The state Youth Services Division disclosed Friday that a second employee had been fired from Arkansas' largest youth lockup in April.
The employee, Wayne Williams, was fired April 8 because of "an allegation of physical intervention" involving a youth, said Amy Webb, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, which oversees the Youth Services Division.
Webb said she couldn't provide a further description of the allegation or the date of the incident because of confidentiality laws.
She said she could confirm that the youth was not injured by Williams.
Williams was an employee of G4S Youth Services, the contractor that has operated the Alexander lockup since 2007. G4S has been paid about $10 million per year to operate the facility for the state.
The lockup, known as the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center, handles intake for nearly all of the state's juvenile delinquents and houses about 100 of the juvenile justice system's most violent and troubled youths.
Assaults at the lockup nearly doubled last year over 2012, according to data obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette under the state's Freedom of Information Act.
The Youth Services Division classifies assaults as one person striking another or being verbally aggressive toward another without retaliation by the victim. The assaults can be youth on youth, youth against staff or staff against youth, agency officials have said.
The data, provided to the state by G4S, show 327 assaults in 2013, a 98 percent increase over the 165 assaults reported a year earlier. Last year's total of assaults was the highest in at least five years.
Youth Services Division Director Tracy Steele said this week that he has asked his staff to look into the causes of the sharp increase in assaults.
A G4S spokesman said the company believes that the increase can mostly be attributed to a change in the definition of "assault."
Through 2012, the company used a narrower definition to determine what altercations it reported as assaults. The company now uses a broader definition, the spokesman said.
Webb said Williams was placed immediately on administrative leave after the purported "physical intervention."
Webb has said that under G4S policy, employees are placed on immediate leave when an allegation of abuse is corroborated by a witness or video evidence.
Webb said she couldn't provide Williams' hire date or position because the information was unavailable late Friday.
Youth Services Division officials were aware of the firing Thursday when Webb told a reporter that only one employee had been fired from the Alexander facility since the beginning of the year, she said Friday.
Webb said she hadn't been notified of Williams' firing when she made the statement to a reporter and the omission wasn't intentional.
The Youth Services Division will review Williams' firing as well as that of the other employee, Eddie Malvin, to make sure "everything was handled properly," she said.
The added scrutiny came at the request of Gov. Mike Beebe's office on Wednesday, the same day Malvin's firing was disclosed to the Democrat-Gazette.
On Thursday, the executive director of a nonprofit disability rights group said he was "alarmed" by the spike in assaults and plans to send monitors into the Alexander lockup "to pull some records."
Tom Masseau, director of the Disability Rights Center of Arkansas, said the group wants "to make sure that the kids are being treated with dignity and respect and that there's adequate programming."
The disability group has federal authority to investigate allegations of mistreatment, abuse or violations of constitutional rights at facilities that house people with disabilities.
Youth Services Division officials and a G4S spokesman said Thursday that they welcomed visits from the disability rights center and would cooperate with its monitors.
Metro on 06/14/2014