Making DJJ safe

Gov. Bush's attitude toward correcting the Department of Juvenile Justice's problems is encouraging. Now he must back it up with a commitment of financial and human resources.

It happens so frequently, we've almost come to expect it: state leaders in crisis circling the wagons instead of admitting problems and changing course.

That's what makes Gov. Jeb Bush's recent reaction to criticism of his Department of Juvenile Justice all the more refreshing. Bush called the criticism, by House members investigating the death of a teenager in custody, "justified."

It's "exactly what the Legislature should be doing: in a fair way, to point out problems," Bush said last week.

The governor's support for uncovering problems is encouraging. But it is not nearly as important - or as telling - as the energy he intends to invest in seeing that those problems are resolved.

No one can doubt that a solution is needed, and needed now. Eight months after 17-year-old Omar Paisley died in a Miami detention center from lack of medical attention, the committee heard testimony recently about guards at the same facility who allegedly tried to cover up their failure to check on a teen attempting suicide. DJJ is also reviewing how an 11-year-old in a Palm Beach facility recently got his wrist broken by a guard.

"It just shows you how deep the culture is in the department," said a disgusted Rep. Gus A. Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, who chairs the House Select Committee on Juvenile Detention Facilities.

To his credit, Bush has made some promising early gestures. After accepting (if not demanding) the temporary leave of DJJ Secretary Bill Bankhead, he brought in C. George Denman who, like Bush, acknowledges that DJJ "is not doing well." Denman did not hesitate in suspending 14 officers and nurses whose lapses in the Paisley case were substantiated by the agency's inspector general. Bush has also committed an extra $6.2-million for staff, medical care and worker screening in Miami and elsewhere.

But it will take more than that to correct the problems Barreiro rightly calls "systemic." Ten of Florida's 25 juvenile-detention centers are overcrowded, in part because too many kids are held there when community programs that have proven successful could keep them and society safer. Overcrowding leads to an overworked, lean and stressed staff, encouraged to focus more on security than treatment. Add to the mix bad leadership and poor training and you've got a culture at DJJ that is dangerous to young people.

The Paisley grand jury was blunt in its diagnosis. "Our investigation has revealed a juvenile justice system plagued by a lack of commitment, a lack of supervision, a lack of guidelines, a lack of proper structure, and a lack of resources," it concluded in January.

The problems at DJJ run deep, and neither Bush nor lawmakers should expect to solve them on the fly or the cheap.