Capital Report
(2011-12-23)
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The Dozier School for Boys
"Brick cottages were surrounded by foliage and they were neatly trim and the grass was cut perfectly and there were tall Florida pines and it looked beautiful."
64-year-old Robert Straley is describing what his first time was like when he walked onto the grounds of the Dozier School for Boys. He's one of the four people who blew the whistle on the facility's punishment room known as the White House, where the alleged child abuse took place, like rape and beatings, which could end in death.
A boy of 13 at the time, weighing 105 pounds, he remembers thinking that he was going to give the Dozier facility a chance. But, on his very first day, Straley says the people in charge mistook him for one of the conspirators who had planned to run away that night. Straley says he was lined up along with those other boys and was flogged:
"I couldn't imagine what in the world that man was hitting me with that was hitting me that hard and I turned over to look and it looked like a razor strap, and it was three times as thick with a wooden handle, and that left me black and blue with pin holes of blood all over, like you'd taken a pin and stuck in me, because when you hit your skin with that much force repeatedly blood is going to collect and it will burst at some point."
The Dozier School for Boys was closed June of this year in what state officials said was a budget trimming move.
Straley says though he's thankful that Dozier is closed for good, he still worries about the abuses going on at other youth correctional facilities all across the state.
And, a recent report by the U.S. Justice Department suggests Straley is right. In the 28-page report, investigators confirmed that there were abuses going on at Dozier as well as the Jackson Juvenile Offender Correction Center, which also closed in June. It also concluded there may be more going on at other youth correctional facilities within the state:
But, Spokesman for the Department of Juvenile Justice CJ Drake disagrees. He says his department had already addressed the issues with Dozier by closing it. He also says those concerns do not exist elsewhere in the state:
"In fact, since 2008, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has proactively closed or significantly scaled back 23 residential programs throughout the state that did not meet our standards for performance. So, we proactively identify concerns and issues and problems, and we take the necessary and appropriate action when they are brought to our attention, we just don't wait for them to get worse."
But, Roy Miller, the President of child advocacy group, the Children's Campaign, argues DJJ didn't really want to close Dozier. He claims the department worked this past session to keep Dozier open, but the advocacy community prevailed with the help of lawmakers.
Miller says after reading the Justice Department's report, it validates a lot of what advocates said was going on at the facility even up until the point it closed.
"And, for DJJ to say they are absolutely certain that these incidents don't occur throughout their system on a day in and day out basis is ludicrous we know it does, and they need to take it more seriously and stopping it and they're not going to root it out and stop it by saying, it's not a systemic issue, it's only isolated.' It's not isolated. It happens a lot more frequently than they would like everybody to believe."
According to the Justice Department's report, youth in the correctional facilities were subjected to treatment that is a violation of their constitutional rights. For example, cameras caught detention officers provoking children and then responding with an excessive amount of force. Investigators also found that there were several cases where force was the first response, instead of as a last resort.
Miller says much abuse may have gone undetected.
"There were blind spots in the Dozier residential program unseen by the cameras. They had one incidence where they only saw the kid being dragged, his legs were visible, but the rest of his body wasn't. That's inexcusable! One thing that DJJ can automatically do is ensure that every square foot of every residential correctional facility under their management is in the view of the camera. There should be no blind spots."
Even though Miller admits there has been a decrease in the use of excessive force within Florida's juvenile justice system in the past couple of years, he says that does not mean the department should use it as an excuse to act like there is no abuse going on within its detention centers.
Straley, on the other hand, who says he has witnessed firsthand what type of abuses have gone on in the youth prisons, says he's not sure much will change. He says that's because the Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not do a thorough investigation and made it seem as if there was no abuse. So, even with this new federal investigation, Straley says he's unsure of what will happen.
He hopes, though, that the department of juvenile justice realizes it has to do better because of what he calls a "recipe for disaster."
"I just hope that this Government report makes them realize that they have got to clamp down on the abuse and screen these people they put in these institutions. They hire people with a low education. And, they have no training as far as what can happen if they do a restraint and things go wrong and that child goes into cardiac arrest or stops breathing, they don't know what to do. They don't even know how to do CPR in a lot of cases."
At the beginning of the month, the U.S. Justice Department's Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez sent Governor Rick Scott a letter, which was also sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi and DJJ Secretary Wansley Walters.
In that letter, Perez says the violations found in the report are due to the "state's failed system of oversight and accountability," which he suspects affects the entire juvenile justice system statewide. Perez says because the two facilities investigated were closed in June, federal investigators ended their review. But, Perez later warned that if for any reason they learn of any more abuses, the department reserves the right to open another investigation.
© Copyright 2012, wfsu
