Semantics Allows Youth In Juvenile Detention Facilities To Endure Solitary Confinement Despite New Law

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The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –

Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge-District 5) helped pass a law last year to close a loophole that allowed juvenile detention facilities in the state to keep kids in solitary confinement.

According to a report from watchdog group Disability Rights Tennessee (DRT), nothing has changed since the law was passed. 

Seclusion practices implemented at Wilder Youth Detention Center in Somerville, TN violate Department of Children Service’s own policies and further harm the young people placed in their care, said the group. The “Therapeutic Response Unit” is where youth are subjected to solitary confinement. One teen, highlighted in the report, was locked up in a room that smelled of urine for 23 hours a day.

Lt. Governor McNally told NewsChannel 5, “We thought we had taken care of the problem, and it’s surprising that it’s not.”

DRT Legal Director Jack Derryberry said, “The law, however well-intentioned and well purposed it was, is not working.”

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One mom who was interviewed by NewsChannel 5 said staff shortages at the facility was cited as the reason for her son’s confinement for 23, and sometimes 24 hours a day.

NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Darren Goods who oversees juvenile justice for DCS if there are cases where kids are spending 23 hours a day or more in a cell.

Goods said it depends on how DCS defines “seclusion” or “solitary confinement.”

A DCS official told NewsChannel 5 in 2019 that even if a child did spend that amount of time alone in his cell, it did not violate any policy. 

Mark Anderson, director of licensing at DCS in 2019, said that because kids could communicate through the steel doors of their cells that “room restriction” was not considered to be solitary confinement. “When you are in solitary confinement, the expectation is that you are completely isolated from everyone else.”

NewTruth

Armed with this information thanks to NewsChannel 5’s investigation, lawmakers defined solitary confinement in the new law as including “confinement to a locked unit or ward where other children may be seen or heard” and said that it could not last longer than six hours a day.

Darren Goods said there wasn’t “a lot for us to change” after the new law was passed. “We are governed by policy 19 – 11 which is more restrictive than the new seclusion law.” Goods said that the amount of time youth can be kept in “therapeutic units” was shortened from 8 weeks to 5 days.

Goods claims that if juveniles can communicate from their cells then they are not being “secluded” but Lt. Governor Randy McNally thinks otherwise and wants DCS to update their rules to follow the new law.

“Our understanding of the bill and the law is fairly clear,” said McNally. “I don’t think there needs to be any other clarification other than the Department needs to update its rules.”

About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.

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