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| "Arkansas' Voice on the Internet" | Previous Features / Investigations |
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 NLR youth assessment center closes DANNY SHAMEER ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE The state has shut down an observation and assessment detention center in North Little Rock where children said they'd been abused and mistreated. The last inmates left Wednesday. The closing was expected. On June 19, Gov. Mike Huckabee ordered the state Department of Human Services to close the center within 60 days. He made the decision after an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette investigation disclosed physical abuse of delinquent children in the state's care -- problems that state officials, including Huckabee, have said they were not always fully aware of. The Observation and Assessment Center, which opened Aug. 7, 1995, was the subject of miscommunication to the very end. The timing of the shutdown caught some high-level Human Services Department officials off-guard. Wednesday morning, agency spokesman Joe Quinn told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that it would be 10 more days before the North Little Rock center closed. The Associated Press was told three to five days. By Wednesday afternoon, the building had no more children, employees said. The employees stood around a counter, chatting and laughing until a reporter arrived. One employee spotted the reporter through a glass door and said, "Don't let him in." By then, though, another employee had buzzed open the door. A shift supervisor who declined to give his name said, "The juveniles have been removed as of today." He refused to answer further questions and referred a reporter to top-level administrators. He said the reporter could find out more from Paul Doramus, head of the agency's Youth Services Division, and Quinn. Doramus did not return messages left at work and his home. Quinn said, "We are at or near zero. We are getting very close to having it emptied out." When a reporter repeated what the center employee had said, Quinn replied, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What I've been saying all day is what I'm saying right now. We're close to the bottom, we're close to zero. "I don't know when we're going to hit zero but we're very close to it. And we could've hit it today. I've been at Alexander all day. I'm not being informed." Later, from his Little Rock office, Quinn called the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to confirm that the last group of children had been removed from the center in North Little Rock. "All of the juveniles have been physically removed from the old observation and assessment building in North Little Rock," he said. "The function of observation and assessment has been moved to both the Alexander Youth Services Center and to Jefferson County." Quinn said that as many as 130 children had been held at the center. Each week, Quinn said, the agency whittled down the number. But he did not have specific numbers. Wednesday morning, he had said 20 youths were locked up at the center. By afternoon, he said he did not know the number. "I think the last batch out in the past two days was probably between 20 and 30," he said. Since August 1995, children in state custody went to the Observation and Assessment Center for medical checkups and an assessment of their mental and emotional state. Afterward, the state assigned them to different detention facilities. The center, once used as North Little Rock's jail, was designed to accommodate 84 children. Within two months of its opening, the center averaged more than 100 children daily. This article was published on Thursday, August 13, 1998 Copyright, permissions and privacy policy Copyright © 2008, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved. This document may not be reprinted without the express written permission of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. |
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