>> But this is what we're supposed to do, to have this public place so that finally people can say, you know, I can finally admit that my child died from a disease that, in our family, we still don't talk about.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.