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"Barbaric confinement" Locked in cell 23 hours per day has been blamed in recent suicides.

Ending a practice dubbed inhumane by critics, the director of the California Youth Authority said Wednesday that young inmates who misbehave will no longer be isolated 23 hours a day in barren segregation cells. Walter Allen III offered no details of how prison officers will manage troublesome youths who are now sent to special detention units and deprived of all privileges for an average of 60 to 90 days. But after members of the Senate Rules Committee called the practice of near-round-the-clock confinement in 6-by-8-foot cells barbaric, Allen said that, "As of today ... it is over." "We are going to change our way of doing business," Allen said. "We're going to change the conditions of confinement." Allen's comments came as the committee met to consider whether to confirm him as director of the troubled CYA, which houses 4,300 inmates in 11 prisons and camps on an annual budget of about $391 million. [more]