State cutbacks seen as threat to juvenile justice
By Kathleen Chapman, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer, Monday, March 27, 2006

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Months after declaring the Florida Institute for Girls a failed experiment, the state decided to reopen its top-security building as a program for 80 boys.

The Department of Juvenile Justice advertised the new program in January. But private companies that specialize in reforming troubled youth weren't interested.

The agency offered $124.80 per teen, per day, about $40 less than the cost of state-run detention centers. After years of extreme cost cutting, most private companies agree they can no longer promise to help difficult teens  or even guarantee their safety.

Lacking a single bid, the state has turned to Youth Services International, a Sarasota-based company headed by Correctional Services Corp. founder James Slattery. The company is now negotiating to take over the program.

Correctional Services, which acquired Youth Services International in 1998, managed a program for 350 boys in Pahokee that made national news for mismanagement and abuse. Like the Florida Institute for Girls, the Pahokee Youth Development Center drew fire for excessive force, lack of meaningful treatment and poorly trained guards.

Correctional Services held 10 teens beyond their release dates so it could bill the state for more money, canceled school for 13 days running and failed to produce some budget records. The prison got a quality score of 37 out of a possible 100 before the company and state mutually decided to end the contract in 1999.

Department of Juvenile Justice spokeswoman Cynthia Lorenzo said the state is willing to negotiate in part because those problems occurred seven years ago.

"In the event that we successfully negotiate a contract, we will monitor their performance, as we do all programs," Lorenzo said.

Youth Services International Senior Vice President Jesse Williams, who was hired in 2003 to oversee 16 programs nationwide, says the company won't repeat the problems of the past.

The company runs a center in Broward County rated "highly effective" in a recent state report. It has improved operations by appointing a worker to monitor quality standards at each of its seven Florida programs, Williams said.

But some don't think it would be possible for anyone to operate a successful program here at the state's bare-bones rates. Officials at both the Pahokee program and the Florida Institute for Girls said at the time that many of their problems were caused in large part by their failure to keep qualified workers at wages of less than $9 an hour.

Across the state, juvenile justice companies say the state's cost cutting has finally pushed the entire system to a breaking point.

Martin County Sheriff Robert Crowder got the attention of state legislators this year by threatening to close his well-respected boot camp. Other residential programs that receive even less money have more quietly disappeared.

Staff turnover threatens youth

According to the Florida Juvenile Justice Association, which represents the state's private contractors, buildings are falling into disrepair because there is no money to fix them. Community service projects meant to teach children responsibility are canceled because there aren't enough workers to watch them.

Companies say they have replaced nurses and psychologists with less qualified employees who are unable to deal with the children's medical and emotional problems. Juveniles whose lives are already in upheaval are mentored by an ever-changing roster of guards, who typically last no more than a year on the job.

Many of those workers in private residential programs make so little that they qualify for food stamps, according to a recent state report. Some are routinely required to guard difficult and violent youth for 16 hours straight because so many of their co-workers have quit.

Executives at G4S Youth Services LLC, a division of the global security firm Group 4 Securicor, thought about bidding on the Palm Beach boys program but passed.

The company, which took over the failing Pahokee program in 1999, has told the state it is within "a heartbeat" of pulling out of one of the six programs it runs in Florida because it can't keep good workers.

The company has lost more than 600 workers in its state programs since May 2005, Chief Operating Officer John Morgenthau said. Even experienced workers committed to the juvenile justice field are quitting.

"I am having those people come to our supervisors with tears in their eyes, saying 'You know I love what I am doing here, but I just can't do it anymore. I've been working double shifts, 16 hours a day, five days a week for six months,' " Morgenthau said.

Teens who look to the workers as mentors and role models don't know who is going to be there the next week, Morgenthau said. And supervisors are forced to leave violent teens alone with inexperienced new hires, he said, "walking out and crossing their fingers and hoping nothing stupid happens."

Florida turned over nearly all of its juvenile programs to a mix of for-profit corporations and nonprofit agencies in the 1990s. Juvenile detention centers similar to adult jails largely remained under state management, but longer-term residential programs were outsourced to private companies. State leaders pitched the change as a way to reform a troubled system and cut expenses.

For years, the private programs eked by, mainly by paying well below the benefits and salaries paid to state workers.

But the rates the state pays to companies that now run those programs have barely budged since the Department of Juvenile Justice was created in 1994. Some costs, such as gasoline and insurance, have roughly doubled over that same time period.

Mark Fontaine, who represents the private contractors as head of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association, believes that the enterprise has finally reached its breaking point.

Of 22 programs put out to bid since July 2004, five were canceled or had no bidders, Fontaine wrote in a paper distributed to legislators. Thirteen more got a response from only one bidder. In addition to the Palm Beach County program, a 72-bed center planned for Miami-Dade is in limbo because the state can't find any takers.

Legislators have proposed spending increases in the past, but clashed over how to allocate the money. Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, who chairs the Senate's Justice Appropriations Committee, said in 2005 that he feared for-profit contractors could use a rate increase to pad profit margins instead of helping kids. He wanted the money earmarked for salaries of the front-line staff.

Rep. Gustavo Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, who serves on the House Juvenile Justice Committee, preferred an across-the-board increase. The state, he argued, should not be in the business of telling private contractors how to spend their money.

Youth facility, adult culture

Youth Services International was founded in 1991 by former Jiffy Lube Chairman W. James Hindman. The company went public in 1994 and merged with Slattery's publicly traded Correctional Services Corp. in 1998. Sarasota-based Correctional Services Corp. managed both juvenile and adult facilities until 2005, when Boca Raton-based company GEO Group Inc. bought it for $62 million.

GEO Group kept the adult prison contracts but sold its juvenile programs back to Slattery, who now runs the operation as Youth Services International. The private for-profit company has six lobbyists registered to do business in Florida, according to state records.

The company has drawn criticism inside and outside Florida.

In 2004, Maryland's Juvenile Services Secretary told The Baltimore Sun he was "shocked and surprised" by conditions at a program run by the company. The reform school hired dozens of people with criminal histories who shouldn't have been working there, according to the newspaper, and failed to prevent teens from getting items that could be used as weapons, such as scissors.

The Sun also quoted the state's juvenile justice chief as saying the company couldn't account for millions of state dollars it spent because "there was no budget."

Williams said problems at the school were not unique to the company. The company had to deal with a very challenging population of boys and an outdated building, he said, and took a loss on its state contract in order to make progress there.

The state of Maryland took over when the company chose not to continue the contract and has since decided to close the center.

Correctional Services Corp. also found itself in the middle of a scandal in 2003, when former New York Assemblywoman Gloria Davis admitted to taking bribes. She said the company gave her free round-trip transportation from her home to the capital in exchange for her help getting state contracts, setting off a wider investigation.

The Associated Press reported in 2003 that Correctional Services Corp. was fined $300,000  then a record amount for New York state  for failing to report accurately its gifts to Davis and other lawmakers.

Slattery denied any wrongdoing at the time, saying a settlement was in the best interest of the company.

Williams said he believes the company is in a much better position to focus on juvenile programs now that it no longer runs prisons for adults. Youth Services International is running smaller programs with more services, he said, and has improved background screening of its workers.

"We want to ensure a quality operation in every respect," he said.

Some who remember the Pahokee center aren't eager to see a repeat.

Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society attorney Barbara Briggs represented a teen at the center who lost weight because he was losing his meals in bets with other kids. The boy was younger and smaller than the others, Briggs said, and the others ganged up on him.

With its violence and power struggles, Briggs remembers, the center "had taken on a culture more similar to an adult prison," she said.

Briggs was not happy to hear about the state's plan for its new program.

"It's depressing, that's all. It's just depressing," Briggs said.

Monday :: February 23, 2004
Grand Jury Assails Florida Girls' Prison
A Palm Beach grand jury has issued a scathing report of treatment of girls in Florida prisons:

With inadequate and virtually untrained staff and poor state oversight, a 100-bed prison for hard-to-manage delinquent girls became a nightmarish place where girls were injured and sexually abused, a Palm Beach County grand jury wrote Monday in the latest rebuke of Florida's juvenile justice system.

The Florida Institute for Girls, operated for the Department of Juvenile Justice by a private company called Premier Behavioral Solutions, was beset by violence. As staff struggled to cope with the violence, the treatment center became a dismal place where girls frequently were locked in their rooms and denied activities, exercise and even an education. Premier was paid $5 million per year by DJJ to run the treatment center....

The Palm Beach grand jury, which began its investigation of the program four months ago, heard testimony from 39 witnesses, including therapists, staff members, police officers and detainees. Grand jurors also reviewed more than 1,000 pages of records, including incident reports from the prison. The grand jury said the incidents were properly investigated by staff from DJJ, the state Department of Children & Families, and local police. However, the report said neither the private company nor DJJ took the necessary steps to correct the problems the reports identified.

Posted Monday :: February 23, 2004| Juvenile Offenders

21 comments to "Grand Jury Assails Florida Girls' Prison"

Posted by scars
February 23, 2004 10:02 PM
Suddenly all those prison rape jokes on TV don't seem so funny, huh?

Posted by Phi
February 23, 2004 11:50 PM
Well, the jokes are only funny when its men and boys with this problem in prisons. Let's face it, its so much more hilarious to have a 14 year-old boy gang-raped so severly that his colon has to be resected. Since the perception is that females don't behave this way there will no doubt be some action taken to change things. I can hear it now, "These girls would be much better off if they would all start acting like the little ladies they are!"

Posted by scarsh
February 24, 2004 12:05 AM
Our "Christian" leaders will probably say that anyone involved in prison rape is obviously a hellbound sodomite anyway.

Posted by Phid
February 24, 2004 12:23 AM
While all the time claiming to love the sinner, but hate the sin. I think it too obvious that these girls are from an area where corporal punishment is not allowed during the formative years of preschool.

Posted by Lauren
February 24, 2004 12:25 AM
This trend of scandals in juvenile facilities is really troubling. No wonder there are so many repeat offenders in the system.

Posted by sat
February 24, 2004 07:51 AM
How about some corporate accountability in America for a change? Let?s see the executives who run ?Premier Behavioral Solutions? behind bars so those bastards can feel the abuse.

Posted by Jlvn
February 24, 2004 09:20 AM
I have an idea, ordain the accused and perhaps the press might actually cover the hideousness of the issue.

Posted by Anonymous
February 24, 2004 09:21 AM
How about if we just turned the whole country into one big jail. That'd be great. Last person in remember to throw the key through the front door out of reach, okay?

Posted by Phi
February 24, 2004 09:24 AM
Exactly, Satchel. You cannot provide behavioral interventions based on a least cost scenario. Especially when least cost always translates to low employee costs through fewer, less educated caretakers. They could do what the really big corporate prisons do by selling inmate labor at 7.50 an hour, giving the inmate .60 an hour, then pocketing the difference for "administrative costs". Those girls should be able to sew garments for a dollar a day like they do in South America. Think how rehabilitative that would be, and the pride of accomplishment the girls would possess after 2 or 3 years of the intervention.

Posted by sat
February 24, 2004 10:18 AM
There?s no doubt that the U.S.?s approach to criminal justice and rehabilitation is corrupt and worthless. My current point is that the fat cats getting rich off of the rape farm known as the Florida DJJ should be swiftly and brutally punished.

Posted by leth
February 24, 2004 10:50 AM
Is my math screwy, or does five million for a hundred beds come to fifty thousand per inmate, per year?

How much is a years tuition to Yale?

Prison. The plantation of the future.

Posted by Anonymous
February 24, 2004 12:10 PM
No... prison, the plantation of the now.

Posted by sat
February 24, 2004 12:24 PM
correction: above should read the U.S.?s correctional systems not U.S.?s approach to criminal justice and rehabilitation. I couldn?t think of the right words at the time.

Posted by Jlvn
February 24, 2004 12:28 PM
If we executed everyone in the prison system right now, would crime disappear forever? Would it even be reduced? "An ounce of prevention is worth ten tons of penance........"

Posted by Roger
February 24, 2004 02:00 PM

Would that be the "Guiliani Method"?

Kill all criminals for even minor offenses, so they wont be around to commit real crimes?

Posted by Jlvn
February 24, 2004 03:31 PM
Roger, yep. We could exterminate every prisoner in the system right now and be back at 2 million in 3 years.

Penance, retribution and revenge simply are not working, how about some prevention and education.

I am sorry I am showing my liberal ignorance. Of course if we executed every criminal in the system crime would disappear, after all every one would be so terrified of execution they certainly would not even consider a "fracture" of a law, let alone a clean break....

Posted by Che's
February 24, 2004 04:12 PM
And now, everyone I point you to the origins of the Suicide Bomber.

Posted by john
February 24, 2004 08:17 PM
In the last couple of years Governor Jeb Bush has cut hundreds of positions in the DJJ while making them responsible for more youthful offenders. Due to all the cuts in funding, it is no surprise that so many of our agencies have been rocked by scandals. You get what you pay for. Unfortunately, it is our youth, and not the politicians responsible, who have to pay the price.

Posted by Anonymous
February 25, 2004 09:42 AM
I never thought prison rape jokes were funny. I do think it's odd that the only time *some* people care about rape is when it's done to men and boys in prison. When it happens to girls and women (inside or outside of prison), they are assumed to be lying, crazy, or slutty.

What strikes me is that many male prisoners experience rape in the same way women on the outside do--coerced sex, but unprovable. No beatings or bruises. They submit because they feel or were threatened, they are afraid, they are coerced. Much like what happens to women. And in either case, it's disgusting, as is our treatment of rape survivors.

When female inmates are raped, it's oftentimes at the hands of their guards.

Posted by Sara
April 15, 2004 12:09 PM
You know whats funny about the entire situation. I was there and you people all seem to think that you know so much about what is actually being taken place in there. Yes I was at the facility for 16 months I am an ex criminal offender and for people to actually think that these girls are not human and should be sent to slave over sewing garnments is outragious. They are humans just like you and I. Everyone has there share of problems. Majority of these females had a horendous past and as they get older they turn to crime to escape what is going on in there homes. So please don't judge these girls for what they have done in there past. It is not there fault that these guards are wanting sex from inmates and brutally torturing them. Do unto others as you would want do unto you.

Posted by vivian
April 22, 2004 08:45 PM
I agree with sara that people do think they know what goes on with these programs and the juveniles and staff there. Yes i too was a juvenile incarcerated in this so called juvenile prison. I would like to say don't write about what you don't know and what you think about us. plus you don't know why we do the things we do.

Riot at Florida Girls Prison Injures 13
By Associated Press
Netscape News, May 5, 2004

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - More than a dozen inmates suffered minor injuries in a riot at Florida's maximum-security prison for girls and young women, which has struggled with staffing problems while trying to help severely troubled young people, authorities said.
Several girls were playing flag football at the Florida Institute for Girls on Sunday when three stripped off their clothes, said Darryl Olson, Department of Juvenile Justice regional director.

One of the girls grabbed a flag from the game, tied it around her neck and threatened to hang herself. The unrest quickly spread to all 48 inmates, with two fighting while others threatened to hurt themselves, scratched at their wrists or tried to open old wounds, authorities said.

Eleven of those injured were briefly taken to hospitals. Three inmates were committed to a mental health crisis unit.

When the institute opened in April 2000, it was praised as an innovative way to treat the state's most troubled and violent female offenders ages 13 to 21.

A grand jury investigation was launched in October reports of inappropriate sexual contact, improper use of physical restraints and long stays in isolation units. In February, the grand jury said allegations that officials covered up abuse were unfounded, but found several problems, including lack of staff training, massive turnover, persistent shortages and poor morale.

The three who started the unrest by stripping had recently returned from a mental health facility and might have been acting up to return there, Olson said. Some inmates prefer it to the prison.

Last Chance Ranch
Florida Detention Center Treats Troubled, Violent Girls
by Debbie Elliott

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All Things Considered, July 22, 2003 · Girls and the Juvenile Justice System is a new five-part series focusing on the harsh and difficult realities young girls face as they battle the complex justice system in the United States.

It begins with a look at the Florida Institute for Girls in West Palm Beach. The state opened the maximum-security facility three years ago, after seeing a sharp spike in the number of girls committing violent crimes. The detention center, which focuses on high-risk females with intensive mental health issues, is the last stop in the juvenile justice system before prison, says director Jacque Layne.

"Girls call it the last chance ranch, " Layne says. " If they can't make it here, they're not going to make it."

Many of the teenagers at the center committed serious violent crimes: car-jacking, armed robbery, aggravated battery, manslaughter. Some have been in and out of juvenile delinquency programs for years. Broken homes, drug and alcohol abuse, dropping out of school and a family history of criminal activity are the norm. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports on some of the girls' stories.

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Our Kids are Dying in Teen Boot Camps: Shut Them Down

Martin Lee Anderson, 14 Years Old, Dies After Two Hours at a Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Facility, or Boot Camp