Youths faced bounties, beatings at state-run development center in Tennessee, watchdog finds

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The bounties were packets of Ramen noodles. Collecting them required violence. 

Staff put the bounties on the young males they didn't like at Tennessee's only state-run youth development center, according to a new watchdog report.

To collect the bounties, youth at Wilder Youth Development Center in Somerville physically assaulted their peers, the investigators found.

Placing bounties is known as “putting noodles on heads” at the facility, and roughly a quarter of the approximately 80 boys and young men investigators interviewed said they either witnessed, perpetrated or been a victim of the practice. 

Wilder’s leadership was aware that staff placed bounties on children in their care, according to the new report by Disability Rights Tennessee and the Youth Law Center.

The use of bounties is just one of many disturbing allegations in the report on conditions at Wilder that the two groups released Wednesday. Over the course of their 20-month investigation, authors of the report said they discovered numerous violations of state and federal law at the facility. Wilder has reduced its population to just 36 male youths between the ages of 14 to 19 as of Tuesday, Tennessee Department of Children's Services (TDCS) spokesperson Sandra Brandon said, far below its capacity of more than 100. 

The report depicts a facility and staff that not only provide little in the way of education, rehabilitation, or psychological treatment, but inflict harm through violence, isolation and unnecessary medication on a population that is overwhelmingly Black and disabled.

“Wilder Youth Development Center has few, if any, of the necessary services to provide rehabilitation and treatment that children need to grow into successful adults,” Jack Derryberry, the legal director for Disability Rights Tennessee, said in an interview.

Every single child at Wilder is a victim of some sort of childhood trauma, Derryberry said.

“They come to Wilder in hope of rehabilitation and treatment and instead they are retraumatized and further traumatized by the facility,” he said. “It’s run like a dangerous prison or jail.”

The Tennessee DCS received the report Tuesday and its preliminary review "noted that several areas of concern have already been identified and addressed by the department prior to the report," Brandon said. 

"Employees who did not follow policy and guidelines have been terminated. Renovations have started on the building to update outdated dorms, bathrooms, and common areas," she said.

In addition, Tennessee DCS also identified "findings we dispute and will address with DRT," Brandon said, but did not provide specifics. 

"DCS understands the challenges of providing as secure environment while also providing rehabilitative services to violent teen offenders," she said. "We will complete a full review of the report. We are confident that with the support of our providers, community partners, legislators, and staff, we can work towards a resolution to any concern that may exist."

Disability Rights Tennessee is the state’s designated protection and advocacy organization for people with disabilities, which means under federal law it has the authority to interview facility staff and residents, as well as review records and surveillance footage, as part of its mandate.

More coverage from the Paste BN Network: Tennessee's Children's Services workers express frustration in workload, leadership

Wilder is the last state-run Youth Development Center in Tennessee. Two other youth development centers were either privatized or closed as a result of a multi-decade decline in juvenile crime rates, escape attempts, and a shift in the field of juvenile justice. Instead of putting youth in jail-like settings, administrators and policymakers adopted an approach that emphasized providing services in community settings.

For the youth who end up in Wilder, that approach has often failed, or has been deemed unlikely to succeed. And while many youth at Wilder have committed violent crimes, including rape and murder, some have not, as the most violent youth in Tennessee are often transferred to adult facilities, according to the investigators. The youth sent to Wilder are the ones judges turn over to Tennessee DCS custody because they believe they can be helped by rehabilitation and treatment.

But the report concluded Wilder was failing to deliver much of either.

Mold, roaches, spiders, mosquitos and lizards

Brian Blalock, a senior attorney at San Francisco-based Youth Law Center, which helped compile the report, said his organization works in a number of states on youth justice issues. But he still was surprised by what investigators learned about Wilder.

 "I don't think its an exaggeration to say we were shocked at the findings," he said. 

Those findings include:

► Wilder staff have physically assaulted youth with few repercussions. Disability Rights Tennessee filed child abuse reports related to more than 10 youth during its investigation, yet DCS investigators didn’t substantiate any of their allegations, despite “substantial documentary evidence,” the group said. One staff member had been the subject of 27 DCS investigations but continued to work.  

► Youth at Wilder told investigators that one Wilder staff member “regularly watched youth while they showered, commented on the size of their genitals, and promised gifts to entice youth to expose themselves.” Report authors said they learned of two incidents in which boys believed they were punished for defending themselves against the staff member. 

► Wilder used its Therapeutic Response Unit to isolate youth for 23 hours a day. Despite a 2021 state law mandating that use of isolation be limited to extreme and limited circumstances, the use of isolation at Wilder was “seemingly arbitrary and completely disconnected from the actual needs of youth,” investigators found. One child stayed in the unit for nearly 18 months. Investigators also found the unit was infested with mold, roaches, spiders, mosquitos and lizards. It also smelt of sewage and youth reported dried blood on the walls from previous self-inflicted injuries, investigators wrote.

► Under Tennessee DCS policy, youth with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities cannot be placed in a youth development center such as Wilder. But a sampling of 11 records of youth housed at Wilder showed none of the youths had been evaluated for intellectual disabilities. Disability Rights Tennessee administered IQ tests to two of the youth, who both scored below a 70. Wilder staff told group that evaluations didn’t happen because there was no psychoeducational evaluator on staff at the facility.

► Youth at Wilder are not receiving required education under state law, the report found. For example, in May 2021, boys in one dorm received only three hours of instruction per week. In addition, Wilder is failing to provide federally required special education services, the report said.

► Wilder fails to provide evidence-based rehabilitation services or activities like sports, music or arts training while cutting off youth from community and family supports.

► A lack of any opportunity to demonstrate growth prevent youth from earning credits, which can be used to reduce sentences. Staff were unable to describe how the credit system worked, investigators wrote.

►Wilder staff seem to medicate residents with little medical oversight. Seventy-eight percent of youth reported being on psychotropic medication, but investigators wrote that it is “unclear how youth are being prescribed medication” given that youth didn’t seem to be regularly seeing medical professionals qualified to prescribe medication.

'Banging our heads against the wall until somebody listens'

Among the causes of these problems at Wilder is a lack of staff and training, report authors said. It cost the state $13.9 million to run Wilder last fiscal year, according to a January 2022 state report. Despite that spending, Wilder hired private security in 2021 and residents have started fires and made repeated escape attempts over the last year. 

But the problems at Wilder are reflective of the disconnect between how state law says juvenile offenders should be treated and the reality of the systems the state has set up to deliver that treatment, said two juvenile judges, who had not yet reviewed the report directly.

“We talk to our commissioners and our governor, and our legislators to try to convince them to build those systems that will respect the future of the children that we see every day,” Shelby County Juvenile Judge Dan Michael said in an interview. “And we just keep banging our heads against the wall until somebody listens.”

Youth at facilities like Wilder typically have disabilities and are victims of abuse themselves. They need more help than most youth, but instead they get less, said Davidson County Juvenile Judge Sheila Calloway.

“If we’re going to help their brain development and help them to overcome the trauma and help them to become better citizens, then we have to give them a whole lot more, versus just the bare minimum,” she said.

'These guards just jumped on your son'

In late 2021, a mother of a boy housed at Wilder received a phone call. There was a hysterical boy on the other end of the line, but it wasn’t her child.

“Ma’am, I’m calling about your son,” she remembered the boy said. “These guards just jumped on your son.”

The boy explained what he had seen: Her son had sat on a table in a common area and was told by guards to move. When he didn’t, five guards grabbed him, put him on a chokehold, threw him to the ground and kicked him in full view of his peers. In the background of the call, she could hear other boys yelling in anger.

The mother spoke to The Tennessean, part of the Paste BN Network, on the condition of anonymity because her son, who has an intellectual disability, is still in Tennessee DCS custody and she fears speaking out could lead to retribution.Disability Rights Tennessee was able to corroborate her depiction of the incident through interviews and other documentary evidence.

The mother made a complaint to the Tennessee DCS child abuse hotline and filed a report. But she never heard from the department about the incident.

Despite the violence allegedly used, and encouraged, by Wilder staff, Tennessee DCS leadership told local officials staff are hamstrung by limits on their ability to be physical with kids, and were seeking an new kind of facility accreditation that would allow them to use more physical force, ABC 24 in Memphis reported last year.

Part of the problem is the very concept of a large prison-like environment for troubled youth, said Terry Maroney, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School. Other states have adopted the “Missouri Model,” which emphasizes treatment in a series of small facilities. Advocates say the model is more effective and less costly to run. 

“The fewer kids you'd have grouped together, generally, the fewer problems you're going to have, the easier it is to run things in a more humane way,” Maroney said.

The mother of the child attacked by guards believes Wilder needs to live up to its title as a development center for youth, instead of a place that punishes children.

“They’re treated like adults in a penitentiary,” the mother said. The children at Wilder made mistakes and they are at the facility to correct and learn from those mistakes, she said.

“But if violence is what you’ve displayed to them, then you’re not changing anything,” she said.

If you or someone you know has had experience with Wilder Youth Development Center, either as a resident or a staff member, The Tennessean would like to hear from you. Contact investigative reporter Josh Keefe via email at jkeefe@tennessean.com.

You can follow him on Twitter: @thejoshkeefe.