David Meffe was only 16 in 2002 when he was abused by fellow inmates in the Toronto Youth Assessment Centre, made to eat excrement from a toilet and lick spit off the floor of a van.

The youth was being held on bail after his parents surrendered him to police for stealing cheques from family members, a last-ditch attempt to fix his behavioural problems with tough love.

A week later he was dead, a suicide in his cell.

An investigation of the facility by then-provincial child advocate Judy Finlay’s office found peer violence, limited meaningful programming and inattention to basic-care needs. The province shut the doors of the “hellish institution” in 2004.

But $93 million dollars and almost a decade later, current provincial youth advocate Irwin Elman is hearing many of the same concerns.

Young offenders at the Roy McMurtry Youth Centre in Brampton, the state-of-the-art facility opened in 2009 to replace the former jail, are still dealing with violent fellow inmates, physically aggressive guards and sometimes substandard basic care.

About 100 youth were interviewed over a two-year period for Elman’s report, released Aug. 7 and titled “It Depends Who’s Working: The Youth Reality at RMYC.” It’s a follow-up to an earlier investigation in 2010, which led Elman to conclude the Roy was “not safe.”

Many youth advocates said the facility should never have been built. A coroner’s inquest following Meffe’s death recommended smaller facilities in local communities.

Agnes Samler, a former probation officer who was then the provincial youth advocate, spoke to the ministry at the time.

“We talked relationship, rehabilitation, importance of family,” she said. “They talked about how beautiful the (Roy McMurtry) campus was going to be.”

On a recent three-hour tour of “the Roy,” as RMYC is universally known, a Star reporter was shown nearly every nook and cranny of the jail, including an empty girls’ unit, and had interviews with managers, staff and program providers.

It was clear much is being done to tackle the problems identified three years ago. Just one change: a youth advisory committee has been devised to give inmates a say in how the jail operates, right down to discussions about food. Incentive programs recognize good behaviour with more time to watch TV or do other activities.

“I’m seeing all the changes, the improvements,” says Ray Tyghter, youth liaison manager for the Roy. “It’s getting better every year. I deal directly with the youth and I’ve heard their concerns.”

Not all staff agree with some of the changes. Some believe the youth are being coddled, one staffer told the Star, requesting anonymity. That belief highlights a philosophical divide among staff over traditional corrections approaches and a relationship custody approach. The split is at the tipping point in the Roy, according to Elman.

Many other improvements, including better integration with community supports upon release, are still in study or planning stages. The big block party shooting last summer on Danzig St. in Toronto, and a subsequent youth action plan announced by Queen’s Park, kicked everything into high gear.

The top four priorities, says Peter Sampaio — co-chair of a new collaborative comprised of four working groups — are enhancing education opportunities, employment and training, rehabilitation and mental health issues and housing for released youth.

Yet successful organizations such as Redemption Reintegration Services in Scarborough — it has employment counsellors, court workers and reintegration workers to help kids getting out of the Roy — still have trouble getting permanent funding.

The organization says it has a 3.5 per cent recidivism rate compared to the 36 per cent rate cited by the province, which tracks kids convicted of only the most serious crimes.

“Sometimes youth don’t even have identification, secure housing or adequate transportation to an appointment to deal with bail or probation,” says exective director Victor Beausoleil. “In some cases, these are the reasons they reoffend.”

The tour of the Roy, a sprawling 77-acre site, was requested far in advance of the release of Elman’s latest report and took a month for the ministry to arrange.

On tour day, youth gathered in the gymnasium for a special event. Twenty-one young men in burgundy sweats filled several rows of chairs, flanked by youth correctional officers. Many were well into their shaving years. All but one was black, underscoring the grim fact that blacks are over-represented in Canadian jails and prisons.

So too with aboriginal men and women, as a recent Star series highlighted.

The Roy can accommodate 160 males and 32 females, but the place is far from full.

At any given time, there are about 100 male inmates and 8 to 12 females at the Roy, most waiting bail or trial. Others are serving sentences for very serious crimes, including murder among them. Most are older. (The ministry recently announced the girls will be moved out to the Syl Apps centre in Oakville where there are better mental health services, further emptying the jail.)

Staff and guests filled other rows, and listened to speaker Ken Jeffers — a prominent voice in Toronto’s black communities. Posters adorned the walls. Two informational booths offering legal and reintegration help. A table of food and drinks awaited the end of formalities.

Only a week before Jeffers’ visit he was being sought for comment on the shooting death of 15-year-old Jarvis Montaque, one of several young black boys to be shot in Toronto this year. Lack of action on report after report, he told a Star reporter, “shows a complete disregard for the lives of young people.”

At the Roy, Jeffers could look out and count some of those lives.

School a dangerous place

The Star’s tour included a visit to the jail school. It’s a bright wing with the feel and amenities of a new regular school, with the noted exceptions of locks on every door, panic buttons and wand-frisking of students. It’s run by the Peel District School Board.

All jail youth are enrolled. A full curriculum is offered, Grades 9 to 12. There are 27 teachers, 10 teaching assistants and two vice principals, a staff-to-student ratio unheard of in a regular school. Average class size is eight students. There are monthly achievement awards. It appears an excellent place to learn, and many do, but youth inmates are often not there long enough to earn many credits.

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Provincial data shows that in the 2011-2012 fiscal year, 1,043 students enrolled at Roy McMurtry but only a total of 844 credits were earned. The figures are similar at other ministry-operated youth facilities.

The Roy school does not know what becomes of its students upon release.

The provincial advocate’s 2010 report noted that some youth did not feel safe in the school and refuse to attend classes. If there is a gang, drug or street-violence sweep in Toronto and Brampton, those under 18 end up at the Roy. Turf rivalries and other disputes are not easily checked at the door.

A worker from another young offender institution says an inmate who refuses to fight another youth are often beaten up by their own crew.

“There’s gangs everywhere, inside and outside,” confirms Troy DaCosta, 19, who spent a month in the Roy awaiting trial on a gun charge. “There are consequences to not taking on a fight.”

Another youth, who was at the Roy shortly after the jail opened in 2009, says he initially went to the school but stopped because of the fights and stabbings.

“I really didn’t want to (go) all that much because that’s where all the violence happened,” said the youth, now 22. “You put a bunch of kids that don’t like each other from on the street together, it’s like they’re just going to hurt each other, you know? That’s why they have metal detectors, just to go to school.”

Officials acknowledged problems mixing certain inmates and have started schooling some youth in their home units.

The tour included a large, empty gymnasium used by the boys. It’s where the Roy Rams basketball team plays against other Peel high school teams. There are no road games for the Rams.

The Star toured a typical living unit. Bedroom cells have a window, bed, stool fixed to the floor in front of a desk ledge, night light and storage shelf. A call button is used to summon staff — to use the washroom, for example.

The living units have a common area with furniture and lunch tables, laundry facilities and an outdoor space with chairs and a basketball hoop.

Another area is set aside for family and professional visits. This is where young mothers visit with their babies.

The Star was allowed to photograph certain areas of the jail, provided no security features were shown.

On a walk to the jail kitchen, Tyghter, the youth liaison manager, said “youth have a big say in what the menu is here. Everybody wants some control over their destiny.”

Inside the industrial kitchen, pizza fresh from the ovens was being loaded into meal trays, delivered in mobile ovens to the back of the jail’s “cottage” living units via a ring road.

Back in the gym, guest speaker Jeffers

mentioned former Mayor Mel Lastman’s “stupid” joke about being afraid to go to Africa, lest he end up being boiled in a pot, and the harm those kinds of comments do to a community.

People today are not “feeling good about themselves,” he said, “and anger comes from a degradation that you see and feel.”

Positive change, he said, has always come about because of the actions of young people —civil rights movements in the American South; revolution in the Arab Spring. He wraps up with his three T’s — think about it, talk about it, take positive action.

“Young people of African descent,” said Jeffers, “must know that you are somebody.”

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