Shortages of staff, training, programs help cause riot at IYC-St. Charles

ST. CHARLES – A riot among youths detained at the Illinois Youth Center on April 19 in St. Charles resulted in a serious head injury to a staff member and renewed criticisms that neither staff nor detainees are safe at the facility.

“One staff member was treated for nonlife-threatening injuries after a disturbance at IYC-St. Charles on April 19,” Illinois Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lindsey Hess stated in an email. “The [Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice] is working with [Illinois Department of Corrections] to complete a full external investigation and cannot provide any further details at this time.”

Ashley Landrus, a juvenile justice specialist at the Illinois Youth Center and union president of Local 416 for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the incident happened about 5 p.m. when one group of youths in one cottage saw another group walking across the campus, coming from dinner to return to their cottage.

The facility holds 138 boys with an average age of 17, but staff members look after incarcerated youthful offenders from age 13 through 21, Landrus said.

“They had two staff monitoring 20 to 25 youths who were recreating inside their unit,” Landrus said. “They had a planned attack of what they were going to do. They had rocks in socks, bricks, mop sticks and broom handles. They overrode the staff, went into a secured staff office and pressed the emergency gate button to get out of their unit to go attack the other youths.”

The staff member who was seriously injured arrived in a security van to “a sea of kids … roughly 40 to 50 kids all now fighting each other and one set is armed,” Landrus said.

There is no protocol or directive as to how to handle a situation such as that – other than to quell the melee, Landrus said.

Staff are not armed and only some are allowed to carry pepper spray, Landrus said.

“[The staff member] got out of his van. He said the youths surrounded him with bricks and broomsticks and all of a sudden, he felt a smack on the back of his head,” Landrus said. “The kid hit him in the back of his head with a mop stick and split his head open.”

According to a 911 recording of a call to TriCom Emergency Dispatch, an employee sought an ambulance for the injured man.

“I have a staff member who just got attacked by multiple youths,” according to the 911 call, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. “We have multiple youths running everywhere. We’re trying to control the situation right now. … I know we have one staff that – the nurses just called and said we need an ambulance immediately.”

‘They split his head open’

Landrus said she was not on duty during the riot, but she was called to Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva that night.

“When I went into the hospital, they asked me if I was OK seeing blood,” Landrus said. “I walked in and he was laying down and they were trying to control the bleeding from the back of the left side of his head. They sat him up to do deep sutures. … A piece of his [scalp] was hanging off like a fish hook. They split his head open all the way to the skull.”

Along with deep sutures, Landrus said the injured staff member required 17 staples to close the wound and has not been back to work as of Thursday.

A Freedom of Information Act request to the Illinois State Police regarding the incident is still pending.

Jennifer Vollen-Katz, executive director of the John Howard Association, said the agency – which independently monitors correctional facilities, policies and practices – had heard about the incident at IYC-St. Charles.

“As soon as we heard about the incident, we are going to go there and find out as much as we can,” Vollen-Katz said. “We will have a report in the near term.”

Consent decree

Landrus said the safety issues at St. Charles exist to some extent at all the state's juvenile detention centers. She said staff members blame a 2012 consent decree from a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five incarcerated juveniles.

According to the consent decree, the state is supposed to address mental health, safety, welfare and education services in its juvenile detention centers.

The state’s facilities have been regularly monitored to see how they are meeting the new expectations, according to federal court filings.

However, in testimony Dec. 5 before the Illinois House Appropriations-Public Safety Committee, ACLU attorney Lindsay Miller said the consent decree calls for:

• Improved staffing ratios for security, education and mental health staff.

• Creation and implementation of an agencywide behavior management system that provides a consistent model for youth behavior throughout all facilities.

• Full-time education and vocational training opportunities, enhanced mental health assessment and treatment, and other programming to eliminate youth idleness
• Improved staff training on effective behavioral management, conflict resolution and de-escalation techniques, and mental health and trauma needs of youth.

"Security and education staff shortages and lack of staff training have hampered change, and particularly at IYC-St. Charles, have interrupted education and general programming," according to Miller's testimony as posted on the ACLU website, www.aclu-il.org.

“Understaffed facilities cannot successfully manage youth, and chronic understaffing and turnover has resulted in increased youth idleness, frustration and misbehavior,” according to Miller’s testimony. “The department is also undergoing a significant culture change, as staff learn to operate in a system that, rightly, no longer permits the use of punitive solitary confinement.”

Miller also called for the state to provide adequate funding to implement the terms of the consent decree.

‘No consequences’

Landrus said the youth not having consequences for their actions is the biggest area of contention between staff and administration over the consent decree.

“The youth have no safety. The staff have no safety. The youth basically run the facility,” Landrus said. “We are there trying to help the youth. What management is doing is not helping them, with no consequences for their actions. Management sets no boundaries and makes no attempts to correct the bad behavior. And in the long run, we are sending those youths back to the community worse than when they came in.”

Landrus said that having little programming for the incarcerated youth contributes to their violent acting out, Landrus said.

“With very little programming, they’re locked in their cells all the time,” Landrus said. “The environment that we work in is so hostile, we are not able to protect ourselves or our youth – whom we are there to protect. We’ve had a youth who had his ears bitten off and another with brain damage from … having his head bounced on the ground.”

Staff members have a fear of the youths’ use of urine and feces as weapons as well as sexual aggressiveness of boys toward female staff, Landrus said.

"All the Juvenile Justice Centers are absolutely insane," Landrus said. "That's why I orchestrated the picket in August on Route 38. … We are not safe."

Landrus said their lack of safety is also evidenced by 50 staff members on workman’s compensation because of injuries inflicted on them by the youths.

A joint status report to the court Feb. 23, supports Landrus’ assessment, stating, “Beyond hiring and retention issues, a significant number of staff at IYC-St. Charles (approximately 50) are on leave due to a claimed service-connected injury.”

There were so many staff members out on workers compensation, a former administrator returned to assist in managing their claims “to ensure that staff return to work as soon as they are medically able to do so,” the court filing stated.