Children in Dallas County custody subject to unjust dayslong seclusion, state probe finds

Children in Dallas County’s juvenile detention center were unlawfully secluded for days, circumventing due process and leaving them without access to an education, exercise, outdoor recreation or showers, according to a yearlong investigation into allegations of inhumane treatment and neglect.
Detention staff falsified “observation sheets,” or status checks on each child in county detention, according to an executive summary of the investigation obtained by The Dallas Morning News. County leaders said the fake documents likely pointed to a coverup by Juvenile Department staff to hide mistreatment.
The News obtained an executive summary of the report by the Office of the Inspector General at the Texas Juvenile Justice Department early Monday that showed the county didn’t use best practices for in juvenile justice. Michael Griffiths, interim director of the county Juvenile Department, described the findings as “inexcusable.”
“The report is troubling to read,” Griffiths said. “But, it is good to know since mid-July of this year, all of those things [raised in the report] have been corrected.”
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Griffiths suggested some of the problems were attributable to the “misuse” of a now-discontinued unit in the detention center and protocols enacted during the pandemic, including reductions in staff.
The Juvenile Board — the nine-member body that oversees the county’s juvenile justice system — has not yet received the full report. Griffiths said he submitted a formal request for the full report.
The executive summary is seven pages. Barbara Kessler, a state Texas Juvenile Justice Department spokesperson, said the full report is more than 100 pages long. She declined to provide a copy, directing The News to submit a public records request. The newspaper’s request was pending Monday morning.
State inspectors found the county Juvenile Department unjustly used a discontinued “special needs unit” at the Dr. Jerome McNeil Jr. Detention Center, where children with disciplinary problems were secluded in cells for up to five days, according to the executive summary. The McNeil Detention Center is in the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center in West Dallas.
The unit helped “youth who are on formal probation with a mental health diagnosis, which could lead to more criminal behavior and affect their ability to follow probation guidelines,” according to the county’s website.
This caused “the inevitable result of frequent confinement of juvenile residents inside their cells and created systemic neglect in which multiple facility staff, educators, and administrators (past and present) were aware,” the inspectors’ executive summary notes.
Detention staff falsified or lacked observation sheets, the report notes. Of juveniles processed through the “special needs unit,” 176 or 191 observation sheets were missing.
Griffiths said the Juvenile Department is conducting an investigation into the report’s findings, including the allegations of falsified records. Facility leadership will identify any staff who violated policy and take “appropriate employee disciplinary action,” he added.
Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, who is a member of the Juvenile Board, said the falsified documents are likely why department officials were hesitant to release observation sheets. Commissioners previously subpoenaed the Juvenile Department for observation sheets from Jan. 1, 2023, to April 4 of that year.
“This has been going on for a long time. So people were either somehow oblivious to the children not being in their classroom or children not being out for recess,” Jenkins said, “or they knew about it and didn’t come forward or question it.
“It’s clear that outside resources need to come in to help fix this because the department itself has not self-corrected in the many years that this undisclosed program was occurring.”
Commissioner Andrew Sommerman, who is also on the Juvenile Board, said any employees who falsified observation sheets should be terminated.
The report’s findings “clearly show” the need for a third-party review of the county’s juvenile justice system, he added.
Such a review should “not just find whether we are meeting minimum standards set by the state; rather, that we have a top-to-bottom review of processes to make sure we are providing the absolute best care to children that are in our custody,” he said.
Jenkins and Dallas County District Attorney Jon Creuzot echoed Sommerman’s call for a thorough review.
“This is a piece of a larger puzzle and obviously problematic and concerning,” Creuzot said. “And it begs the question, should we not do a complete evaluation of the department?”
Judge Cheryl Lee Shannon, chair of the Juvenile Board, did not immediately comment on the findings. Shannon was presiding over jury selection for a trial Monday morning. A court coordinator said the judge would be available Tuesday to comment on the findings.
The long-awaited report findings come after the resignations of Darryl Beatty, the former Juvenile Department director who quit days after an unannounced state inspection, and DeAndra Jones, a deputy director who oversaw the detention center.
The report found that the “special needs unit” had been in place since 2009, preceding Beatty.
The original intent of the unit was “unclear” and subject to multiple changes over the years, according to the report. Department officials said the program was disbanded in August 2023.
Griffiths served as the Juvenile Department’s executive director from 1995 to 2010 and again in 2018. He oversaw the unit’s creation and said it was intended to provide youth with an “opportunity to process their actions” with clinical and detention staffers trained in intervention strategies.
“It became an isolation protocol without clinical intervention,” he said.
State standards allow for children to be placed in “safety-based seclusion” when they are determined to be a threat to staff or another child. In Dallas County, after a child was removed from safety-based seclusion, inspectors found that the child was then placed in the “special needs unit,” where they continued to be isolated for additional time, up to five days.
Beatty, who had been in charge of the Juvenile Department since 2018, previously told the board he was unaware of children secluded for lengthy periods of time until an interview with The News. The report rebuked Beatty, noting that he should have been aware of the “special needs unit.”
The inspector wrote that while Beatty didn’t have an “active role in creating the policies and procedure that allowed for neglect of juvenile residents, he had ample opportunity to take corrective action.”
Beatty did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Griffiths plans to present a proposed “disciplinary seclusion policy” — something the department has operated without since 2017 — during the board’s next regular meeting in October, he said.
“We want to have the community’s confidence, the commissioners court’s confidence, and the juvenile board’s confidence in the operation of the agency,” Griffiths said.
State inspectors launched their inquiry last July, weeks after a three-month investigation by The News on poor conditions in the juvenile justice detention center.
The findings may bolster calls for a third party to review the juvenile system. Griffiths has said he would bring a draft “scope of work” — a proposal listing what elements a third-party agency would evaluate — for the board to consider during its next regular meeting in October.