Youth miss out on school, mental services in Arkansas jails
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Colton turned 17 alone in an unheated juvenile jail cell in Batesville, 370 miles from home.
He had only a thin mat and blanket for sleeping. Slugs crept in through a space between the wall and the ground. Water was turned off. Guards took his Bible, he said, but supplied a few squares of toilet paper when asked.
"I spent two weeks of that first month there," Colton said to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "Just sitting in a jumpsuit, freezing cold."
The state of Arkansas then moved Colton to a state-run youth lockup in Harrisburg. There, he said, the on-duty staff sometimes slept at night, leaving youths free to attack one another.
When another teen inmate punched him in the face, Colton decided to run away. Police caught him the next day.
If anyone had asked why he ran, Colton said, he would have told them he was angry, afraid and beginning to feel hopeless.
He knew he had to stay out of trouble and meet prescribed goals before he could go home, but the goals required treatment, such as counseling or other supportive programs, which he didn't get enough of behind bars. And the violence and abuse were a lot to take.
"I barely kept it together," Colton said. "When you're locked up with 100 different people who are angry just like you are, when you're just trying to leave, there's nothing you can do but get triggered."
Colton's not an isolated case, according to local youth advocates, watchdog inspection reports, other documents and interviews.
Jailed youths routinely spend weeks, sometimes months, without treatment for drug abuse problems or behavioral issues.
And state-run lockups, where young offenders serve their actual sentences, have too few therapists and education programs that fall short, watchdog reports show.
"Youth feel concerned...