LITTLE ROCK — Problems in the Arkansas Division of Youth Services stem in part from the agency's failure to obey state law, an angry legislator said Monday.
Rep. Dennis Young, D-Texarkana, said he was incensed to read in Sunday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette accounts of the state's youthful-offender operations.
The division also was criticized in two state audit reports the division received last week, the Democrat-Gazette learned.
Young sponsored legislation in the 1997 session to require background checks for state employees and prospective state employees who have direct contact with children.
The resulting Act 1019 of 1997 required state agencies to complete checks on all existing employees by Oct. 1, 2000, and to conduct background checks on prospective employees beginning last October. But the new law didn't stop the division from hiring a convicted murderer in April.
"If they had been doing what we asked, this never would have happened," Young said. "It angers me greatly to find out our own state agencies haven't been following the law. If anyone should be following the law, it should be the state, and for six months they haven't been following it."
Willie Slater, convicted of murder in Phillips County in 1974, was hired as a youth services worker at the Central Arkansas Observation and Assessment Center in North Little Rock, which is operated by the Division of Youth Services.
A Democrat-Gazette reporter told department officials about Slater, who was fired May 22. After learning of Slater, the department speeded up the process for obtaining background checks on new employees.
The last paragraph of Act 1019 turned out to be prophetic. It states that "in some instances, allegations of employee criminal misconduct involving children are not being investigated."
Young said Monday that he didn't know of specific instances of abuse or misconduct in 1997. But he said he had heard rumors, which he was trying to correct through the background checks.
On May 15, Young sent letters to the state agencies affected by Act 1019, asking whether they were complying with the law.
On June 3, he received a response from Paul Doramus, the new director of youth services.
Doramus, who started work June 1, said the division requested criminal background check applications for all current employees assigned to the division's three 24-hour facilities in Pulaski and Saline counties. The completed applications were sent in April to the Arkansas State Police for processing, he said.
Another of the department's divisions that deals directly with children, the Division of Children and Family Services, started doing criminal background checks on new employees on May 27, said the division's director Diane O'Connell.
O'Connell, hired in January, said she didn't know why the division didn't begin the background checks last October, as required by law. But she said she supports the law.
"This is a good thing, and we need to do it to protect children," O'Connell said.
She said about 900 employees in her division have direct contact with children. Starting July 1, the division will begin random background checks on existing employees. The goal, she said, is to have background checks completed for all employees by Oct. 1, 2000.
Last week, the Division of Youth Services received two reports on security and sanitation at its facilities. In April and May, audit teams from the Department of Correction and the Department of Health inspected the Alexander Youth Services Center and the North Little Rock Observation and Assessment Center.
Findings included:
"The kitchen is extremely dirty."
"Some toilets backed up into adjoining cells when flushed."
"Knives were readily accessible to the [youths] as weapons."
Those findings, however, didn't surprise anyone within the Department of Human Services, the division's parent agency.
"We have said very publicly for three months now that we have had problems, and I think we have been very forthright about that," department spokesman Joe Quinn said. "With these two reports, the value for us is that they are a road map at how we go about making improvements."
Human Services Director Lee Frazier asked for the audits on April 24, the same day Gov. Mike Huckabee announced that he had learned that youths in state custody were being abused and the steps that were being taken to correct the problems.
The Correction Department sent in its security audit team, which also inspects prisons.
"Keep in mind that the audit team went there to help them, not to pass judgment," Correction Department spokesman Dina Tyler said. "They tried to give them a starting point."
The team saved its harshest criticism for the North Little Rock center, listing 44 deficiencies in general sanitation and security.
The report noted that brooms and mops were not secured and, thus, could be used as weapons. One teen-ager has alleged that other teen-agers at the center sodomized him with a broom handle.
The report also noted that locks, when not in use, were left out and also could be used as weapons. The same went for knives in the kitchen.
The auditors found that the youths assigned to the kitchen were not under direct supervision at all times and had ready access to knives; substances such as sugar and yeast, which can be used to make alcohol; and pepper, which can be used as a weapon. They also had opportunities to hide things in food storage areas.
The report also found chemicals stored with food, and electric appliances used above sinks.
In the control center at the North Little Rock facility, specific daily job assignments for the staff were not posted. Staff members old the auditors that they were to use "common sense" in doing their jobs. In addition, the auditors were allowed into the center even though they had set off two metal detectors.
"We were never examined to determine what set off the alarms," the report stated. "We were told by the security officer that it was 'okay.' "
Much of the Correction Department's report deals with staff training and accountability for keys at the two facilities, including the serious-offender program at Alexander.
"Although there was a Key Control policy, staff was not aware of the policy," the report noted. "The keys are kept in an unlocked drawer, readily accessible" to the youths.
The auditors found that keys weren't always kept in secure areas, such as a locked metal key box. Daily logs intended to keep track of keys couldn't be found when the auditors arrived, nor could the staff always account for who was supposed to have how many keys.
Quinn said one difference between the Division of Youth Services and the Correction Department is that youth services doesn't run prisons. So, he said, he wouldn't expect the division's facilities to meet every check that an adult prison would.
"Would we try to build a prison out of this report? No. But we do think they have offered us many good suggestions," he said.
Tyler said audits find problems at adult prisons, too.
"Every time you take a facility and put it under a magnifying glass, you'll find shortcomings," she said. "Their overall impression of the O&A facility is that is a workable facility, but there are areas that truly need some improvement."
The Health Department's report noted that the North Little Rock center had several plumbing problems, including toilets that sometimes back up into those in adjoining cells.
Much of the Health Department report focused on problems with administrative policies and procedures dealing with sanitation and nutrition.
Quinn said the most disturbing things he found in the reports were the mentions of toilet backups.
"That's a true health hazard," he said. "That was the one that, internally, got everyone's attention."