Douglas County Youth Center Superintendent Brad Alexander in one of the individual rooms for juveniles in 2004.
Most juvenile detention centers in Nebraska have made needed progress over the past year in reducing their use of solitary confinement for detained youths. Significant challenges remain, but many of the latest findings by a state inspector general are encouraging.
Of 33 juvenile-focused centers around the state, seven use room confinement with some frequency, and most showed a reduction over the past year. As examples, Julie Rogers, the state inspector general for child welfare, cited the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Centers in Kearney and Geneva as well as youth centers in Sarpy, Lancaster and Madison Counties.
The trend at those centers is a welcome change from 2016, when a study by ACLU of Nebraska found that juvenile detention institutions in Nebraska kept youths in room confinement for some of the longest periods in the nation.
Mental health professionals warn that juvenile facilities’ use of solitary confinement risks great harm to young offenders and should be used sparingly. Practice around the country is moving toward reduced use of such confinement.
The Nebraska Legislature in 2016 responded by requiring that juvenile detention centers around the state adopt policies to reduce the times they resort to restrictive housing. The legislation, by State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln, also required that the centers report the circumstances whenever they use room confinement.
The Douglas County Youth Center is an exception to progress over the past year at other Nebraska facilities, Rogers writes in her new report. More than 90 percent of the time, solitary confinement at the center involved stays exceeding eight hours.
Center personnel told Rogers that the main factors leading to restrictive housing are a youth’s significant mental health problems or gang affiliation. Also, “sometimes a youth feels safe in restrictive housing after having an altercation in the general population.”
The center is working to reduce its use of solitary confinement, the report says, by adding a licensed mental health provider to the evening schedule and using various rehabilitation programs. Staff keep track of gang membership to avoid housing members of rival gangs together.
Rogers’ report listed the elements of best practice for the use of restrictive housing for juveniles: It should be “used as a last resort when all other least restrictive measures have failed.” It should last no longer than 24 hours; some experts say limits of two or four hours are appropriate.
It also should be closely monitored, Rogers writes: “Youth should be checked on by staff frequently, and when the incident is for an extended period of time, the youth should be seen by a mental health professional.”
Some of Nebraska’s juvenile detention centers face significant challenges, no question, in managing youths with major mental health issues or violent and disruptive tendencies. At the same time, the expert findings about the dangers from extended solitary confinement are clear.
