Colorado’s juvenile detention system has failed to improve
On June 6, 2017, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed House Bill 1329 into law. That law, sponsored by 53 legislators from across Colorado, mandates long-overdue reform of the Division of Youth Corrections, starting with changing its name to the Division of Youth Services (DYS) to better reflect the agency’s role in helping our incarcerated youth.
The General Assembly wanted to ensure: that young people sent to DYS received the rehabilitation they needed to make lasting behavioral changes; that young people and staff were physically safe; and that these young people were prepared to become law-abiding, contributing members of their communities when they were released. These are not lofty goals. They are common-sense approaches to making sure delinquent young people don’t become criminal adults, something that all of us have a stake in accomplishing.
Before we drafted this bill, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, Colorado State Public Defender, Disability Law Colorado and the Colorado Juvenile Defender Center released Bound and Broken, a report on the division’s culture. We were horrified to learn of the many reports — corroborated by official records as well as medical reports — of staff physically abusing young people who came into DYS already traumatized and with mental illness and other disabilities.
Throughout the legislative process in the first months of 2017, we had many meetings with DYS leaders. The theme of those meetings was the necessity for meaningful cultural change within staterun facilities. DYS leadership agreed that change was needed and promised it would happen. The events of the past month have called this commitment into serious question.
Mark Huerta has been a guard at the Lookout Youth Services Center in Golden for 30 months. He is a Mixed Martial Arts fighter who shows his fighting videos to kids at Lookout. According to an investigation by the Department of Human Services (DHS), during that time the division has received 35 complaints against him for “Institutional Abuse and Neglect.” Of the 17 DHS chose to investigate, it concluded that none were founded. However, the investigation noted that “there appears to be a pattern of alleged physical abuse with Mr. Mark Huerta based on the prior contacts with Child Protective Services.”
The young people at Lookout, including those interviewed for the Bound and Broken report, consistently identify Huerta as one of its most brutal guards. Lawyers from both Disability Law Colorado and the Public Defender’s Office witnessed Huerta’s abusive tactics. In January of this year, a supervising lawyer with the Public Defender’s office wrote to the director of Lookout to express her concerns about him. Despite all of this, DYS is employing Huerta to train other staff in physical management of kids, and in August named him employee of the month. Is this the message of culture change that DYS wants to send to its staff ? Is this the model that DYS extols?
Also in August, a guard at the Grand Mesa Youth Services Center, in Grand Junction, was charged with sexually assaulting two of the young girls being held there. This follows another arrest of a guard at the Gilliam Youth Detention Center in Denver last December, again for sexually assaulting two underage girls in custody there. At the end of August, a child committed suicide at the Mount View Youth Services Center in Lakewood. This was the second youth suicide at Mount View in three months.
Physical abuse allegations, child sexual assault allegations, suicides: clearly, the cultural change myself and other lawmakers sought to make is sorely needed but not occurring. These incidents call into question DYS leadership’s commitment to making the kind of change that is essential in our state’s youth confinement system. It is true that, following the Bound and Broken report, DYS promised to phase out some of its pain-compliance techniques (striking kids with knees in sensitive nerve areas, tying down kids with a full body straight jacket called the WRAP), but that’s only part of the solution. Real change will require intensive staff training and evaluation, as well as the will to weed out, rather than reward, problem guards.
It is not the enormity of our problems, but the lack of forthright commitment to solutions that stands in the way of making things better. A first step is owning the past and acknowledging problems. DYS must be willing to scrutinize old practices, behavior patterns and values and ask if they are in line with the change it promised during the last legislative session.
If not, DYS must show the courage and willpower to replace them with approaches that promise kids will emerge from its facilities better, not worse; whole, not broken.
The overwhelming majority of young people in DYS custody will be released back into our communities. All of us have a stake in demanding that the experiences DYS provides makes them ready to rejoin us as productive, healthy Coloradans.
State Rep. Pete Lee is a Democrat from Colorado Springs representing House District 18. State Rep. Lois Landgraf is a Republican from Fountain representing House District 21.