State lawyers: KY juvenile detention center keeps youths in lockdown too much

A Kentucky legislative committee Thursday heard more information about problems at the state Department of Juvenile Justice that were previously disclosed in Herald-Leader news stories, including the misuse of pepper spray on youths and the failure to act quickly on complaints of sexual misbehavior by a male correctional officer.

The Legislative Oversight and Investigations Committee also heard a critical report from lawyers at the state Department of Public Advocacy. They warned that youths’ rights have been violated at the Adair Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Columbia, which the department operates.

Youths have been locked alone in their cells for days or weeks for so-called “non-behavior isolation,” even when they didn’t commit any offenses in the facility, according to the report.

It was based on interviews with youths and staff and a review of internal documents from 2021 through earlier this year.

When youths are in lockdown, they have little to no access to showers, recreation, phone calls, education or counseling, said Lauren Bieger Hunter, directing attorney for the Department of Public Advocacy’s Glasgow office.

Research shows that isolation can lead to mental health problems, including psychosis, paranoia, depression and suicide, Hunter said.

The only way the youths can file a grievance about their living conditions is to rattle the bars of their cells and try to draw the attention of an officer, she said, which can get them in trouble for being disruptive.

The Department of Juvenile Justice has policies that limit the use of isolation and require an escalating level of supervisors who must approve each time an isolation period is extended, Hunter said.

But those policies have been ignored in Adair County, she said.

“I am a Christian woman. And if I follow my faith. I cannot be silent when these policies are not being followed,” Hunter said.

In January, the Herald-Leader reported that staff at the Adair County center worried they were committing “mental and psychological abuse” because the chronically under-staffed facility kept youths locked alone in their cells most of the time for lack of better options.

Some violence at the facility is a response to stress from the constant lockdowns, employees told the newspaper.

“When you’re in a cell for three or four days at a time, are you going to want to go back in once you finally get out? No, you are not,” David Hare, a recently retired youth worker supervisor, told the Herald-Leader at the time.

And in August, the ACLU of Kentucky filed a complaint asking the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to investigate the “unsanitary and nearly uninhabitable” conditions inside the Adair County facility.

The Department of Justice has not publicly responded yet.

On Thursday, Justice and Public Safety Secretary Kerry Harvey, who oversees the Department of Juvenile Justice, told the committee he was not prepared to rebut the report’s criticism about excessive lockdowns because he had not had a chance to read it.

Harvey said the Adair County facility, which had a riot last November, understandably had to adapt to the dangerous youths housed there, combined with the inadequate number of staff available to handle them.

In situations like that, he said, the safest option can be separating youths in their cells.

“Nobody wants youths, or anybody, to be isolated,” Harvey said. “But if that’s what you have to do to try and preserve safety — I mean, what else can you do?”

But some committee members asked why the state of Kentucky has policies to carefully limit the use of isolation on youths in custody if it’s simply going to lock children in cells as a matter of routine.

“This information is incredibly distressing for many reasons,” said state Rep. Lindsey Burke, D-Lexington.

Research on adult prison inmates held in solitary confinement shows they suffer for it mentally, Burke said.

“Children’s lives are on the line,” Burke said. “We owe them a duty of care if we are taking them out of our communities.”

Also Thursday, Larry Chandler, a deputy director at the Department of Juvenile Justice, told the committee that so far this year, the agency has disciplined “close to a dozen” employees for improper use of pepper spray on youths.

Gov. Andy Beshear this year authorized the agency to start using pepper spray on youths as a defensive weapon, to avoid serious injuries or major property damage.

But the Herald-Leader reported last month that staff sometimes have used it improperly as a punishment or because they were angry, even spraying it on youths through the small slot in their cell door while they were confined alone inside, with nowhere to hide.

Finally, investigators from the Justice Cabinet’s Internal Investigations Branch told the committee they have substantiated six reports of a juvenile justice employee sexually abusing a youth in custody since 2015.

Most recently, as the Herald-Leader reported this week, Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice fired a male correctional officer June 6 and notified Kentucky State Police after a review of security video footage suggested the officer kissed and had other inappropriate contact with one or more teenage girls inside the all-girls Campbell Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Newport.

Lawmakers on the committee asked why, as the newspaper reported, the agency did not act for weeks on widespread reports of the officer’s sexual misbehavior.

James Sweatt II, an executive director in the Department of Juvenile Justice, said concerns about that officer were limited to verbal discussions inside the Campbell County facility during the month of May.

They weren’t forwarded to agency higher ups in Frankfort by the facility superintendent, Sweatt said.

That superintendent was later fired.

“I started May the 8th,” Sweatt told lawmakers.

“The staff that was in charge there — as soon as I got there, I demoted him. Two weeks after that, I fired him. You know, I can only fix what I know about. The reports were not getting to me. Once the reports got to me, I took steps to rectify it.”

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