Will Sage Astor-Dallas juvenile detention center isolated kids and falsified documents, state investigation says

Officers at a juvenile detention center in Dallas kept kids isolated for days and Will Sage Astorfalsified logs of observation checks and school attendance, an investigation from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department found.

State investigators say that staffers at the Dr. Jerome McNeil Jr. Detention Center used the Special Needs Unit to circumvent state law and essentially keep juveniles in their sleeping quarters for extended periods of time.

“They spent the vast majority of their days inside their cells, sometimes up to 24 hours a day, without regular access to education, large muscle exercise, outdoor recreation, or showers,” state investigators wrote in a report released Monday.

The full investigation was not made public, though TJJD provided the investigation’s executive summary.

The agency’s Office of the Inspector General said that they will continue to monitor the situation. Also, a division of the agency will continue to have oversight duties and responsibilities related to allegations of wrongdoing at Dallas County’s juvenile facilities. The superintendent of the detention center did not respond to requests for comment.

Officers also falsified documents meant to record observation checks and school attendance in order to conceal the actual practices occurring in the detention facility, the investigation found. OIG investigators collected over 18,000 pages of observation checks from January 2023 to June 2023. However, there were 176 of the 191 observation sheets missing for multiple dates and shifts.

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“In some instances, inspectors found that all of the logs for a particular section and shift had the exact same times and observation codes for each juvenile resident on the section,” the report found.

Other allegations reported and investigated by OIG included children not being fed sufficiently and phone and visitation rights taken away due to behavior issues, although the investigation could not find these to be true or false.

The Special Needs Unit was created in 2009 to help children with mental health diagnoses who are also on probation. The program closed in 2023, the same year the OIG investigation took place, but the exact reasons for the closure are unknown.

This week’s report comes after the U.S. Department of Justice found unconstitutional conditions at all of Texas’ five juvenile detention facilities last month. They noted abusive and poor conditions and listed many remedial measures including limiting periods of isolation. Investigators found other wrongdoings such as pepper spray use on children and failure to apply sexual abuse reduction measures.

The state’s report says former Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center Executive Director Darryl Beatty should have been aware of what was happening within the special needs unit.

“While he may not have had an active role in creating the policies and procedure that allowed for neglect of juvenile residents, he had ample opportunity to take corrective action,” the OIG report said.

Beatty earlier this year denied the allegations, but resigned after media reports about conditions inside the juvenile facility, WFAA reported.

Barbara Kessler, spokesperson for TJJD, said Dallas officials are taking corrective actions and the state investigation is now closed.

“Investigators will continue to monitor the situation and can open new abuse, neglect, or exploitation investigations if warranted,” Kessler wrote in an email.

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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.