MERIDIAN —     Children detained at the Lauderdale County Juvenile Detention Facility continue to be subject to poor and sometimes abusive conditions 10 months after a settlement agreement over the center was reached, according to a status report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    The SPLC, a non-profit civil rights organization, said that even though the county has made progress toward complying with the agreement, many serious problems, such as the abuse of mace by guards, have yet to be addressed.

    The report contained several accounts of youth being subjected to especially severe abuses, including several occasions of youth being forced to eat while confined in a disgusting cell with their own feces, and one girl who'd recently had a miscarriage being made to sleep in soiled sanitary pads and clothing.

    The county says it intends to comply with the agreement, but that it will take a long time to meet all 50 of the agreement's provisions, which call for a huge overhaul of the facility's operation.

    Of the 50 provisions, the county has reached full compliance with five and partial compliance with 26, according to the SPLC's report. The group deemed the county to be in non-compliance with 19 of the provisions.

    Lee Thaggard, the attorney representing the county in the case, stressed that the status report represents the opinion of the SPLC.

    The agreement was reached after a group called Disability Rights Mississippi sued the county for not letting them into the facility to check conditions there. SPLC represented Disability Rights Mississippi in the case, and remains involved with the implementation of the agreement.

    Including unnecessary use of mace, the report said the facility continues to use improper forms of punishment and restraint. The report specifically describes continued problems in almost every aspect of the juvenile center's management that was addressed in the settlement, from sanitation to education to medical care.

    However, some progress has been made in many areas, including the removal of a restraint chair that was previously used at the facility, the adoption of new health and mental health service contracts, and a new partnership between the facility and the local non-profit group Youth Excitement Team.

    Thaggard said much of the work so far has been in drafting new policies, with cooperation between the SPLC and the juvenile center administration. The report says that, in many cases, the SPLC has drafted policies at the request of the administration, but that many of those policies have not been implemented yet.

    SPLC characterized conditions at the facility as "abusive" and cited "violations of the basic rights of confined children," but said the county, "has taken significant steps toward compliance with (the) agreement."

    SPLC made a presentation on the report to the board of supervisors at a work session Thursday morning.



'Abusive conditions'



    According to the report, the facility's current practices exacerbate, rather than reduce, negative or violent behavior in inmates.

    The report says the center has failed to implement a new discipline policy that would improve behavior by using graduated levels of punishment for bad behavior and rewards for good behavior. The report said some of the guards make behavioral problems worse by yelling, cussing, and name-calling at the youth and sometimes subjecting them to shockingly abusive punishments.

    For example, the agreement allows for youth to be locked in their cells as punishment for up to a maximum of 48 hours as long as they are let out to attend school, maintain hygiene, and have one hour of large muscle exercise — but the report says children are regularly locked in their cells for more than 48 hours without being let out at all, sometimes even being forced to eat right next to a pool of their own defecation.

    "On several occasions, while these youth have been locked in their cells, the Juvenile Center has turned off the water into their cells for extended periods of time, so that these youth have not been able to flush their toilets, resulting in children being confined for days in a small space in disgusting and unsanitary conditions, where they were also forced to eat," the report says. "In at least one recent instance, a child was also deprived of all clothing except for a pair of boxers, and when another youth tried to give him clothing, that youth was disciplined."

    Youth Court Judge Frank Coleman said at the work session that the youth who had his water turned off had been using his water to flood the dormitory.

    Guards are also reported as improperly using mace often, and in general handling situations in ways that make the situation worse.

    Though chemical restraints including mace are used much less than they were before the agreement was reached, the report says, they are still used improperly and too much.

    "There has continued to be numerous occasions where staff has maced children for being loud, talking back, making verbal threats, or throwing water while children have been secured in their cells and did not present an immediate danger to anyone," the report says. "Many times, this situation has started with the child having been placed on lockdown for a minor rule violation, which made them upset and caused them to make a minor verbal comment. Rather than taking steps to calm the child down or to de-escalate the situation, the staff has instead escalated the situation by inappropriately engaging with the child, sometimes calling the child names, cussing or making other inappropriate comments, and making them more upset, leading to behavior such as described above."

    A specific incident from January in which a girl was maced after being sent to her cell for laughing is described in the report. "A staff member yelled at her to stop laughing, cussed at her, and sent her to her cell. The girl went to her cell, was upset and yelled back at the staff member. While the child was secured in her cell alone, the staff member continued to engage with her, yelling and cussing at her. The staff member then sprayed mace into the girl's small cell, onto her. The mace caused serious pain for both that child and another who was in the dormitory at the time."

    Coleman said in the work session that sometimes children cause such a serious disruption from inside their cell that guards have to use mace, and gave the example of a child throwing feces.

    SPLC said it is not appropriate to use mace while the child is locked inside the cell, and that proper training could teach staff other ways to handle volatile situations.

    The report said the juvenile center has not attempted to provide training on verbal de-escalation and crisis prevention methods to its staff.

    Staff also use physical force abusively, according to the report. "There continue to be reports of staff members using physical force in inappropriate, violent, and abusive manners. The frequency of these reports has decreased significantly since when the agreement went into effect, but remain persistent and still occur too often," the report reads. "On several recent occasions, youth have reported that staff members have placed their hands on children's necks and chocked them ... there have been multiple incidents in which youth were slammed to the ground and then were sat on by one or more guards, a practice that is dangerous and creates a serious risk of injury, asphyxiation and death."



Idle hands



    Another area where the report says the center has not made progress is in addressing boredom and idleness in inmates. Boredom, it says, is known to lead to increased behavior problems.

    "The Juvenile Center director has acknowledged that boredom is at the root of many behavioral problems that occur at the detention center," the report says. "Youth frequently report to the Southern Poverty Law Center that they sleep all day because there is nothing else to do and that the idleness intensifies conditions such as depression."

    The report said that children are often sent to sit idly in their cells for no apparent reason, and that the facility has so far failed to implement a daily structured activity program that includes educational, rehabilitative, and recreational programs, as laid out in the agreement.

    "School hours are limited: on weekdays, some youth attend school for between one and three hours per day," the report reads. "Outside of school hours, youth primarily occupy their time watching television, playing cards, talking to one another, and playing basketball for a limited amount of time in good weather."

    The report said a number of educational and recreational supplies, such as games and art supplies, are only rarely put to use.

    The report quotes the U.S. Department of Justice as saying, in another case involving a juvenile detention center, "The amount and quality of structured daily programming in juvenile facilities has a significant impact on the rate of violent and antisocial incidents."

    

A long list of problems



    SPLC outlined numerous other problems in the report. There is said to be a lack of adequate supervision by staff, with girls in particular being sometimes left without any supervision at all. Also more particularly with the girls, a lack of sufficient confidentiality of the inmate's medical and mental health records has been reported.

    The center also has not implemented a multi-tiered suicide prevention policy, as is called for in the agreement, and has not made a policy of notifying the parents, attorney, and court when an inmate is placed on suicide watch, according to the report. The current suicide prevention policy was not described in the report.

    The settlement called for visitation with family members and attorneys that allows full physical contact, but the report says youths and their families are still separated by a wooden door with a screen when they visit. The report also notes that visiting hours are during regular business hours, making it harder for working parents to visit. Children are also not being routinely allowed to call their parents, attorneys, or social workers, the report said.

    There also is no system in which inmates can file grievances.

    These are among numerous other problems listed in detail in the status report.    



Areas of progress



    As the report notes, there have been some significant areas of improvement at the facility. Thaggard, who pointed out that the report is a progress report, not a final report, said the process of coming into compliance with the agreement is ongoing.    

    One especially significant area of improvement is in the medical care and mental health care contracts that the county has entered into for the juvenile center.  Before the mental health and medical services were acquired, there were serious problems with the medical and mental health care, or lack thereof, provided at the facility, as the report details.

    "For example, last year, a child was brought to the detention center from school with a severe head injury and to wait for hours to be taken to the hospital, where his family learned that he had a broken hand," it said.

    In another incident this past fall, "a girl who had had a recent miscarriage reported to multiple staff members that she was in pain and had abnormal bleeding; she was not given medical attention or painkillers, was told by staff that there was nothing wrong with her, and had to sleep in soiled sanitary pads and clothes."

    But the contract, once fully implemented, will bring the center into full compliance on many of the medical care and mental health care related provisions, and children are already receiving more sufficient medical care than when the incidents described above took place.

    "Recently, youth have generally been provided with a full medical screening and a full physical exam in less than 72 hours (after admittance), and have generally been provided access to medical professionals upon request."

    There are still some problems with medical and mental health care at the facility, but the new contract brings with it a vast improvement.

    Another significant step is a partnership with local non-profit Youth Excitement Team, which is helping the county with prevention. YET is hosting a reporting center that would provide an alternative to detention for youth who violate the terms of a court order but do not commit a delinquent act, such as children who run away from home or are suspended from school.

    Y.E.T. has also begun to implement an electronic monitoring program that would allow youth who commit certain types of offenses to be placed under constant supervision instead of detained in the juvenile center.

    In conjunction with the the electronic monitoring and day reporting programs, Y.E.T. is implementing mentoring programs, education programs, and job placement programs.

    "They are given the opportunity to be productive and not be thrown away and locked up," Program Director Terrance Roberts said during the work session. "For some of them, they're getting it."

    Roberts said the primary goals of the programs are to reduce recidivism and lessen the stress on the juvenile delinquency system.

    "The development of these programs represents a notable and serious commitment to the development of alternatives (to detention)," the report said. "However, youth continue to be held  in secure custody at the detention center for technical probation violations, including out-of-school suspension."

    The county has also removed a restraint chair that used to be used on inmates in the juvenile center.

    

Moving forward



    Board of Supervisors President Craig Hitt said he takes a positive message from the report, taking into consideration that it is the first progress report on the county's compliance with the agreement.

    "We've still got miles to go, but we're moving in the right direction," he said.

    Thaggard stressed that the county is still actively working with the SPLC to make improvements at the center.

    "A lot of what's mentioned in the report is the development of policies and procedures, and there's a tremendous amount of effort...in working on those policies and procedures," he said. "This was not contemplated that compliance would happen overnight. It's got to be a progression, and some of the things take time to get done."

    Though the board of supervisors has the option to just close the facility, Hitt said he hopes the board won't do that and doesn't think it's likely they will.

    "Personally, I just don't think that's something that would be beneficial to the people of Lauderdale County," he said. Hitt said he hopes to instead find ways to improve conditions without putting an extreme financial burden on the county.

    With many of the worst problems at the center stemming from a lack of funding and a lack of proper staff training, Hitt said he thinks that, long-term, the alternative sanction programs administered by Y.E.T. could make all the difference.

    Hitt said that it's difficult to train staff because there are so few staff members that they can't be spared to leave for training, but that by reducing the number of inmates at the center, the alternative sanction programs could give staff more time for training.

    He said the county has also looked at the possibility of having someone come to conduct on-site training, which would require employees to take less time away from the duties they are being trained to properly do.

    Hitt said that reducing the number of inmates at the center could also, in the long-term, reduce costs at the center.

    "We've been needing to do something for a long time, and unfortunately it took having (SPLC) come in to make us do things," he said. "But I think that now, we're moving in the right direction."

    In the report, the SPLC noted that the county has made significant positive steps, but noted that the county, "remains out of compliance with a significant majority of the terms of the settlement agreement."

    "Lauderdale County must take prompt action to comply with the terms of the agreement," the report said, "to ensure that the youth confined at the Lauderdale County Juvenile Center are finally free of abusive conditions."

    Coleman did not return phone calls for comment.

    The full text of the report is available on the Web at www.meridianstar.com.

    Here's a summarized look at the provisions of the settlement, showing which the county has complied with so far, which it has not yet complied with, and which it has partially complied with:



Partial Compliance:



• Conduct health screenings of youth when they enter the facility

• Conduct mental health screenings of youth when they enter the facility

• Provide youth with all of their prescription medications

• Maintain a staff to youth ratio of 1:8 during the day and 1:10 and ensure staff actively monitors youth

• Allow youth to engage in structured activities outside of their cell from 7 a.m. until 30 minutes before bedtime

• Provide adequate mental health services

• Maintain psychological evaluations for youth on psychotropic medications

• Provide individual mental health treatment to youth with a mental health history

• Provide adequate medical care

• Provide, in a timely manner, care by a medical professional to youth who request it

• Prescriptions to be distributed by trained staff

• Ensure confidentiality of health information

• Implement policy that discourages unnecessary use of chemical restraints such as mace.

• Do not allow chemical restraints to be used for the convenience of staff

• Use mechanical restraints only when youth is in non-secure area and poses risk of flight or violence

• Adhere  to limits on amount of time mechanical restraints can be used

• Provide mental health evaluation for youth on highest level of suicide watch

• Allow youth on suicide watch to participate in regular activities

• Provide means to maintain adequate hygiene

• Provide clean sleeping mats and blankets

• Do not withhold sleeping mats and blankets

• Provide clean, sanitary environment

• Maintain an encouraging visitation schedule and allow visitation by minors who are close relatives

• Allow youth to receive phone calls from their attorneys

• Provide equal access to services and recreation for both genders

• Allow large muscle exercise for at least one hour per day



Not in Compliance:



• Consider alternative sanctions before sending youth who commit a non-delinquent act to detention

• Implement strategies to reduce the need to send youth to detention

• Establish a daily structured program of educational, rehabilitative, and recreational activities

• Develop a discipline policy that uses positive behavior intervention

• Do not confine youth to cell as punishment for longer than 48 hours, with youth allowed out of cell for school, hygiene, and one hour of exercise.

• Only use restraints if there is a threat of bodily harm

• Supervise youth who are under restraint

• Notify a medical professional when restraints are used

• Cease use of physical force as punishment

• Notify a medical professional whenever force is used

• Develop a multi-tiered suicide prevention policy

• Report suicide watch to parents and court

• Comply with fire safety, food safety, weather emergency, sanitation, and environmental toxin laws

• Allow adequate visitation space and physical contact during visitation

• Allow youth to phone parents three times a week at no charge

• Allow youth to phone attorneys and social workers free of charge

• Implement an adequate, accessible grievance system

• Train staff on reporting child abuse and neglect

• Train staff on complying with the agreement



In Compliance:

• Send youth detained for non-violent offenses home if staff to youth ratio drops below specified number for more than two days

• Have a doctor or nurse practitioner available

• Do not use restraints to secure youth to a fixed object

• Do not practice hogtying

• Do not restrict visitation privileges unless there is a security threat