COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio is challenging federal officials’
legal efforts to get a court to limit solitary confinement used to
discipline boys with mental health disorders throughout the state’s
juvenile prison system.
The Justice Department calls the practice
rampant and sought an order to limit seclusion at four facilities, a
request that adds to a 2008 lawsuit raising concerns about seclusion and
inadequate mental health services in the system.
State responses
filed Friday said a proposal aimed at reducing seclusion is under
discussion and the Justice Department’s latest arguments should be
rejected.
Given the responsibility to provide a safe environment
encouraging rehabilitation, the state is "in the best position to
determine how seclusion is applied, the amount of time a youth should
spend in seclusion based on all aspects of the youth’s experience at
(the Department of Youth Services), and the best ways to reduce
seclusion if necessary," the attorney general’s office wrote.
The
state accused federal officials of improperly trying to alter an earlier
agreement in the case without filing a new complaint and to reach
beyond the one facility that the Justice Department still oversees under
the agreement. That youth prison, the Scioto Juvenile Correctional
Facility, is scheduled to close soon.
The Justice Department
alleges Ohio violates the boys’ due process rights by depriving them of
education, exercise and mental health care and doesn’t alter their
treatment when they return to the general population to address
ramifications of solitary confinement or the problems that led to
seclusion.
"If these boys are to be protected from the irreparable
harm of excessive and repeated seclusion, it is up to this court to
protect them," the department said in its request.
Youth Services has said it secludes juveniles as a last resort and still offers treatment and programming
in those cases.
Federal
authorities asked the court to limit solitary confinement for mentally
ill boys to no more than 24 hours without exercise, education or other
programming; no more than three consecutive days; and no more than three
days within a 30-day period unless officials review a youth’s mental
health treatment plan and take other steps. They also say use of
restraints shouldn’t be substituted for seclusion.
The Columbus
Dispatch reported earlier Friday that new statistics show Ohio juvenile
prisons increased its use of solitary confinement last year, averaging
about 453 hours for each youth, whether they were actually placed in
seclusion or not.
Much has changed in Ohio’s juvenile prisons in
the decade since a different lawsuit depicted the system as having a
culture of violence in the system. It has closed several juvenile
prisons in recent years as more young offenders go to locally run
facilities, meaning those still in state facilities are often older and
more violent.
The four juvenile prisons house about 440 youth.
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