Teens isolated too long in Hennepin County Juvenile Detention
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A new report is raising concerns about how young offenders are treated while inside the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC).
The annual Department of Corrections inspection found children locked up in their rooms and isolated for too long, violating their rights.
The findings come after extensive FOX 9 reporting on kids who are illegally detained at the JDC but have nowhere to go.
Isolation and seclusion concerns
The state’s inspection "identified concerns around lack of supervision of residents" and found residents were locked in their rooms for so long that it violated their rights.
FOX 9 found earlier this year that some offenders as young as 12 years old have also been illegally detained in juvenile detention for weeks. Those kids are supposed to be transferred to care facilities within 48 hours because they are incompetent.
"It is definitely a traumatic environment," said Tracy Reid, a Hennepin County Juvenile Public Defender, who represented several children. "They are subject to isolation daily due to short staffing. They are not given any therapeutic care. It is not a therapeutic environment. It is not a rehabilitative environment. It is just detention. And it is pretty substantially, isolated detention."
The report found the facility has experienced significant staffing shortages since last June, and as a result, has resorted to the use of seclusion when it is not warranted.
Inspectors also found residents locked in their rooms even when staff were present, according to staff reports and reviews of camera footage.
"There are multiple occasions of residents being locked in their rooms while multiple staff are observed sitting in the staff office", the audit found.
The DOC gave the county 10 days to come up with a plan to ensure residents are "receiving positive and proactive adult guidance, support and supervision" including programming and recreation time out of their rooms for "interaction with staff and peers."
County responds
The county insists corrective actions cited in the inspection report are already underway.
"Our staffing challenges are not dissimilar to other correctional facilities and law enforcement agencies, and we have made a concerted effort to address them. We have made good progress in our hiring, onboarding, and training of staff," said Mary Ellen Heng, the acting Director of the Hennepin County Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation (DOCCR).
Hennepin County is budgeted to have up to 76 full-time correctional officers at the juvenile detention center, but currently has only 53 actively working. They are in the process of filling another 16 positions through new hires or officers returning from leave.
The county is also spending $22 million to move some children out of detention and into a treatment environment at a new youth stabilization center that should open early next year.