The state Youth Services Division has stopped sending youths to an Independence County juvenile detention center after a state investigator found the lockup violated state standards by using restraints and 23-hour lockdown as punishment, a division spokesman said Wednesday.
In response to the investigator's findings, the division will also move 14 youths housed at the lockup to other facilities over the next two weeks.
The agency made the decision this week after it discovered at least a dozen cases at the White River Juvenile Detention Center in Batesville in which the investigator determined that staff members improperly used a mechanical restraint chair, handcuffs or lockdown for misbehavior such as talking or banging on doors.
Youths were also threatened with Tasers for misbehavior that didn't pose a threat to themselves or others, a division spokesman said.
The White River lockup is the second juvenile detention center to be cut off from housing youths in state custody as a result of staff members using methods that violated state juvenile detention standards.
Last week, the division stopped placing youths at the Yell County Juvenile Detention Center in Danville in response to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette investigation that found the lockup's employees and local law enforcement routinely punished youths with 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 two brief breaks, pepper-sprayed for "mouthing" or pepper-sprayed while in the restraint device.
On Wednesday, Independence County Judge Robert Griffin said the cases singled out by the Youth Services Division at the White River lockup paled in comparison with those in the Yell County lockup.
"We know there's nothing like what you guys have discovered in these other facilities," Griffin said. "We've seen some of these children from these other facilities, and we have seen them come in with bruises, welts, abraded faces, and they don't leave here like that.
"There's no comparison between treatment there versus treatment here," he added.
Amy Webb, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, said that the division's internal investigator, April Hannah, raised concerns about the White River lockup after reviewing incident reports for November and December.
"While conducting these reviews, Investigator Hannah became concerned that White River JDC staff may have been using restraints and lockdown arbitrarily and as punishment," Webb wrote in a statement.
"[Hannah] found incidents in which youth were handcuffed for minor issues that did not involve threat of harm to self or others. She also identified incidents in which 23-hour lockdown was used for inappropriate but minor youth actions, such as banging on doors or talking," she said.
Webb noted that Hannah also found three cases in which staff members threatened youths with Tasers for "minor" misbehavior.
"The Arkansas Juvenile Detention Facility Standards allow for the use of Tasers in very limited circumstances, but they should never be used in that manner," Webb said.
Webb said the division will work with the juvenile detention center to change its practices, but won't start sending youth there until it is satisfied that the lockup has stopped using banned methods.
"There's a cultural shift that we want to see happen at White River because we don't want kids locked down, arbitrarily punished just because of minor offenses. We want the folks handling it in a different way. There are other ways to handle it that would work," Webb said.
Griffin said Wednesday that he hadn't yet reviewed all of the reports referenced by the Youth Services Division, but he welcomes the division's review of the facility and input on how to better handle disruptive youth.
He said the juvenile detention center will work with the agency to correct any problems.
"If we have anything happening, we're going to correct it -- end of story," Griffin said.
Griffin said he believes that the lockup is safe and noted that it has been the subject of outside scrutiny for more than a year after an employee made allegations that employees weren't being truthful in their reports about how they treated youths.
The employee also accused the lockup of treating youths in ways that violated their civil rights.
Griffin said that an Independence County sheriff's investigator looked into the allegations, but then asked the Arkansas State Police to conduct the investigation.
The state police declined to investigate the claims for jurisdictional reasons, Griffin said, so he called the FBI.
"After about a three-month period, we hadn't heard anything [from the FBI], and we couldn't get the U.S. attorney's office to tell us anything," Griffin said.
"Obviously, if there were any true things going on currently, they would have been here immediately and said, 'Hey, wait a minute, these things can't happen.' So we believe by them not coming, there wasn't anything happening, but that wasn't a source of comfort to me," he added.
Griffin said he brought in the lockup's former administrator to investigate the claims. The administrator, Jim Starzy, didn't find any evidence of wrongdoing, the judge said.
Griffin said Wednesday that he still hasn't heard anything from federal officials but believes an FBI investigation is ongoing.
Deb Green, a spokesman for the FBI's Little Rock field office, didn't return a message left on her cellphone by Wednesday evening.
Webb said that the Youth Services Division hasn't been contacted by federal investigators about mistreatment of youths at the White River lockup.
Webb said the division became aware of the methods of punishment as part of a months-long effort to get juvenile detention centers to submit routine incident reports to the state.
The Youth Services Division houses youths in its custody at White River and other juvenile detention centers while those children are awaiting placement in state residential treatment centers.
Over the past few years, the state has paid White River about $40,000 to $50,000 per month to house youths. At times, as many as 45 youths in state custody were at the 52-bed lockup, according to payment invoices.
The White River lockup, which also houses youths not in state custody, must abide by a written agreement with the division that lays out how youths are supposed to be treated and what kind of documents the lockup is required to submit to the state.
Last spring, division officials noticed that the White River lockup and other juvenile detention centers were not submitting incident reports as required. The officials made the discovery while gathering records in response to a request from the Democrat-Gazette filed under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
Since then, Webb said, officials also learned that some juvenile detention centers weren't using the division's computerized case management system to document interactions with youths in state custody.
As division officials worked to obtain those reports, Hannah, who started her job in November, began reviewing documents from the juvenile detention centers to make sure they are treating youths appropriately.
Her review included a batch of reports containing the dozen involving punishment at the White River lockup.
On Wednesday, the newspaper requested copies of the reports, with the understanding that identifying information of any youths would be removed, but Webb denied the request.
Griffin also declined to release the reports, but he described a few in an interview.
"They're not doing physical things. They're doing a lockdown, a 23-hour lockdown. They're taking stuff out and having them in their room for 23 hours so there's not any abusive situations," Griffin said of some of the reports.
Other reports show staff members following through with threats of using lockdown or a restraint chair that Griffin said he could understand as part of being consistent in discipline.
"That's a follow-up of what we told you we were going to do," Griffin said.
Griffin noted that the state's concerns about use of Tasers in the facility did not involve the devices being used on youths, just the threat.
Under its agreement, the Youth Services Division allows the White River lockup to use Tasers even though it bars the use of the stun devices in state residential treatment centers and four other juvenile detention centers that house youths in state custody.
Webb said Wednesday that she didn't know why White River was allowed to use Tasers while other facilities weren't.
Griffin said that the devices are necessary to protect the guards and other staff members, some of whom have been attacked or had youths attempt to stab them with "homemade shanks."
"We've had no incidents of abuse. They have no reason to fear us having these in our possession. They enable us to protect our officers," Griffin said, noting that "some of these children are men."
Griffin said that the lockup intends to keep using Tasers, though, in the past week the lockup has changed its policy to allow only senior staff members and supervisors to carry them.
A team from the Youth Services Division is expected to visit the lockup Monday to continue its review.
Information for this article was contributed by Shea Stewart of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 01/01/2015