Staff fired after 2 teen suicides in DCS custody

An independent review of two teen suicides within three weeks inside one Department of Children’s Services facility for delinquent youth has detailed widespread problems at the facility, including delays in giving kids medication, a failure to conduct regular required checks on children, poor staff training and severe staff shortages.

Two security officers at the Mountain View Youth Development Center were fired Tuesday and the facility’s security manager, Steve Harrison, resigned the same day in response to the findings submitted by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth.

DCS Commissioner Jim Henry pledged he would expedite efforts to hire and train staff at the East Tennessee facility, which currently has 30 unfilled positions and requires existing staff to regularly work overtime to oversee about 114 teenage boys. Henry said he would reach out to other states and experts for advice in revamping the state’s current approach to delinquent youth, promising to move “away from a correctional-style approach and more closely towards a therapeutic approach.”

On July 13, 16-year-old Brandon Greene fatally hanged himself in his room as other teens left to shower.

Greene had been on suicide watch three times before, once after trying to poison himself by drinking ink from two pens. Another time he was found lying on the floor with a shoestring around his neck. But four days after his last suicide attempt, he was taken off suicide watch. Two days later, he hanged himself with a T-shirt wrapped around a laundry bag cord attached to a metal shelf above his bed. The report noted Greene had been prescribed psychotropic medication before his death, but never took it because the facility had not yet obtained it.

The report found it took as long as two to three weeks for some teens to receive prescription drugs at the facility.

Three weeks after Greene’s death, on Aug. 1, an 18-year-old identified by his father as Frank Cass Jr. hanged himself with a bed sheet from a metal shelf unit in his room.

Cass had been placed in a segregation unit after he had been involved in three assault incidents in the prior week, the report said. In the two months before his death, staff had reported eight incidents involving assaults by Cass and use of confinements and restraints. On the day of his death, staff were supposed to check on him every 15 minutes. Instead, staff waited an hour and 45 minutes to check on him. During that time, he took his own life.

Both teens were taking Zoloft, an antidepressant whose side effects include “violent behavior, mania or aggression, which can all lead to suicide,” the report said. It noted that staff members at Mountain View were unaware of the types of medications the teens were prescribed and did not know their potential side effects.

The report noted that 57 percent of all teens aged 13-18 living at the facility were receiving psychotropic medications, “an awfully high number” that is more comparable to a psychiatric facility for teens than a detention center, said Paul DeMuro, a national expert and consultant in juvenile justice.

DeMuro, who was not part of the investigation, said it was especially troubling to learn that one of the teens had been placed in a segregated facility.

“The more you physically isolate them, the more problematic it often becomes,” he said. “There needs to be a healthy degree of human interaction as well as one-on-one supervision, not just sitting alone in a room. It’s done ostensibly in the name of safety, but it’s oftentimes not safe.”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has investigated the deaths, recently turning over its findings to Jefferson County District Attorney General James Dunn. Dunn said he would review the investigation and make a decision by Friday whether to pursue criminal charges.

Reach Anita Wadhwani at 615-259-8092 and on Twitter @AnitaWadhwani.

Budget cuts for delinquent youth

The Department of Children’s Services has cut its budget for delinquent youth by more than 40 percent since 2009.

Source: Tennessee Department of Children’s Services