There may be some room for praise after that latest report from the Division of Youth Services last week — some room.
An investigator in DYS’ Internal Affairs department issued a three-page report last Wednesday that commended the sheriff of Yell County for getting rid of The Wrap — as if getting rid of the infernal thing required heavy thinking. For some of us, allowing kids to be wrapped up in this cross between a straitjacket and a sleeping bag for hours at a time, sometimes with a blinding mask on as well, would be grounds for another kind of report—a police report. Or at least a State Police investigation.
The folks at DYS praised Sheriff Bill Gilkey for getting rid of The Wrap once and for all, as well as retraining his people who run the lockup about handling disruptive kids there.
And that, it appears, is that. Because the same day the report came out, the Department of Human Services said it’s not going to conduct any more investigations. The papers reported on The Wrap, the public was outraged, The Wrap was thrown in the heap, and the folks at the Yell County juvenile lockup have been scolded, uh, retrained. Happy ending all around?
Yes, the official report is out, and when official reports come out, that does sometime end the matter. Because a report’s fine, but … .
The juvenile lockup in Yell County wasn’t the only place where The Wrap has been used in this state. In the last few months, Arkansas’ Newspaper has quoted other employees in other juvenile halls around the state giving excuses for using The Wrap—as if the inexcusable could so easily be excused.
So what about those other juvenile lockups? Has this Wrap thing been exorcised from the state completely, or just in the hills of Yell County?
Investigators say things are going swimmingly-ish at Yell County’s juvenile lockup nowadays, incident reports are being sent to the state as required, with something called a Corrective Action Plan in place, and the kids themselves say they are being treated better. Which is great.
.
But of all the stories of late about juvenile lockups in this state, the one that caught our attention, like a headlight in the night, was one earlier this month — when Asa Hutchinson visited the lockup at Alexander.
The governor-elect thought it appropriate to visit the state’s largest juvenile hall even before his inauguration. That place has drawn even worse publicity this year than the one in Yell County, and deservedly so. Assaults at the Alexander lockup nearly doubled from 2012 to 2013, and there were allegations that the staff had something to do with that. A juvenile-rights group even accused staffers of bribing kids there to assault other kids.
The governor-elect told the press after he visited Alexander that his surprise inspection was meant to send a message, which, if we may freely translate, was: Clean Up Your Act.
Or as the governor-elect put it: “Whenever folks know that the governor can show up unexpectedly, that’s a good thing.”
Yes, sir, it is. Because the state’s juvenile lockups should be in the business of getting these kids back on the right path, not making them worse.
Asa Hutchinson’s surprise visit to Alexander, and his message to the rest of the juvenile lockups in Arkansas, may do more good than any report out of the Division of Youth Services.
Because a report’s fine, but … . a visit from an incoming governor may be a lot better at getting bureaucrats’ attention. The way a two-by-four gets a mule’s attention.