Jackson Free Press

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Mississippi school children continue to suffer physical abuse at the Oakley and Columbia training schools, according to monitor Joyce L. Burrell's report. Burrell reports numerous allegations of abuse and glacial progress in the state's efforts to reform the schools.

In 2003, the U.S. Department of Justice documented chronic neglect and abuse at the training schools, including boys and girls as young as 10 being hog-tied, beaten, choked and shackled to poles. Students were also deprived of education and adequate medical care. Three federal lawsuits against the state led to a consent decree that required wide-ranging reforms. For the past 15 months, Burrell has monitored the state's compliance, issuing quarterly reports.

Burrell now reports that although the worst abuses have ended, student-on-student and staff-on-student physical abuse continue.

Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Sheila Bedi said that school staff still haven't wrapped their heads around the idea that they're not supposed to strike students. "The state has moved back from the aggressive, violent programs it was using when the Department of Justice came down, but we're still seeing staff lose their temper with children, choke children and slap children. There's a culture inside these facilities that these children just don't matter. The staff are under resourced, underpaid, overworked, but there's no leadership there telling them that it is unacceptable to put your hands on children," Bedi said.

Burrell is troubled that most reports of abuse come from DOJ or SPLC attorneys, indicating that students remain afraid of staff. She recommends that the state create an ombudsman outside the Department of Human Services, possibly from the attorney general's office, who regularly interviews youth.

Burrell is "very concerned" about the lack of progress in reforming the schools. "I thought more progress would have been made, and that the issue of not having sufficient numbers of adequately trained staff would have been resolved," Burrell states.

The training schools are supposed to add staff under the consent decree, but high turnover has crippled that effort. In the last quarter, new principals took over at both schools, with large turnovers in critical staff, including policy director, compliance director and special education coordinator. New hires are matched almost one-for-one in departures. The result is negligible growth in staff and inadequate training.

Burrell cites "low pay, the perception of unsafe and less than supportive integration into the work force" as reasons why the training schools keep losing staff. She is sympathetic to staff, many of whom work large amounts of overtime at Oakley, and places blame on the state. "I am still not convinced that the children and youth impacted by this consent decree and settlement agreement are of the highest priority to the State leadership team," she writes. Burrell says the state should take emergency personnel measures to attract staff and retain them with adequate pay.

The state has achieved only partial success in providing suicide prevention and health care, along with special education. It has failed almost entirely in providing adequate mental health care.

Rep. George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg, chairman of the House Juvenile Justice Committee, said: "We'll be doing everything we can to address the two institutions' funding this year. As for the other issues, I'm disheartened by the slow progress, but much of that, I fear, is ... out of the state's hands. Still, we can do what we need to do regarding the staffing."

Since 2003, the Legislature has passed two juvenile justice bills that have reformed the youth court system and emphasized community-based programs. The result is a 60 percent reduction in the number of students at the training schools.

Bedi said the training schools cost far too much money to produce such miserable results. "We're still spending about $50,000 per child per year to fund these things, which by their nature, will subject children to abuse and neglect and don't really work," Bedi said.

Additional reporting by Adam Lynch.