|
Conditions at youth lockup rankle
legislators
February 22, 2007
BY AMY UPSHAW
Members of a House panel that
focuses on children said Wednesday that they are outraged that the
state spends, on average, about $ 70, 000 a year per bed at the
143-bed Alexander Juvenile Correctional Facility, yet conditions and
services continue to be woefully inadequate.
“We’ve got to start looking at a
breakdown of these expenses and see if they are justified,” said
state Rep. Ed Garner, R-Maumelle, a member of the House Committee on
Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs. “It’s
clear the kids are not the beneficiaries.”
The facility, which houses between
600 and 700 youths per year, wasn’t designed to house troubled
children and has a history of problems that stretches back a decade.
Consultants have recommended that it and a smaller facility in
Mansfield be closed and rebuilt, and other facilities repaired, at a
cost of $ 104 million.
Garner and others have said they
doubt they will have a solution to the facility’s problems this
legislative session, but they hope to make progress toward one in
the next few months.
Committee members toured the
facility last week and spent Wednesday morning peppering the
facility’s new manager, Todd Speight, and officials with the state’s
Youth Services Division with questions and complaints about what
they saw.
Among their complaints was that
many buildings on the sprawling campus in Saline County were
unclean.
“I’m very, very disappointed. It
was filthy... the cafeteria was filthy,” said Rep. Bobby Pierce,
D-Sheridan. “The rooms are bare. They are pitiful, and they stunk
like [children ] had been urinating in the corners.
“[The children ] should have a
clean place to live.”
Pierce said the state needs to
inspect the facility, which has been run by Virginia-based G 4 S
Youth Services since Jan. 21, more often.
Arkansas hired G 4 S to run its
largest and most troubled youth lockup after firing Cornell Cos.
Inc. in November after an investigation that showed nurses working
for Cornell were inappropriately injecting children with
anti-psychotic medications to tame bad behavior. The practice is
called chemical restraint — something G 4 S officials say they do
not use.
The state considered finding a new
management company an emergency and suspended all rules for a formal
bidding process. G 4 S has a temporary contract to run the facility
in Alexander until June 30 for $ 4. 5 million.
The Youth Services Division has the
option of renewing the contract for $ 10 million for an additional
year without requesting bids.
Representatives also said
educational and mental-health services at the facility needed
improvement.
They asked G 4 S officials to give
the committee the company’s goals and strategic plan for the
facility.
Speight, the facility manager and a
G 4 S Youth Services employee, promised legislators that he was
working toward solving many problems — big and small — at the
facility, but he acknowledged that improvements will take time.
Already, the company has changed
the food vendor, purchased some new uniforms for some of the
children, reduced the amount of time children spend in their rooms,
streamlined the process for giving children medication and planned
quarterly family days so that the children will be able to spend
more time with parents and siblings.
Soon, policies prohibiting children
from having family photos in the rooms will be ended, and additional
table games will be added.
And, he said, the facility will be
cleaner next time legislators visit.
“As the saying goes, we’re going to
eat the elephant one bite at a time,” Speight said after the
meeting.
Committee chairman Rep. Linda
Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, urged Speight to tell legislators what
they need to do to improve conditions and services at the facility.
“I know you did not create the
conditions in which you’re working, but we need to hear from you [on
] what we can do,” she said.
“Being there for the last 30 days,
I don’t have the answer,” Speight said, adding that he and others
with G 4 S were studying the facility and would know more in a
couple of months.
“We have to deliver,” Speight said.
“That’s what we signed up to do. We truly understand the obstacles.”
John Morgenthau, chief operating
officer for G 4 S, said he wants legislators to visit the facility
and for people to tell company officials the problems they find so
that the problems can be fixed.
“Review our reports we submit to
DYS,” Morgenthau said. “Visit again in three months, in six months.
You’ll see some radical changes and improvements.”
Committee vice-chairman Rep. Dawn
Creekmore, D-Hensley, said she will be monitoring the facility
closely.
“We’ve let this go on long enough,”
Creekmore said after the meeting adjourned. “Our children are too
important.”
The committee eventually will make
recommendations about what should be done with the facility,
Creekmore said, but not anytime soon.
Child advocates have said they want
the state to close the facility, which serves as the main processing
center for children in state custody, and replace it with smaller
facilities spread throughout the state. On average, about 500
children are in the Youth Services Division’s custody every day.
Over the years, youths had
complained that employees kicked them, slapped them and even
threatened them with death.
A few youths have killed themselves
at the center in years past. And in 2005, 17-year old inmate Keisha
Brown died from blood clots in her lungs. She had complained of
being ill, her medical records show, but nurses at the facility
didn’t believe her.
A U. S. Department of Justice
investigation found civil-rights violations in the delivery of
mental-health care, education, fire safety and freedom of religious
expression at the lockup.
Sen. Shane Broadway, D-Bryant,
spoke to committee members Wednesday about the facility, which is in
his district.
“It’s a very important issue — one
that requires a lot of discussion,” Broadway said. “Longterm, the
discussion has to be, ‘ What do we do about the facility that is
there. ’”
If Creekmore doesn’t see “some
positive changes” quickly, she said her recommendation will come
“sooner rather than later.”
|
