The report describes the Kailua facility as "in a state of chaos" with guards routinely using "excessive force" to control the youth at the 71-bed facility, the report said.

Justice officials conducted an on-site inspection of Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility in October 2004, interviewing administrators, youth correctional officers, medical and mental health staff. Later that month, they interviewed several female inmates who had been temporarily placed in a Utah facility.

"We find that youth confined at HYCF suffer harm or risk of harm from constitutional deficiencies in the facility's confinement practices, suicide prevention procedures, and provision of access to mental health and medical care services," the report said.

The report said a culture has develop at the prison where abuse of the young inmates often goes unreported and uninvestigated.

The guards "run the facility as they choose, regardless of the negative impact on the health and welfare of the youth confined there," the report stated.

Security staff have stepped into the situation to take over.

The state undertook reform efforts at the youth prison two years ago after the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii alleged that youths at the prison were abused, assaulted and harassed by guards and kept in severely overcrowded conditions.

Gov. Linda Lingle removed the facility's two top administrators, and the attorney general's office launched an investigation into the allegations.