Devine to direct youth services agency

A former head of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality will now lead the state agency responsible for housing and treating the state's youthful offenders, state officials announced Wednesday.

Marcus Devine, 43, is to start March 9 as director of the state Division of Youth Services, a post that has been vacant for nearly four months after former Director Tracy Steele resigned in October.

Devine previously was a deputy director at the Arkansas Department of Human Services, the agency that oversees the Youth Services Division.

On Wednesday, Human Services Director John Selig said Devine was "uniquely qualified" to lead the Youth Services Division because of his management skills and knowledge of "both the legislative process and DHS."

"It will be great to have someone with Marcus' years of experience heading such a critically important division," Selig said in a written statement. "He is keenly aware that good managers can do a lot with lean state budgets. I appreciate his willingness to serve."

Devine will take the position as the division is working to improve how youths are treated at three facilities where the state houses teen offenders.

The state's largest youth lockup, known as the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center near Alexander, is currently being monitored by Disability Rights Arkansas, a federally funded nonprofit that uncovered allegations last summer that staff members were rewarding youths with candy for assaulting their peers.

Over the past two months, the division stopped sending youths to two county-operated juvenile detention centers because of how staff members were treating youths.

The division stopped placing youths at the Yell County Juvenile Detention Center in Danville in response to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette investigation that found that the lockup's employees and local law enforcement officers routinely punished youths using a mechanical restraint chair, an immobilization device known as The Wrap and pepper spray.

In isolated cases, the newspaper found that youths at the Yell County lockup were hogtied, left in The Wrap for six hours with only two brief breaks, pepper-sprayed for "mouthing" off, or pepper-sprayed while in the restraint device.

The division also stopped sending youths to the White River Juvenile Detention Center in Independence County after a division internal investigator found that the lockup violated state standards by using restraints and 23-hour lockdowns as punishments.

Both county lockups are working to correct the problems.

On Wednesday, J.R. Davis, spokesman for Gov. Asa Hutchinson, said the governor recommended Devine for the division directorship because of Devine's past experience leading large state agencies.

"It goes back to having experience running those larger agencies. Obviously with DYS and its past and current state, the governor saw that Mr. Devine is someone who can take on those challenges and turn it around," Davis said.

In an interview, Devine said he takes the welfare of the children in the division's custody seriously.

"We have an obligation to make sure that they're protected," he said.

Devine said he looks forward to meeting with division staff members, service providers, judges and other stakeholders in the state's juvenile justice system to "find a good way forward to improve juvenile justice for the state."

"I think one of the best things I will do is listen and then be proactive after I've listened and learned," he said. "I will be undistracted in my approach to this division."

Devine first served with the state in 1997 as a regulatory liaison for Gov. Mike Huckabee. In February 1999, he became a deputy director of the Human Services Department, overseeing the Youth Services Division as well as the Division of Children and Family Services, Services for the Blind and other offices.

He was deputy director until March 2000. In 2002, Huckabee tapped Devine to head the Environmental Quality Department, the state agency that regulates pollution. He led the agency until 2007.

After leaving the agency, he became president of Poseidon Energy Services, a drilling-waste disposal company. According to a July 2011 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article, the Environmental Quality Department fined the company $14,400 for illegally dumping saltwater sludge where it could contaminate nearby waterways.

Later that month, the company admitted fault and its intention to take steps to correct the problem.

On Wednesday, Devine said the issue "was completely corrected."

"I was the president of the company, and I took responsibility for that. We paid a fine ... and we moved forward to remediate the sludge that was improperly placed," he said. "It wasn't hazardous. It was just oil sand with water, but we corrected that."

Devine said the company closed in November 2011 because of less demand for drilling in the Fayetteville Shale.

"There was less and less need for oil-field services companies. We didn't have any real space to continue, so we mothballed that operation," he said.

Most recently, Devine, who is an attorney, said he's been involved in a construction company and a company that has a concessions contract with Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field.

As the Youth Services Division director, Devine's salary will be $100,077.

Metro on 02/26/2015

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