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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Saturday, August 13, 2005 Posted on: Saturday, August 13, 2005

Life for youth detainees violent, cruel, probe finds

 •  Justice Department report
(PDF file)

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

This secured courtyard for females is part of the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility's complex. A report citing abuses at the facility found that young women cut themselves "out of sheer boredom."

Photos by Richard Ambo | The Honolulu Advertiser

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JUSTICE REPORT

Examples of abuse and violence at the state's juvenile justice facility: Guard abuse
  • An inmate was put in a chokehold while a second guard gouged the inmate's eyes. They then hog-tied the youth. Inmate behavior
  • Several inmates "mobbed" another inmate.
  • An inmate was sexually assaulted while he slept. Suicidal behavior
  • Two inmates tried to kill themselves by hanging at nearly the same time on Sept. 10, 2004. For one, it was the second attempt on the same day.
  • When found hanging, a youth was cut down by security — but was not taken to an emergency room for more than two hours.
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    A module housing male youth detainees shows an open area with doors leading to cells. According to the report, guards routinely discipline the boys with force.
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    Kaleve Tufono-Iosefa, corrections manager at the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility, monitors one of the modules for young men. State officials, responding to the Department of Justice's report, said yesterday that they are addressing the abusive conditions.
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    Life inside the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility was marked by cruelty, violence and suicide, U.S. Department of Justice officials found when they conducted an inspection last October.

    Justice officials interviewed administrators, youth correctional officers, and medical and mental-health staff during their on-site inspection of the 71-bed facility. They also later interviewed several female inmates who had been temporarily placed in a Utah facility.

    Their findings were contained in a scathing 30-page report released yesterday.

    The report described efforts by youth correctional officers to control the inmates as disturbing and excessive. Security personnel "run the facility as they choose, regardless of the negative impact on the health and welfare of the youths confined there," the report stated.

    Between July 2003 and last September, there were 37 incidents where an inmate was injured by a staffer, the report stated, and the security measures created "a grave risk of injury or death."

    Said one guard, with respect to force: "For juveniles, anything goes."

    In the report, the examples of abuse by the guards were brutal and demeaning. They choked youths hard enough to leave handprints, punched them in the face and one slammed a cell door on an inmate's hand with such force it broke two fingers.

    Among examples cited:

  • In September 2004, a guard placed a youth in a chokehold with the youth's face smothered against the guard's chest. Another guard then gouged the youth's eyes with his fingers. After this, the youth was handcuffed and hog-tied.

  • On June 11, 2004, a guard began to argue with an inmate over the youth's desire for cereal as an evening snack. The guard shoved and punched the youth, slapped him, choked him and threw him against a wall. The guard later said he "just lost it."

  • On Jan. 21, 2004, a guard "grabbed, squeezed and twisted the testicles of a youth for at least 15 seconds" during a routine lineup after school. An internal investigation discovered that the guard had done this to two other youths. He was subsequently charged with third-degree assault.

    Controlling disruptive youths in such a way tended to exacerbate the task of rehabilitation, the report stated. Staffers warned facility administrators of problems.

    In 2003, a nurse said the use of force was escalating with more inmates needing emergency-room treatment. A physician who treated the youth complained that the risk of being killed during acts of discipline was "a real possibility." Inadequate training was cited but the guards were not given any better understanding on the use of force, the report stated.

    Isolation was often used for discipline, but the facility appeared to ignore completely "the adverse psychological side effects of prolonged isolation," the report stated. No standards govern such punishment.

    Staff often confined juveniles to their cells because they were short-staffed or for convenience.

    Youths were locked in cells "for days on end," according to shift logs reviewed. This practice increased violence and tension, the report stated.

    The inspectors noticed during their visit that inmates had carved into their own skin. The youths told investigators they did this "out of sheer boredom while confined to disciplinary isolation."

    This practice among female inmates particularly alarmed the investigators who discovered that all but one girl readily admitted to cutting herself.

    Violence among the youths was a widespread problem, the report stated. Nineteen separate examples were listed, but several stood out:

  • Several inmates "mobbed" another inmate, but guards or medical personnel did not document the incident. Two weeks later, the facility doctor noted the victim was coughing up blood. Four weeks after the incident, the doctor said the victim still suffered from being kicked.

  • Armed with a dust pan, a youth snuck up behind another youth and struck him on the back of the head. It took 10 stitches to close the wound that stretched from the top of his head to his forehead.

  • One youth suffered two black eyes after a beating, with his right eye swollen shut completely. The guard on duty, however, waited two days to inform the facility's medical unit.

    The justice investigators were deeply concerned about a lack of measures to prevent inmates from harming themselves.

    The report stated staff failed to adequately assess suicidal youths as well as monitor those who were subject to suicide precautions and in disciplinary isolation. Staff also lacked the training needed to respond to suicide attempts.

    Justice officials said the risk of self-harm was not hypothetical and cited two female inmates who had tried to kill themselves on Sept. 10, 2004, a month before the on-site inspection.

    One youth used her bra to hang herself from the bunkbed of her cell, the report said. Another youth found her and yelled for a guard to help. Arriving at the cell, the guard became frightened and dropped his keys. Another youth quickly grabbed the keys, unlocked the cell and lifted the unconscious victim while another inmate removed the strangling bra.

    At the same time, at a different cell within the same area of the facility, a different inmate also tried to hang herself with a bedsheet tied to a pole, the report said. A guard and an inmate removed the sheet. The report stated that the suicidal inmate had already tried to kill herself earlier that same day by cutting herself 21 times with a bra wire and two days earlier by cutting her wrist with a razor.

    The report cited a lack of training on how to respond to suicides. One youth was found hanging from a bedsheet at midnight Dec. 23, 2003, but the security staff did not immediately notify medical and mental-health personnel and waited more than two hours before taking the youth to an emergency room.

    "This kind of delay is difficult to understand or excuse," the report stated.