3 youth lockups urged to end use of Wrap device

Facilities ask for alternatives

The state Youth Services Division sent letters Friday to three juvenile-detention centers, urging them to stop using a restraining device that immobilizes children's legs.

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The division made the request to the detention centers in Benton, Washington and Sebastian counties. But because the division does not have contracts to hold children at those locations, the centers are not obligated to follow through with the requests, a Youth Services Division spokesman said.

The move came after the division ordered the Yell County Juvenile Detention Center, with which it does have a contract, to stop restraining children in a way that division Director Tracy Steele called "potentially dangerous" and said "exposes the youth to ridicule and humiliation."

The Danville center had been using a restraining device, known as The Wrap, that handcuffed children and immobilized their legs. In addition to the device, staff members at the Yell County facility placed a motorcycle helmet covered in duct tape over the youths' heads, cutting off most light.

The staff members left the youths, restrained with The Wrap and the helmet, in a sitting position with their hands behind their backs for two hours at a time and up to four hours with a "brief break," Steele wrote in a cease-and-desist letter to center administrators.

Steele's letter described the use of The Wrap and the helmet as punitive.

Yell County Sheriff Bill Gilkey's chief deputy, Capt. John Foster, asked the Youth Services Division for guidance on what to do in place of using the restraining device.

In a letter dated Friday, Youth Services Division Assistant Director Carmen Mosley-Sims recommended a three-tiered approach to the county: training on teenage development, the teenage brain and restorative justice; training on different interventions, including motivational interviewing and holding techniques; and incorporation of the state's best practices.

The Benton, Washington and Sebastian county juvenile-detention centers were the only other three in Arkansas that have used The Wrap, "reportedly in limited circumstances and in perhaps a different manner than was being used at your sister JDC," according to Steele's letters to the three centers.

Unlike Yell County's center, the other three centers do not have modified versions of The Wrap, Youth Services spokesman Amy Webb said.

" [The Youth Services Division], as the administrative agency over the youth services system in the state, has a keen interest in ensuring all system-involved youth are receiving safe and appropriate care, including in response to disruptive conduct," Steele wrote.

"Although DYS does not have a contractual relationship with your JDC, we would like to extend our support and assistance to you in adopting best practices, obtaining any needed training, and otherwise helping to identify resources that will assist your facility in caring for the youth in your custody."

The division also has asked each of the three center directors to allow Youth Services staff members to visit the facilities and see a demonstration of The Wrap's "typical use" there.

Jean Mack, director of the Washington County Juvenile Detention Center, said Friday that she plans to keep using the device until a new method for subduing disruptive youths or different forms of training arise.

Denyse Collins, director of the Benton County Juvenile Detention Center, agreed.

Mack's 36-bed facility began using The Wrap in the late 1990s after officials there researched different methods to deal with combative children, she said.

At the time, staff members would use training that required them to physically hold the child, either standing up or on the ground, while using "therapeutic talk," she said. That method sometimes resulted in injuries to staff members or the children, she said.

With The Wrap, Mack said, staff members found that they could more quickly de-escalate a situation.

"We're hands off. The staff never holds the child," she said. "Our facility follows procedures the way they were designed. The helmet was not part of the manual."

Staff members rarely use the restraining device, she added, and use verbal de-escalation and other techniques first. Mack couldn't recall the last time her staff used The Wrap.

"It's unfortunate that a device that was designed to be of assistance to facilities was misused, which makes the rest of us look bad when we're doing our best to maintain safety," Mack said.

Mack said she would open her doors to the Youth Services Division's staff members and that she would be open to discussion and change.

"But I will need to be offered a recourse," she said. "When you have a really combative individual, we have to have some means to keep them safe and keep the staff safe."

Collins also stood behind her 36-bed facility's use of the restraining device.

"My staff are certified to use it. We have not improperly used The Wrap. No one has been injured in our use," she said. "We don't use it on a routine basis. We don't use it as punishment. We use it when a kid's life is in danger as the last resort."

Benton County's juvenile-detention center uses The Wrap with handcuffs, but does not use a helmet, Collins said, adding that staff members have used spit guards or soft-lined helmets if a child is biting his cheek or banging his head on floors or walls.

"But most of the time, staff uses their hands to secure the head," she said. "We surely don't use duct tape. There's no reason to use duct tape."

The facility has used the restraining device five times in the past year and half, she said. On one occasion, a girl was beating her head on the floor. In other cases, two male residents arrived "high on meth and trying to harm themselves," another resident tried to break her limbs, and the last tried to break his neck, Collins said.

"Unless someone can come up with a better way, yes, I will be using it," she said. "When we take [away] a restraint device that does work, you leave people having to think of their own devices to use. That's when you get into a scary situation."

A call to the Sebastian County Juvenile Detention Center on Friday afternoon was placed after the facility's director, Capt. Fran Hall, had already left.

In an interview Thursday, Hall said the facility didn't use the device because "it doesn't work real well for us."

Staff members initially tried out The Wrap after they won it as a door prize at a statewide conference years ago, Hall said.

"You really have to restrain them to get them into The Wrap," she said. "But by the time you get a minute, it's kind of defeating the whole purpose. I didn't care for it, so we didn't use it. It was overkill."

Hall said she didn't know where the device was being stored.

The three facilities have passed their annual inspections, said Danny Hickman, the state coordinator of the state Criminal Detention Facilities Review committees. Hickman plans to inspect the Yell County facility next week.

He said he would examine the Danville center's policies and standards "very closely" at that time. If the facility violates the Juvenile Detention Standards, which govern the centers, Hickman will write them up, which he said was "basically a warning."

Steele has said the Yell County facility's use of The Wrap not only violated Juvenile Detention Standards, but also violates the memorandum of understanding between the center and the division, which governs the treatment of youths committed to the division who are housed at the juvenile detention center.

In Yell County, Foster has said the restraint was removed from the Danville center within an hour after receiving notice from the Youth Services Division to stop its use.

The sheriff's office is working with the Youth Services Division to come up with an alternative plan to restrain disruptive youths, but no plan had been determined Friday. The sheriff's office reached out to the Youth Services Division for any input on alternatives.

"We're trying to do everything we can to do what they want done," Foster said Friday, adding that several center staff members have signed up for statewide training later this month. "We've already implemented the things they suggested. Now, we're looking at other alternatives and training."

The facility had on-site training, but "obviously that's not going to suitable for the new approach," he said.

Foster added that it was too early to say whether the sheriff's office would begin an investigation into the use of the restraining devices in the juvenile detention center there.

Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the Arkansas State Police, said Thursday that the agency was not investigating any of the state's 14 juvenile-detention centers.

A Section on 10/11/2014

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