Coalition calls for a new approach based on highly-successful Missouri model

Denver, CO (3/2/17) – Violence in Colorado’s Division of Youth Corrections (DYC) facilities has risen dramatically in recent years, and the common use of punitive measures, including pain compliance, knee strikes, solitary confinement, and a full-body straitjacket called the WRAP have created a culture of violence that is failing Colorado’s troubled youth, according to a new report released today by the Colorado Child Safety Coalition.
Bound and Broken: How DYC’s Culture of Violence is Hurting Colorado’s Kids and What to Do About It includes new findings, photos, case studies, and policy recommendations, including a call for a pilot program in DYC based on the Missouri Approach, a highly-successful model used by several states that has resulted in safer facilities with far fewer assaults against both staff and youth, while maintaining low recidivism rates and high educational outcomes.
Along with the report, the Coalition released a short video (fully accessible version) featuring an interview with Xavier Long, a former DYC resident who has significant mental health needs and, rather than being provided the treatment he desperately needed at DYC, was exposed to violence.  The video contains the first ever publicly released video of a child in the WRAP in DYC.
“Kids incarcerated in Colorado are in crisis. Staff members strike, isolate, and bind children, making DYC facilities unsafe spaces for both staff and youth.  For the sake of Colorado’s kids and staff, it is time to transform DYC’s punitive and broken culture into one of rehabilitation and hope,” said ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney Rebecca T. Wallace. “There is a clear path forward. The Missouri Approach, the gold standard in providing rehabilitative treatment to incarcerated youth, treats kids like kids. Without force, isolation, or full body restraints, this approach is proven to keep kids and staff safer, while maintaining low recidivism rates and high educational outcomes.  We are calling on DYC and our state legislators to embrace the Missouri Approach, starting with a pilot program to begin this year.  Colorado’s kids can wait no longer.”
The Coalition, which includes the ACLU of Colorado, Disability Law Colorado, the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, and the Colorado Juvenile Defender Center, interviewed 21 children from 11 of DYC’s 13 state owned facilities and reviewed more than 1,000 internal DYC documents and multiple videos. The report concludes that, despite DYC’s mission of rehabilitation rather than punishment, the culture of DYC is plagued by punitive practices that cause physical and emotional harm to the young people in its care and deter rehabilitation.
In 2016 alone, DYC staff placed youth in solitary confinement 2240 times and used physical restraints more than 3600 times, with over sixty percent of those incidents resulting in the use of mechanical restraints, including handcuffs, leg irons, shackles and/or the WRAP.  Physical punishment methods, including pain compliance and targeted strikes with staff’s knees to sensitive parts of youths’ bodies, caused multiple injuries to young people, including bruises, scratches, rug burns, separated joints, and closed head injuries, according to the report.  The United States Department of Justice has determined pain compliance techniques violate children’s constitutional rights.
“Isolation and physical punishment don’t help at-risk young people turn their lives around,” said Ann Roan, State Training Director for Juvenile Defense and Complex Litigation at the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender.  “If we are serious about investing in Colorado’s troubled kids, changing DYC’s punitive culture is a must.”
Colorado is one of the few juvenile justice systems in the country that uses the WRAP, a full body restraint device that is akin to a straitjacket. In 2016, DYC placed young people in the WRAP at least 253 times. The WRAP was outlawed in Arkansas after the Ombudsman called the device “torture” when used on youth. The report contains the first ever publicly released photo of a child in the WRAP in DYC.
“Despite assurances from top DYC officials that the Division was moving away from the use of pain compliance, isolation and the WRAP, we learned that these punitive practices are still commonly used,” said Mark Ivandick, Managing Attorney of Disability Law Colorado.  “Young people with mental illness and other disabilities are overrepresented in DYC and are disproportionately experiencing these atrocities.  This must stop.  Action must be taken to ensure that DYC’s culture matches its rhetoric of providing trauma-informed, rehabilitative care.  We urge the state legislature to create real change and foster a therapeutic environment by implementing the Missouri Approach.”
Based on the model pioneered by the Missouri Division of Youth Services, the Missouri Approach offers staff better, non-punitive tools to respond to the needs of young people in their care.  Missouri data show that its youth corrections staff is 13 times less likely to be assaulted compared to other states and incarcerated youth in Missouri are 4.5 times less likely to be assaulted and 200 times less likely to be placed in solitary confinement.  As one Missouri youth said to DYC leadership and a member of the Colorado Child Safety Coalition during a recent Missouri Division of Youth Services tour: “The kids in Colorado deserve as good as the kids in Missouri.”
Resources:

Read the Colorado Child Safety Coalition Report: Bound and Broken: How DYC’s Culture of Violence is Hurting Colorado’s Kids and What to Do About It

Watch Bound and Broken: Exposing the culture of violence within the Colorado Division of Youth Corrections: https://youtu.be/55fScl3jXdA

Fully accessible version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fai-KmgLTV8&feature=youtu.be

DENVER – A county court judge ruled this morning that Denver’s park exclusion directive is unconstitutional because it denies fundamental rights to due process.  The court dismissed all charges against Troy Holm, an ACLU of Colorado client who faced a year in jail for entering a park after he was banned under the directive.

“By authorizing police to issue so-called suspension notices that immediately made it a crime to enter a public park, Denver attempted an end-run around the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director.  “The court’s ruling affirms a bedrock principle of due process: the government cannot take away our rights without first providing, at a minimum, notice of the accusation and a fair opportunity to defend against it.”

The temporary exclusion directive was initiated by the Parks Department without an ordinance or vote of the City Council on September 1, 2016.  It authorized police to summarily banish people from city parks without a hearing, conviction, or other due process, based on mere suspicion of illegal drug activity.  According to the directive, a person “need not be charged, tried or convicted of any crime, infraction, or administrative citation” for a suspension notice to be issued or effective.

Denver officials justified the directive as necessary to combat what they characterized as a “huge epidemic of heroin use” and associated violent behavior in the parks, but an ACLU review of every suspension notice issued in the first five months of the directive revealed that expulsions primarily targeted persons experiencing homelessness who were suspected of simple consumption or possession of marijuana.  This despite a pledge in writing from the Denver City Attorney’s office to the ACLU that the “illegal drug activity” targeted by the program would not include marijuana.

On October 14, a police officer handed Troy Holm a suspension notice based on suspicion of marijuana use. Two days later, he was charged with a misdemeanor for violating the notice and for trespassing simply because he re-entered the same park.  The ACLU of Colorado filed a motion to dismiss on Holm’s behalf in December, challenging the constitutionality of the charges and the directive.

In siding with the ACLU of Colorado and dismissing the charges, the Court ruled today that, “As the park suspensions under Temporary Directive 2016-1 take effect immediately, within the pure unchecked discretion of any police officer on the scene, and with a complete lack of pre-deprivation Due Process, the suspensions violate procedural Due Process protections and are found unconstitutional for this reason.”

“As the court’s dismissal recognizes, Denver’s policy of banishing people from public places on the spot was an unconstitutional violation of Denver residents’ rights,” said ACLU of Colorado cooperating attorney Adam Frank, who represented Holm in court. “The judge’s order sends a strong message to the City of Denver that it cannot violate people’s rights with impunity.”

more on this case

DENVER – In a letter sent today, the ACLU of Colorado called on the Fort Collins City Council to abandon an “outrageous, cruel, and absurd” proposed ordinance that would make it a crime, punishable by up to 6 months in jail and fines of up to $2650, to sit, kneel, or lie down in a large portion of downtown, to sit for too long on public benches, or to have more “attended property” than a person can carry, such as a shopping cart filled with possessions.

“The intention of this ordinance is clear.  It is designed to give police tools to harass, arrest, and remove people who are homeless from downtown Fort Collins,” said ACLU of Colorado Executive Director Nathan Woodliff-Stanley. “People do not lose their right to exist when they lose a home.  Fort Collins should abandon this ill-conceived ordinance and focus its resources instead on real solutions to poverty and homelessness.”

The so-called “disruptive behavior” ordinance would make it a jailable offense to sit, kneel, or lie down within 20 feet of any commercial property or pedestrian walkway or to sit for more than an hour on chairs and public benches or to use them for “any purpose other than sitting.” The ordinance also includes a vaguely-worded prohibition on “unattended property” and language criminalizing the possession of “attended property” unless it is “less than or equal to an amount that may reasonably be expected to be hand-carried by a single adult.”

Along with the proposed ordinance, the Council is considering spending up to $150,000 a year in city funds to purchase beds in the Larimer County Jail to house “repeat municipal offenders.”

“It’s absurd to think that sitting down or having more possessions than a person can carry are disruptive behaviors that must be criminalized,” said Woodliff-Stanley. “Equal enforcement of such a vague and incomprehensible law would be impossible.  It is all but certain that the ordinance would be enforced in a discriminatory manner, ignoring the actions of people who have money while harassing those who appear homeless, poor, or of an undesired ethnicity, opening the city to potential liability as a result.”

In March 2015, Fort Collins settled a lawsuit with the ACLU of Colorado following revelations that the city had enforced its panhandling law predominantly against individuals who peacefully asked for charity by displaying a sign, an activity that is protected by the First Amendment and that was not prohibited by the panhandling ordinance.  The city agreed to repeal portions of its ordinance, pay the ACLU of Colorado’s legal fees, and stop arresting, ticketing, citing, or interfering with the rights of people who peacefully ask for charity.

The City of Fort Collins posted an online survey and will host an open house event on Thursday, Feb. 23^rd at Northside Aztlan from 6-7:30 pm to receive community input on the proposed ordinance.

Resources:

• Read the ACLU of Colorado letter: http://static.aclu-co.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/2017-02-17-FC-City-Council-ACLU-FC-sit-lie-ordinance.pdf
• Read ACLU Announces Settlement with Fort Collins over Panhandling Law