THERE'S NO GUARANTEE OF CYA REFORM SUCCESS.

Byline: Tom Sirmons

WHEN it comes to getting and keeping criminals off the streets, my motto is ``whatever works.'' So my mind is wide open, if a bit jaded, to a plan for changing the way California deals with youthful offenders.

The concept being considered by the California Youth Authority to combat a recidivism rate of around 70 percent is to try to change the lives of troublesome teens. That's a shift from the status quo of warehousing them until they're old enough that future crimes land them in the state penitentiary 

Sounds good, but, as always, the devil is in the details.

What the CYA has in mind is something along the lines of what takes place in a drug treatment facility: more one-on-one counseling, more group therapy, a higher ratio of staff to inmates, and fewer kids per unit in the state's eight youth prison facilities. The CYA would also put a new emphasis on assessing each offender individually.

Authorities are quick to point out that we're not talking about summer camp for gangbangers, with marshmallow roasts and singing ``Kumbaya.'' A prison is still a prison, and I don't recall bars and high, electrified fences at Camp Hi-Rock, where I spent my summers before I became a wretched adolescent who usually was up to no good.

What authorities are also not talking about is cost, at least not directly.

Nonetheless, in submitting their new blueprint to the courts last week, CYA officials told the Christian Science Monitor, in effect, changes won't be cheap. But, they say, drastic alterations in the programs at CYA facilities, aimed at returning to society kids who are different than when they were locked up, will pay untold dividends in the long run.

That has an ominous ring to it. Sounds like we're talking big bucks.

And there is no guarantee that any of this would do much good.

Remember, in the past, especially during the 1960s, great emphasis was placed on prisoner rehabilitation rather than mere punishment. The results were less than encouraging. That's not to say that a more comprehensive approach, with new bells and whistles added on, would be similarly ineffective; but it is a caution flag.

Most criminal gang members, who constitute the majority among California's nearly 3,300 imprisoned minors, are fully acculturated to a lifestyle and mentality that regards authority as the enemy and anyone who submits to it as a chump. Truly making an impression on that indoctrinated mind-set is no small undertaking. It requires the breaking of habits that are years standing. It also requires the cultivation of new, more positive behaviors.

And even if that can be achieved, at the end of their sentences, these kids go right back to the mean streets where all the peer pressure is on returning to their old selves.

It's a lot to ask of anyone, let alone a teenager.

Can it be done?

Maybe. But let's take it slow until we find out.

Start with one CYA facility and give the new programs a trial run for one year. At the end of that time, the authority should be in a position to report on what kinds of results it's getting.

If the outcomes vindicate the new approach, start laying out the money to expand it. But we should not spend massive amounts of taxpayer funds on a pig in a poke, no matter how many child psychologists and other ``experts'' sing its praises.

There are three reasons for incarcerating criminal offenders:

One is to get them off the streets.

The second is to mete out the punishment, in the form of deprivation of liberty, that justice demands for their crimes.

And the third is, in the process of the first two, to get criminals to see the tragic folly of their former behavior and repent, which simply means to turn away from it.

We have already spent a fortune on the prison system. We cannot afford to spend even more simply making incarceration a more pleasant experience to return to.