Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice has become a system that runs on neglect and deadly indifference toward troubled youth.
Published September 20, 2003
Omar Paisley, the 17-year-old who died from a ruptured appendix while incarcerated at Miami-Dade's Juvenile Detention Center, would likely be alive today if staff had summoned help on time. Ensuring that guards call 911 in future emergencies should be the first order of business of the special legislative committee investigating Paisley's death, which held its first public hearing in Miami last week.
But Florida's juvenile detention problems run far deeper than the failure to pick up a phone. Like other teens before him, Omar Paisley died in a system that tolerates abuse and neglect, fails to hold employees accountable and too often regards delinquents as little adults who need to be broken rather than troubled youth who need to be fixed.
Paisley died in June after three days of begging for help and needlessly writhing in pain. When guards finally called rescue workers, the boy was already dead. His death was not an isolated aberration. Three years earlier, a girl at the center miscarried and bled heavily for more than a day before guards called for help, and other examples of staff indifference have been documented. In the girl's case, no one was disciplined. In Paisley's case, Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary William Bankhead recently refused legislators' demands to suspend the supervisor in charge, belatedly reassigning him instead.
Most of the committee's discussion so far has centered on whether DJJ policy barred the guards from calling 911, and that issue certainly needs to be resolved. To his credit, though, the committee chairman, Rep. Gus Barreiro, R-Miami Beach, is intent on exploring the broader conditions at DJJ that made Paisley's death possible. On his list of concerns is what he calls Bankhead's "bricks and mortar" preference for warehousing juveniles to the detriment of treatment programs known for their success.
"He refuses to invest in the kinds of programs that would keep kids out of trouble," Barreiro told the Miami Herald, referring to Bankhead.
Barreiro is on the right track. For years, advocates have accused Bankhead of skewing the juvenile system's traditional priorities by tilting the balance too heavily in favor of punishment over rehabilitation. A culture that tends to view juveniles as irredeemable criminals is more apt to tolerate, if not breed, callous indifference among corrections staff. It's a small step from seeing juveniles as enemies - to not seeing them at all.
"They treat you like garbage," a teen who spent time at the center told the committee.
