The report, released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice, identified issues in physical and sexual abuse, lack of mental health treatment, and failure to provide adequate educational services for students with disabilities. The report covered all five of the juvenile department-operated “secure facilities,” which house children found to have committed an act that would be a crime if they were adults or who broke parole.
Federal officials said the state has been cooperative with the investigation and they believe positive progress will continue to be made, but warned legal action could be taken to remedy these conditions if necessary. State officials echoed these sentiments and said the juvenile department has already taken steps to improve some of the issues identified.
Here are some of the highlights of the report’s findings:
1. Security staff and supervisors are armed with pepper spray cans at least 4 times larger than standard canisters, using them frequently and at close range.
While standard-issue pepper spray cans come in 1.5-3 ounces, the juvenile department’s staff are armed with 13.4-ounce cans intended for use with large crowds. These cans are often sprayed directly onto a child’s face and for extended periods, the report found.
The justice department’s report also said staff regularly use pepper spray as the first resort when children misbehave, bypassing any attempts to defuse the situation. A similar tactic was observed when it comes to physical force — using it as the first strategy and to an excessive degree — which includes slamming children who are allegedly already handcuffed into brick walls and sitting on them in a manner that restricts breathing.
Staff also often did not fill out use-of-force forms to document these incidents, and when they did, the supervisory review section was left blank. The report pointed to this to show the limited internal accountability to limit physical behaviors from staff.
2. Children in all five facilities spend about 17-22 hours a day alone in their cells.
This isolation affects children in the general population and stems from procedures and routines rather than any form of behavioral punishment. For children transferred to a higher security unit as a response to their behaviors, more severe isolation is experienced with all meals taken in cells and sometimes exercise breaks as well. Policy limits time in these higher security units to one to two hours, but the report said many instances were identified where children spent days or weeks there.
The report also details the harms of excessive isolation for children, including hallucinations, paranoia, self-harm, depression, anxiety and suicide.
3. Half of all children with moderate to severe mental health needs had a treatment plan on file, according to a random sampling.
The juvenile department has seen a dramatic spike of children in its care being identified as having moderate to severe mental health needs, going from 21 percent in 2014 to 85 percent in 2022. This increase has been publicly acknowledged at state legislative hearings, but the justice department’s report found that many children are still disciplined for self-harm and other behaviors related to mental health struggles.
The report described an inconsistent and piecemeal system of care, with children receiving repetitive and nonspecific diagnoses and going months between counseling sessions. Often, the only impairments identified were related to law-breaking behaviors, it said.
The report also noted that the juvenile department suspended mental health care for children placed in the specialized program for violent and aggressive behaviors. “TJJD’s practice of pausing mental health treatment while children complete this program ignores that a child’s violent or aggressive behavior may be a result from untreated mental health issues,” the report said.
4. During a 20-month period, the juvenile department referred one child out of 575 for a disability evaluation.
The juvenile department operates a school district for children in its facilities and must adhere to the same standards as other public schools. The justice department’s report identified several issues with the special education services provided, including using standardized goals and interventions that violate the “individualized” requirement in federal law.
For children who came in with a special education plan, the report reviewed 74 plans and found significant changes made to 73 of them. This included decreasing the special education support a student received each week by an average of four and a half hours.
5. A child in each unit is tasked with distributing and collecting grievance forms upon request from the other children.
Instead of grievance forms being publicly available and able to be turned in anonymously, children are left to manage the reporting of grievances for themselves, according to the report. Emergency grievances were repeatedly assigned to the standard 10-day response time, the report said.
Grievances were also marked as “resolved” if the child received a response, regardless of it the child’s complaint was meaningfully addressed.
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