New South Carolina Juvenile Justice Chief Urges Reforms | Health, medicine and fitness

COLUMBIA, SC (AP) — Turning around South Carolina’s chronically dangerous juvenile detention centers is now the job of a prosecutor who sent some of those children to prison.

Justice Department director Eden Hendrick heads the troubled agency after two of its predecessors resigned after state audits revealed major flaws ranging from a “useless and ineffective” internal police force to an inability to protect children.

“We’ve been fighting this battle for a long time,” Hendrick said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m hopeful that it’s really getting a bit more traction now and that we can really start providing these young people with the real services they need.”

Horrors detailed in testimonials to lawmakers and investigators include the months of solitary confinement in small concrete cells and dozens of violent attacks by peers and guards. Staff members in their care have tied, choked, beaten and even bitten children, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division found.

Hendrick was confirmed in May, shortly before the agency agreed to sweeping reforms at the main juvenile detention center. Solutions include installing a modern surveillance system, revising the use of force rules, reducing solitary confinement, and ensuring that children receive physical and recreational activities.

Hendrick, who took on the position of interim director in September, is asking time to change both the prisons and the culture of an agency whose employees often feel forgotten and unappreciated.

Reform proponents want to give Hendrick a chance, but meanwhile sued the state over the size of the settlement, demanding a complete overhaul that includes four other facilities.

Hendrix said the surveillance system upgrade funded two years ago is nearing completion and will ensure there is no place where cameras can’t monitor, eliminating blind spots where youth and staff know an attack won’t be recorded.

Hendrick also received $20 million this month for one of her top priorities: building a separate 20-bed treatment facility for young people with severe mental illness. Such inmates do not receive adequate care in mainstream prisons, creating time-consuming and dangerous disruptions for staff and other youth.

The budget also includes $8 million for additional security, $1.6 million for pay increases and hiring bonuses, and $1.5 million to upgrade the system for virtual prison visits.

Elsewhere, she’s doing what she can — like installing microwaves so staff can eat hot lunches while controlling costs — and looks forward to providing the salaries needed to hire more people.

South Carolina juvenile detention centers carry the legacy of more than a decade under federal supervision, about 20 years ago. Judges were stunned that children were treated like hardened criminals who cannot be reformed if they are given counseling, drug treatment and education and job opportunities.

“Eden is new to her role, but this is a system, a department that is in ruins and has for decades not abide by what the Constitution requires. I’m not particularly receptive to the ‘trust us, we’ll fix it’ argument,” said Allen Chaney, an attorney with the ACLU of South Carolina.

The past two executives have been forced to leave – Sylvia Murray in 2017 after she failed to bring the gang-related riots under control, and Freddie Pough last year with lawmakers angered over a worker’s strike.

“What our kids are interested in is that things are better, not promises,” Chaney said.

Similar problems are occurring across the country. In Texas, federal authorities recently began investigating five juvenile detentions, said Amy Borror, a juvenile court expert at The Gault Center, a nonprofit organization in Washington, DC.

“You can’t move fast enough when children are housed under these conditions,” Borror said. “We hurt them every day, we cause trauma, we ask for more problems down the road.”

Extra money does not guarantee better results. Texas has spent 31% more on juvenile justice and South Carolina 27% more in the past decade, according to the Justice Policy Institute, which aims to make incarceration a last resort.

But spending can help: Georgia has spent 24% more targeting community programs rather than juvenile detention centers, and has seen a 20% drop in the number of minors in prison, according to the group’s Sticker Shock report.

Proponents note that the abuse and neglect has a disproportionate impact on black children, who represent most of the South Carolina agency’s charges.

In the ACLU lawsuit, a lawyer said the current circumstances are “creepy reminiscent” of what her clients are going through on death row and what children went through in the 1990s. The suit describes fights between whole wings of children and young people who are afraid of nighttime attacks when they take sleeping medication.

One mother said her 14-year-old son was attacked dozens of times during his years in custody by other children and guards and placed in solitary confinement for his own protection, where he struggled to get an education using occasional worksheets.

A guard detained the boy during an attack by juveniles. Children beat him with milk crates, locks and pipes ripped from the ceiling, the mother reported in court papers. Because of the pandemic, she could only see his injuries on video calls.

Nationally, the number of children held in restrictive prisons or prison-like environments has fallen significantly over the past two decades.

South Carolina is not following that trend.

A 2019 change that raises the minimum age at which teens can be tried as adults from 17 to 18 put more children in the juvenile system, and the closure of the courts during the COVID-19 pandemic kept them there, Hendrick said.

Legislation to reduce the number of minors incarcerated, setting up diversion programs and a Bill of Rights for children, limiting probation and banning pledges for status violations died after being pulled from a Senate committee this spring.

Despite the setbacks, Alexsandra Chauhan, who shared courtrooms with Hendrick as a public defender, thanks her for putting fewer children in isolation and more in therapy, along with overhauling the security cameras.

“She wins my respect every day. I really see the changes she’s made and I really recognize the hardships of her job,” said Chauhan, who works with youth defenders at the state commission for the defense of the needy.

Michelle Liu was a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national, not-for-profit service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on classified issues. Follow her twitter.com/@mchelleliu