SC Juvenile Justice audit finds spike in violent incidents, staffing deficiencies
State Juvenile Justice facilities are severely understaffed, their employees are poorly trained and the juveniles in their care are being left untreated and unsupervised, leading to an increase in violent incidents, according to the findings of the South Carolina Legislative Audit Council.
The Legislative Audit Council, which reviews state agencies and programs to identify ways to cut costs and improve performance, audited the S.C. Department of Juvenile Justice in 2017 and followed up in 2019 at the request of the General Assembly.
Their follow-up review, published Tuesday, found conditions at the state’s secure juvenile facilities had deteriorated over that time.
The report found that staffing had dwindled and many workers lacked experience and, as a result, incidents involving juveniles, including youth-on-youth violence and violence toward staff members, had nearly doubled.
Juvenile-to-staff ratios at DJJ’s secure facilities failed to meet both federal and the agency’s own internal standards for minimum supervision, the auditors found.
Even as the juvenile population at most of the facilities increased from 2017 to 2019, the number of hours worked by security staff plummeted, likely due to the agency’s decision to stop paying overtime in September 2018, the report found.
The elimination of paid overtime, which was intended to tamp down on perceived overtime abuse, led to a reduction in staffing levels as some workers left the agency and others took days off with the additional comp time they’d accrued in lieu of overtime pay.
Juvenile Justice even had to close multiple living units at its secure facilities due to low staffing levels, including the entire Coastal Evaluation Center in Ridgeville, whose residents were relocated to facilities in Columbia for two months in 2019 due to a lack of local staff.
Fewer workers meant less supervision for juveniles and an uptick in incidents, including serious ones like the alleged sexual assaults of four girls at the Midlands Evaluation Center in December 2019, according to the report.
“An internal administrative investigation into the December 2019 alleged sexual assault incident at MEC found that it was caused, in part, because supervisory security staff were assisting with juvenile transport, had not completed supervisory duties, and were, therefore, unaware of the current locations of other juveniles in the facility,” the auditors wrote.
Reported incidents at secure facilities have increased 124% since 2017, including a 42% increase in violent incidents and a 31% spike in fights between youths, according to the report.
The rise in violence, the auditors said, may be responsible for the agency’s “excessive and unconstitutional” use of isolation, identified last year by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The reduced security staff that remains is not receiving adequate training, the report said.
Nearly two-thirds of security staff employees who graduated from the Criminal Justice Academy failed to complete mandatory training within a year of their hire dates, as is required by state law.
One detention center security employee, who was identified in the Legislative Audit Council’s 2017 audit as one of nearly three-quarters of staff who had not completed training, had still not completed the training by the 2019 follow-up.
In addition to not training its employees, Juvenile Justice has failed to enforce its progressive discipline policy for workers accused of misconduct, the auditors found.
“Our review of employee disciplinary actions found that DJJ is relying on officers with multiple disciplinary actions demonstrating a history of reckless or indifferent behavior towards juvenile safety,” an audit summary states. “One employee in our sample had 10 disciplinary actions for failure to carry out job responsibilities, an offense which, under DJJ’s discipline policy, should have resulted in termination after three disciplinary actions.”
Meanwhile, juveniles under the care of DJJ have not received adequate medical care due to lack of staff, resulting in delayed doctors visits and trips to the emergency room.
In one documented case, a juvenile who was attacked by multiple other youths could not be taken to the emergency room because no staff members were available to transport him.
Other juveniles with mental health issues have not received their daily medications or have repeatedly missed psychiatric counseling appointments, some of them court ordered, because staff was not available to transport them, the audit found.
The report also said workers had not been properly trained to deal with juveniles who have mental health diagnoses and that documentation of issues like missed appointments and treatment was sorely lacking.
In addition to security and training issues, the audit found DJJ had been late on payments to vendors more than a quarter of the time between July 2016 and May 2020.
“In our discussions with DJJ personnel, we found that several vendors, including those providing medical supplies, bedding supplies, and information technology services, have refused to provide services to DJJ until payments are received,” the auditors wrote.
Freddie Pough, the agency’s executive director, acknowledged some of DJJ’s deficiencies in a letter to the Legislative Audit Council and said the agency was in the process of correcting them.
But he also took issue with portions of the audit and how it was conducted, asserting it contained “numerous instances where LAC simply failed to understand fundamental aspects of DJJ’s operations, misstated facts, dismissed the conclusions of trained professionals within their specific areas of expertise in favor of LAC’s, and failed to consider information provided by DJJ.”
Pough said Juvenile Justice had partnered with the Center for Children’s Law and Policy to get help analyzing data, revising policies, improving recruitment and retention of staff, and enhancing staff training. The agency also recently received a $750,000 federal grant to help reduce its use of isolation.
“DJJ is committed to working collaboratively with national experts to update protocols, practices, policies, and training programs to bring organizational change that will positively impact the culture of DJJ, both for youth served by DJJ and for DJJ staff,” he wrote.
The director also implored the General Assembly to increase state entry-level salaries for correctional staff, which he said had failed to keep pace with the private sector and led to many positions going unfilled, and to pass a juvenile justice reform bill.
Pough said the fact that a majority of cases referred to the agency involve youth charged with non-violent or low-level offenses suggest an over-reliance in South Carolina on out-of-home placements for juveniles who do not pose a risk to public safety. Rather than confining relatively low-risk juveniles, he suggested enhancing community supervision and access to prevention and intervention services.
“If we as a state can implement these proven juvenile justice system reform measures, we can make great strides to correct the understaffing problems DJJ faces, save taxpayer dollars, reduce recidivism, and create safer communities,” Pough wrote.
A spokesman for Gov. Henry McMaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Juvenile Justice audit.
This story was originally published April 7, 2021 at 1:10 PM with the headline "SC Juvenile Justice audit finds spike in violent incidents, staffing deficiencies."