ALEXANDER LOCKUP

Lockup youth hurt; worker fired, another quits

Injuries to a child at Arkansas' largest youth lockup over the weekend resulted in the firing of one employee and the abrupt resignation of another before he could be fired, the state Youth Services Division disclosed Wednesday.

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The firing at the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center was the third this year involving an allegation of staff-on-youth assault, all of which have been disclosed by the agency in response to questions from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette over the past week.

It was the second such firing this year that involved injury to a youth at the facility near Alexander, and it comes as a nonprofit disability-rights group prepares to send monitors into the lockup because of a near doubling of reported assaults that occurred there last year.

On Wednesday, Amy Webb, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, said the Youth Services Division is working to determine whether there's a pattern of "staff-on-youth incidents" that need to be addressed at the lockup.

"We're at a point where we need to figure out if these are isolated incidents or part of a facilitywide problem," Webb said.

Division leaders have directed the contractor that operates the lockup to conduct a "facilitywide evaluation of its policy and procedures as it relates to staff-on-youth issues," Webb said.

The Youth Services Division also has asked the contractor, Florida-based G4S Youth Services, to come up with a "plan of action" regarding allegations of staff members assaulting youths, Webb said.

"What we don't want to see is a continuation of incidents where there are allegations of staff-on-client abuse or assault. ... We want a plan of action from our contractor on what they're going to do to ensure that these types of incidents don't happen," Webb said.

A spokesman for G4S said in an email that the company, which has operated the lockup since 2007, wasn't able to comment on the Youth Services Division's requests because the firing was disclosed late in the day Wednesday.

G4S has been paid about $10 million per year to operate the lockup, which houses about 100 of the state's most violent and behaviorally troubled youths. The facility also handles intake for nearly all of the state's juvenile delinquents.

Last week, the Human Services Department, which oversees the Youth Services Division, was directed by Gov. Mike Beebe to look into the first two firings.

Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said Wednesday that the governor was notified of the latest assault allegation and expects that it will be reviewed like the other two firings.

"It's something that's on the front burner right now," DeCample said.

On Wednesday, Webb said she couldn't provide a detailed description of what led to the employee's firing, but said the fired employee, a woman, was terminated because of "an allegation of a reported assault."

The employee who resigned, a man, left the facility before he could be fired for "not following procedures specifically related to an inappropriate hold," Webb said. A hold is a type of physical restraint that employees can use to subdue youths who become violent or unruly.

Webb said she didn't know whether the youth injured in the reported assault was hospitalized or required medical attention. She said the injuries had been described to her as "superficial."

Webb said she couldn't identify the fired employee because the dismissal could still be appealed. The other employee resigned "before they could be terminated," Webb said. As a result, she couldn't release his name.

The firing comes less than a week after the Youth Services Division disclosed the firings of the other two employees at the Alexander lockup. The two employees were fired in April after separate allegations of assaulting youths.

In addition to reviewing the firings, the Youth Services Division is also looking into why reported assaults nearly doubled at the lockup last year.

In 2013, the lockup reported 327 assaults, a 98 percent increase from 165 in 2012. The number of assaults reported last year was the highest number in at least five years.

State officials have attributed the increase to several factors, but they and a G4S official have said they believe that better reporting of assaults at the lockup contributed to the increase.

The Youth Services Division has said that it classifies assaults at the Alexander lockup 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.

A G4S spokesman said last week that the increase in assaults was largely due to a change in the definition of "assault" that the company uses. Through 2012, the company used a narrower definition than it does now, the spokesman said.

The increase in assaults was reported last week by the Democrat-Gazette after it obtained internal data from the Youth Services Division using the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

After the increase was made public, the nonprofit Disability Rights Center of Arkansas decided to send in monitors to investigate the facility's safety.

The group has federal authority to investigate allegations of mistreatment, abuse or violations of constitutional rights at facilities that house people with disabilities.

Tom Masseau, the group's executive director, has said the monitors will be making sure that the youths are safe, treated with dignity and respect and are receiving appropriate educational and mental health services.

On Wednesday, Masseau said that his monitors plan to conduct interviews with the youths housed at the Alexander lockup and that they will ask about any allegations of staff-on-youth assault.

"We're going to figure out what is going on that's not being reported, and if it is reported, how detailed is it," Masseau said.

"If somebody wants to come forward and share some concerns with us, we do have the ability to pull their record and look a little bit deeper into what is going on," he added.

Masseau said the monitors also will be reviewing the lockup's incident-reporting procedures to determine what altercations the contractor is reporting as assaults.

"I know it's a very broad definition, but we want to take a closer look at that," he said.

Youth Services Division officials and a G4S spokesman have said that they welcome the group's visits and will cooperate with its monitors.

Tracy Steele, the director of the Youth Services Division, also has proposed changes in response to the increase in assaults.

Steele has said that he wants to increase the number of division-employed monitors from two to six, including a monitor that will be housed at the Alexander lockup full time.

Steele said he's also working to strengthen the Youth Services Division's ability to hold its contractors accountable, including giving his agency the ability to impose administrative or financial sanctions on uncooperative contractors.

Steele said he's also considering adding a requirement for contractors to collect more data and respond to trends in assaults and other major incidents.

The changes are all on the table as the division works to write the next contract for the operation of the Alexander lockup. The contract is to be put out for bid early next year.

A Section on 06/19/2014

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