November 23, 2004
Child Detention Centers Criticized in New Jersey
By LESLIE KAUFMAN, NY TIMES

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Hundreds of children and teenagers held in juvenile detention facilities in New Jersey are there illegally, kept for months without basic medical care in locked quarters that are severely overcrowded and leave them vulnerable to episodes of violence, according to a report by the independent monitor of the state's child welfare system.

The report, issued by the Office of the Child Advocate, which was created last year after the state's child welfare system scandal, is based on a yearlong investigation that had access to confidential government records.

It amounts to a damning portrait of the 17 county detention facilities that together house more than 10,000 adolescents a year.

The report found that fully a quarter of the youths held in detention facilities, many of them suffering from mental health problems, were there simply because the state could not find a more appropriate setting, such as a hospital or foster home. And in what the report called a "cruel irony,'' scores of them stayed four months longer on average than the sentences served by the adolescents who had been sent there for committing crimes.

The counties, according to the report, often failed to provide the most troubled youths in the facilities with rudimentary mental health care. Evaluations often were not done in some county juvenile jails; in others, mental health care was provided by drug and alcohol counselors, not doctors.

State officials acknowledged the problems yesterday and said significant reforms were being introduced and had already reduced the population in detention.

Nevertheless, the report offered recent chilling examples of cases that underscored the chaos and damage suffered by some of the adolescents in the detention centers.

One boy, over eight weeks in one of the centers, attempted suicide five times, often showered with his clothes on and threatened workers, but was taken off suicide watch by a social worker. That night, he was found trying to hang himself from a light fixture, using a piece of elastic from his underwear. A 16-year-old attempted suicide 14 times before being hospitalized.

"Thousands of kids are being inappropriately waylaid into detention when they need community-based mental health services,'' said Kevin M. Ryan, the child advocate. "The vast majority of the mentally ill kids are in detention for some minor offense like stealing a bike or getting into a fight. During the course of doing this report, we saw scores of them slowly and painfully come apart as they failed to receive treatment.''

Mr. Ryan said he had been particularly struck by the case of one teenager at the detention center in Union County. The youth had tried to kill himself four times in one month, once by slicing his wrists with a broken plastic cup, once by swallowing a screw, and yet again by drinking the chemicals from an ice pack.

"Putting kids like this in detention is akin to placing an asthmatic child in a closet with pollen and asbestos,'' he said. "It is a given they are going to get sicker.''

The inappropriate but frequent placement of mentally ill adolescents in detention facilities is a national problem. According to a 1999 report by the surgeon general, one in five youngsters in detention centers across the country have serious emotional problems, just as in New Jersey. Still, the child advocate's report points to long-term systemic failures within the state that have exacerbated the impact of such incarceration on adolescents.

In one measure, the report found that juveniles are often placed in detention centers that have already reached maximum capacity, a practice Mr. Ryan called a flagrant violation of state law. In 2003 in Camden County, the juvenile detention center had more than twice as many youths as legally allowed inside its walls on a daily basis.

Over the years, the administrator of the Camden County center, Mary T. Previte, has repeatedly protested the overcrowding, calling the conditions a "tinderbox'' that could lead to violence and sexual assault.

One of the reasons the detention centers in New Jersey remain overcrowded, according to the report, is an insufficient number of state-sponsored places to send the adolescents for care or safekeeping, such as boarding homes for emotionally disturbed children.

"The primary reason many of these youth are in detention is because the county detention center, unlike the schoolhouse, is the only place that cannot say no,'' the report said.

Finding appropriate placement for such youngsters is the responsibility of the state's Division of Youth and Family Services, which has been deeply troubled for years.

Last year, citing the agency's systematic failure to provide services and safe foster homes to children, a federal court in Trenton ordered sweeping reforms and called for monitoring by an independent panel of child welfare experts.

Yesterday, Andy Williams, a spokesman for the Department of Human Services, which is responsible for the child welfare agency, said those reforms have already resulted in improvements that address the problems at the detention centers highlighted in the report.

"We certainly couldn't argue that kids who need behavior health services shouldn't be in detention,'' said Mr. Williams, "but it is already a priority of the child welfare reform plan.'' He said his agency was working to expand the availability of health care and other services that might reduce the number of adolescents inappropriately placed in secure detention.

"Right now we can provide services to 1,500 kids while they remain in their communities,'' he said, in discussing the allocation of resources, "and when we have completed the expansion by June of next year, we will service 4,000.''

In addition, he said, since the spring the division has been placing case managers at the worst detention centers, where they have been doing mental health assessments and shortening the time it takes to get them into a more appropriate setting. "In March the census in Camden was 100, and now it is 60,'' he said.

Still, Camden is designed to hold only 37 youths, which may be an indication of how far the state still has to go.

"Look there have definitely been improvements,'' said Howard L. Beyer, the executive director of the Juvenile Justice Commission, "but one night in detention for a kid who doesn't belong there will have an adverse affect on them for the rest of their life.''

Indeed, Mr. Ryan, the state's child advocate, listed a raft of proposed reforms in his report, including requirements that every detention center have a licensed mental health worker and that the Department of Human Services put case managers in all the detention centers.

The report also called on state officials to make better use of available federal money to improve the conditions of the detention centers. For years, it found, the state had failed to apply for assistance for eligible youths at the detention centers. In the last year alone, it asserted, that could have amounted to $600,000 in federal help.