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Tennessee lawmakers want more oversight of juvenile detention. • Tennessee Lookout [1]
['Paige Pfleger', 'More From Author', '- March']
Date: 2024-03-21
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WPLN/Nashville Public Radio.
The commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services publicly said this month that the agency was working with lawmakers to address oversight gaps at juvenile detention facilities across the state. But behind the scenes, the department is working to water down a bill that would do just that, according to one of the bill’s sponsors and others working on the legislation.
Last year, an investigation by WPLN and ProPublica revealed that the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center in Knoxville was illegally locking children alone in cells and that the facility had faced few consequences even as DCS repeatedly documented violations.
In response, one Democratic and two Republican state lawmakers drafted proposed legislation that would give an independent state agency the power to require changes at facilities that violate state standards, effectively forcing DCS to act.
As it stands, DCS inspects and writes reports on youth detention centers across the state. If inspectors document persistent problems, DCS says, it can freeze or slow admissions, decrease capacity or refuse to approve a license. DCS said it has used those interventions at other facilities but never at the Bean Center.
DCS is pushing for different language that would strip the independent agency from having enforcement power and leave DCS in charge of deciding how to respond to problems.
DCS declined to comment on the legislation but said it is working to address the problems at the Bean Center.
WPLN and ProPublica found that inspectors documented that the Bean Center had been improperly using solitary confinement for years. While DCS noted the violations in its reports, the department failed to effectively intervene. DCS says it cannot revoke the Bean Center’s license, but it has not approved its renewal either.
“The Bean Center has been in a nonapproved status for quite some time,” DCS Commissioner Margie Quin told lawmakers in a hearing this month. “We’re in that facility on a quarterly basis and continue to work with them.”
But some Tennessee lawmakers and child welfare advocates say it’s not enough to simply document that a facility is out of compliance with state standards. In a letter in November, 14 Democratic lawmakers called on DCS to intervene at the Bean Center and called for the superintendent and namesake of the facility, Richard L. Bean, to lose his job.
Bean did not respond to a request for comment.
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