ALEXANDER LOCKUP

Youth lockup tells group: Send authorities evidence

The contractor that runs the state's largest juvenile lockup said Tuesday that if a disability rights group has evidence of abuse perpetrated by its staff, the group needs to report it to the proper authorities: either the state Children and Family Services Division or the Arkansas State Police.

In a written statement, contractor G4S Youth Services called on the nonprofit Disability Rights Center of Arkansas to provide state investigators with any evidence of child maltreatment or abuse it encountered while monitoring the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center near Alexander this summer.

In response, the leader of the Disability Rights Center questioned why G4S hadn't known about many of the allegations and reported them to authorities already.

He also questioned whether the company was allowing youths access to telephones and enough privacy so they could report abuse to the state police or state child abuse hotline.

The company's call came in response to a report released this week by the disability rights group that laid out allegations that staff members at the lockup rewarded youths with candy bars for punching, slapping or bothering other children.

The report also found that youths said they had been physically abused by staff members and assaulted in "dead zones" in the lockup's video surveillance system. The lockup houses about 100 of the state's most behaviorally troubled youths.

G4S spokesman Monica Lewman-Garcia wrote in the statement that the company has "zero tolerance" for abuse and would support criminal investigations of the allegations if evidence of such acts was turned over.

"Concerning the allegations of abuse, these relate to potential criminal acts and must be reported immediately. As the DRC has the information relating to the allegations, it is incumbent upon DRC to ensure they are reported through the appropriate channels ... so that the allegations can be investigated," Lewman-Garcia wrote.

Late Tuesday, Tom Masseau, executive director of the disability rights group, questioned whether the company's staff had been thorough in their own reporting of abuse to state authorities.

"Even in looking at some of the incident reports that are serious, not all of them have been reported to the state police or the [child abuse] hotline," he said, noting that some of the incident reports detailed kids being slapped, slammed against walls or suffering a broken arm.

G4S employees are required by state law to report child abuse. The Disability Rights Center's workers are not "mandatory reporters," Masseau said, though they are following up on many of the allegations of abuse made by the youth.

"All of these allegations of abuse and assaults occurred while the youth were there under their watch, most of them by their own staff, yet they haven't been reported. ... They should know about these things. This should not come as a surprise to them," Masseau said.

He has said his organization considers the allegations of staff rewarding assaults to be credible because they came from several youths who were housed in different areas at the Alexander campus.

The monitors didn't find any evidence that youths were seriously injured by any of the assaults resulting from the rewards practice. The youths also didn't name the staff members involved for fear of retaliation.

The response from G4S came the same day that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published details of the report and the Disability Rights Center released it to the public.

In its statement Tuesday, G4S noted that it had already taken actions to address safety concerns at the lockup since June when the Democrat-Gazette reported that assaults nearly doubled at the facility last year.

In 2013, the facility reported 327 assaults, up 98 percent from the 165 reported the year before, according to internal data from the state Division of Youth Services.

The newspaper's report prompted the disability rights center to send monitors into the lockup, who then compiled the report released this week. The group has authority under federal law to investigate facilities that house people with disabilities, such as the Alexander lockup.

Lewman-Garcia noted that since then the company has made several changes, including bringing in an outside consultant to review staff member and youth culture and appointing a "seasoned" senior manager to be onsite and oversee the lockup.

The company announced that it will begin conducting exit interviews with youths who are transferred from the facility to get feedback on improvements that could be made.

The company plans to work with the disability rights center to identify holes in its surveillance camera coverage, an issue it says it has worked with the Youth Services Division to address over the past several years.

Lewman-Garcia also defended the company's psychiatric services, saying that youths are evaluated by a psychiatrist every 30 days and monitored for medication side effects. And she noted that "all youth have 24-hour access" to state child maltreatment hotline.

But Masseau challenged the company's contentions, saying the facility's current contract psychiatrist couldn't maintain that level of care with the number of youths who required mental health care at the facility.

The disability rights center in its report questioned whether a single contract psychiatrist who visited one or two days a week could adequately provide mental health care to the facility where 85 children are prescribed psychotropic medications.

Also, he said, youths don't have necessary phone access to report abuse if it occurred. If youths wanted to use the phone, they would have to request permission and have a staff member present during the call, Masseau said.

"How appropriate is this for the youth, when they currently don't feel safe or fear retaliation?" he said.

Also on Tuesday, Youth Services Division officials said they were working to validate the allegations made in the report, but hadn't yet received enough information to make much headway.

Amy Webb, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, said Youth Services Division officials didn't know about the allegations of staff members rewarding assaults until they met with Masseau on Aug. 12.

At that meeting, Human Services Department Deputy Director Keesa Smith and Youth Services Division Director Tracy Steele asked for additional information, including the names of the youths who made the allegations, but so far, the agency hasn't received the requested details.

"At this point ... we don't know who the kid is. We don't know who the staff are who are allegedly involved. We don't know which dorm it was. We don't know what date it allegedly happened," Webb said.

"For us to investigate it, we've got to be able to identify a kid or staff or something like that to determine whether it's true," she added.

Webb said the agency has done some preliminary questioning of employees and others who interact with the youths at the facility.

That included James Walker, the division's clinical director at the lockup, who reported that he never had heard of the allegations and neither had the facility's management staff.

On Tuesday, Masseau said that he plans to meet with division leaders in the coming days to work together to address many of the problems identified in the report.

But he said he felt it would be irresponsible to release the names of the children to the Youth Services Division because it would violate the trust of the youths who already reported fears of retaliation for talking with the group's monitors.

"They placed their trust in us, and for us to give the names of these kids who are talking about this to DYS officials who haven't been very responsive to them in the first place would show a lack of trust and be a breach of confidentiality," he said.

Masseau said he believes that the agency should direct its staff to interview the children and build trust with them in order to ensure that the youths can report such allegations without fear of retaliation.

"In talking with the youth there, over time they felt comfortable enough with us to be able to share some of these experiences and stories. That's how we found out about it," he said.

Masseau said he believes that the Youth Services Division has enough information in the group's report to launch an investigation and make changes at the facility.

On Tuesday, the Youth Services Division began addressing some of the report's recommendations.

Webb said the agency requested a review of the facility's mental health services and approved seeking bids to improve the coverage of the surveillance cameras at the lockup.

Webb said agency officials also discussed the report with G4S, which has been paid about $10 million per year to operate the lockup since 2007.

"They've been very responsive to us so far, and we will continue to work with them and make sure that any concerns that we have will be addressed," Webb said.

A Section on 08/20/2014

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