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Thursday, November 17, 2005
Ind. Gov't. - Update re 3-part series on juvenile facility problems
Nancy J. Sulok of the South Bend Tribune, who wrote the three-part series in October on juvenile facility problems (see this ILB entry), writes today in a column headlined "Changes being made at state-run juvenile lockups: Continuation of medications is part of new policy," that:
Greater parental involvement and a change in medication policies have taken place over the past two months at the South Bend Juvenile Correctional Facility.J. David Donahue, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Correction, discussed the changes during an interview last week in South Bend, where he was attending a community corrections conference at Ivy Tech Community College. * * *
Donahue said changes are under way throughout the juvenile justice facilities in Indiana.
One of the issues in the DOJ report concerned safety and the assaults of inmates. Donahue said more security cameras have been added to minimize blind spots that were out of view of the guards and surveillance cameras.
Video cameras also are being used now, Donahue said, to document the behavior of the juvenile offenders. Staff members recently were trained to use the cameras to monitor emotionally upset children. Donahue said video has been used that way for some time now in the adult prisons but are an innovation in the juvenile facilities.
Information can be shared with Child Protective Services and other agencies that deal with troubled youths, he added.
Also new for the staff, Donahue said, is the requirement that the teachers offer parent-teacher conferences. He said the idea occurred to him while he was attending such a conference for his own son. He was surprised to find out that similar meetings were not conducted in the juvenile facilities. Absolutely nothing is more important than involving parents in their children's education and development, Donahue said.
The DOJ report also was critical of the DOC's policy of discontinuing behavior-modifying drugs.All youths go through an intake process at Logansport, and the staff there routinely was stopping the the use of drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder and other mental health problems.
Parents were extremely critical of the practice because the cutting off of drugs often caused their sons to exhibit disruptive behavior that impeded their progress. Donahue said the practice has been stopped. Boys who are taking psychotropic drugs when they arrive at intake are kept on the medications now, he said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 17, 2005 10:43 AM
Posted to Indiana Government