"This week's back-and-forth between the various sides seems to be getting a mite snippy. It shouldn't. All this is too important for snippy. Everybody ought to concentrate on the welfare and futures of these kids, not on covering their own backsides."
--Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Friday, August 29, 2014
It now seems as though the adults have started acting like adults when it comes to the youth lock-up at Alexander. This can only be a good thing.
After a series of news articles about allegations of abuse at the state's largest juvenile detention center, those running the place and an independent group monitoring it had proceeded to butt heads. Like a couple of kids in the back seat on a long car ride. But the latest story about the lockup brought some much needed relief:
Both groups--the state's Division of Youth Services and the nonprofit group called the Disability Rights Center of Arkansas--have promised to work together to investigate these allegations about kids being offered bribes to bully each other. Now the adults who have had to put up with the kids in the back seat pestering each other all this time can relax. We're almost to the driveway of the old home place.
The law fully entitles the group put in charge of safeguarding the rights of kids at the lockup to check on what's going on there. And it did. The accusations about staffers using kids to bully other kids is just that--an allegation--at this point. But it's a serious one.
If these accusations hold up, some staffers should lose their jobs. At least. If the claims don't, or just prove unfounded, then the staff--and the company that runs the place--should have their reputations restored.
It's as simple as that. There's no need to make it any more complicated. If all the adults concerned will just act like it. It's the least they owe these kids.
Editorial on 08/30/2014