Department of Justice investigating excessive force, isolation in KY’s juvenile jails

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A federal civil-rights investigation into how youths are treated inside the eight detention centers run by the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice has been launched, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Federal investigators will examine whether the detention centers use excessive force and punitive isolation, if youths are adequately protected from violence and sexual abuse, and whether the commonwealth provides sufficient mental health care, education and services for children with disabilities.

The Lexington Herald-Leader has reported extensively for the past three years on chronic abuse and neglect of youths held in facilities operated by the state Department of Juvenile Justice. Its coverage has examined the assaults, riots, escapes and other longstanding problems at the troubled agency.

Its reporting triggered an independent audit from state Auditor Allison Ball’s office that was ordered by Kentucky legislators in March 2023.

In some cases, teenagers have been held in isolation for extended periods because of under-staffing, not because they posed a safety risk. In other cases, employees have used excessive force on youths, including pepper spraying them in their cells as a form of punishment.

A former youth worker the newspaper wrote about in 2021, Nathaniel Lumpkins, pleaded guilty last month to breaking a 15-year-old boy’s arm out of anger at one of the Department of Juvenile Justice’s facilities.

Earlier this year, the state’s independent audit confirmed many of the newspaper’s findings. Former employees and youths held in the detention centers also have filed multiple lawsuits to protest the living conditions inside the facilities.

“Confinement in the juvenile justice system should help children avoid future contact with law enforcement and mature into law-abiding, productive members of society. Too often, juvenile justice facilities break our children, exposing them to dangerous and traumatic conditions,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement Wednesday.

“We are launching this investigation to ensure that children in Kentucky youth detention facilities are safe from harm, receive adequate mental health care and get appropriate special education services,” she said. “All children held in the custody of the state deserve safe and humane conditions that can bring about true rehabilitation and reform.”

The Civil Rights Division recently signed a settlement agreement over the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice’s Broad River Road Complex, that state’s only long-term post-adjudication facility for children, and it’s investigating conditions in five post-adjudication facilities for children in Texas, the agency said Wednesday.

The division will work with the U.S. attorney’s offices in Louisville and Lexington, the Justice Department said.

“The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky stands ready to protect the rights of all children in Kentucky, including those who end up in juvenile detention,” said U.S. Attorney Mike Bennett in Louisville.

The return of the U.S. Justice Department brings Kentucky full circle.

The state Department of Juvenile Justice was created in 1996 as part of a settlement with the Justice Department after the previous hodgepodge of juvenile lockups, overseen by the Cabinet for Human Resources, was discovered to be so bad that it violated youths’ civil rights.

“The harmful conditions inside DJJ facilities have been well-documented for years now,” state Senate Judiciary Chairman Whitney Westerfield said Wednesday.

“Despite additional funding from the legislature, these issues persist,” the Fruit Hill Republican said. “In the last several years, we’ve seen instances of horrific, traumatic assaults on minors and even a death. We continue to hear stories involving improper restraint and the abusive use of isolation, among others.

“I welcome the Department of Justice’s increased scrutiny on DJJ leadership, its facilities and the unreasonable and unconstitutional practices allowed or encouraged inside them,” the senator said.

Terry Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Kentucky Youth Advocates, called the federal probe “welcome news indeed!”

“Call it a system failure. Call it a crisis. Call it a hot mess. Call it what you want, but Kentucky’s juvenile justice system is failing kids and community safety every day,” Brooks said.

“The Beshear administration, in response to a spate of tragedies that grabbed media headlines, has begun to make modest — very modest — improvements. And yet, in contrast to other aspects of this administration, such as the child welfare sector, the juvenile justice arena is a closed shop, disdaining access to advocates,” Brooks said.

Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration responded to news of the federal investigation with a list of the reforms it said it has enacted at the Department of Juvenile Justice.

That list includes pay raises of more than $20,000 annually to attract and retain badly needed employees; segregating youths in the facilities based on gender and the severity of their alleged offenses; requiring more employee training; and creating a compliance branch to monitor conditions inside the facilities.

Despite these efforts, problems have festered..

In recent months under Beshear’s watch, the Herald-Leader has documented youth grievances about safety and hygiene that were confirmed by facility employees; state prison workers who either were fired or resigned while under investigation for wrongdoing who found new jobs at the Department of Juvenile Justice; and a mentally ill teen girl who spent much of the summer of 2022 locked — sometimes naked — in a filthy isolation cell.

“We look forward to being able to talk to the Department of Justice, because as of today, no members of our leadership have been interviewed, and we have not had the opportunity to discuss any incident, policy or issue with the Department of Justice,” Justice and Public Safety Secretary Keith Jackson said.

In his own statement, Beshear lamented the 2024 General Assembly’s failure to pass a $165 million aid package for the Department of Juvenile Justice, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Danny Carroll of Benton.

Carroll’s Senate Bill 242 was meant to build a 16-bed mental health treatment center for the department and two new all-girls detention centers, and it would have provided tens of millions of dollars to repair and upgrade existing buildings. But the bill died in the House. A fraction of the hoped-for sum was provided in the state budget.

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