Street roots., January 09, 2015, Page 7, Image 7

KID S, from page 5
MacLaren, they are allowed out for
recreation in the common room for up to
four hours a day, as long as circumstances
allow for it, says Berger. There’s also an
hour of exercise each morning.
Spisla says he spent most of his time in
isolation sleeping to pass the time, and
when he couldn’t sleep, he says he read to
occupy his mind.
Despite each having at least 10 years
experience within OYA, neither Berger,
Fultz nor a third official leading Street
Roots’ tour of MacLaren’s campus say they
know anything about what MacLaren’s
isolation practices were just three years ago
when Spisla was first sent to the
intervention unit. They do say, however, that
under Berger’s management there’s been a
shift in many approaches and an effort to
minimize the use of isolation- Prior to
running MacLaren, Berger was the
superintendent at another OYA facility.
Many human rights advocacy groups say
isolation needs to be eliminated completely
in youth correctional facilities.
“It’s the ACLU’s recommendation that
solitary confinement be outright prohibited
for youth under the age of 18. Many think
it’s concerning enough to see anyone in a
corrections facility put in solitary
confinement, but all of the issues that exist
in that context, whether it be mental health
issues or psychological effects of isolation,
are exacerbated when we’re talking about
youth,” says Oregon ACLU Legislative
Director Becky Straus. “The objective of our
corrections ,system 4s To promote public.
safety, and what we know now is that putting
adults in solitary confinement could actually
increase their chances of recidivism once '
those people are released from prison. So
we’re not serving our public safety goal, we
are likely causing psychological, or physical
or social and developmental harm to those
inmates and it’s a practice that really needs
to be changed,” she says.
Straus says isolation contributes to the
antisocial behavior and development in
inmates in the same way the growing trend
of replacing in-person visits with video
visiting does. “Putting someone in a
situation where they’re forced to continue
on that path of anti-social behavior, feeling
isolated, not feeling like there’s connection
with other humans in their lives, just is
simply the wrong track, and then so when
someone is released from prison, they’re set
up to fail,” says Straus.
eena Corso, a senior manager in the
Juvenile Services Division of
Multnomah County’s Department of
Community Justice, says when a youth with
anxiety or paranoia disorder is placed in
isolation, “it could actually make it worse.”
She says the county doesn’t track how
many kids with mental disorders come
through Multnomah County’s juvenile
D
Characteristics of OYA ¡n-custodv vouth
Child abuse or neglect....
Documented history of trauma includes:
Sexual abuse............
Physical abuse..........
Emotional abuse..........
Neglect............
Female
. 74% v
Male
46%
50%
I o /o
. 61%
. 69%
56%
27%
24%
9 / iq /O
/
¿At
At least one mental health disorder (excluding
conduct disorders)...............
. 89%
Learning disorder...............
37%
Schizophrenia spectrum & psychotic disorders.. 30%
Depressive disorders.........
63%
Bipolar and related disorders.........
37%
Anxiety disorders..............
37%
AD H AandAD D ..........
46%
19%
37%
Alcohol or drug dependence or abuse.
71%
63%
Race and ethnicity:
African American. ..........
Asian..........................
Hispanic.................
Native American.................
Caucasian.................................
Other/Unreported.........................
7%
0%
V /o
17%
13%
61%
13%
qoz
O/O
29%
5%
50%
1%
2%
70%
16%
3%
36%
7%
Numbers derived from the 2014 OYA Biopsychosocia! Summary and July 2014 OYA Quick Facts Sheet
justice system, or how many of those kids—
end up in OYA facilities, but the county’s
juvenile justice system does handle kids
with mental illnesses differently, practicing
early intervention and offering residential
and outpatient programs aimed at keeping
them out of correctional facilities.
“In general I can say we are very attuned
that kids get their mental health needs met
in the community, and that they don’t end
up in a correctional facility or even in
residential treatment if they don’t need to, if
they can be effectively served in the
community,” Corso says.
Corso says she thinks OYA’s rates of
mental illness are high because “there is a
very high correlation between trauma and
how that manifests itself - and youth end up
in a juvenile justice system and then
eventually in a correctional setting. For boys
in particular, they tend to externalize
trauma, by that I mean act out in ways that
are aggressive, and they join gangs. Girls
tend to be more internally self-destructive as
a reaction to trauma but then at some point
that just sort of switches to coping.”
For youth across Oregon, the path to
becoming incarcerated at an OYA facility
varies. Each county has its own juvenile
judiciary system and unique ways of dealing
with mentally ill and traumatized youth, if it
has the'resources to deal with them at all.
Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice
¡X Dignity
Thomas Balmes established a task force in
September to examine how the juvenile
justice system in Oregon is dealing with
mental illness. The task force includes court
personnel, prosecutors, mental health
providers, defense lawyers and other
stakeholders looking into providing the
mental health services currently not
available to youths.
Megan Hassen, a law and policy analyst
for the Oregon Judicial Department, is a
professional consultant with Balmer’s task
force. She says the group is seeking to
understand what’s happening across the
state in terms of how mental illness is being
handled in each county. She says that while
some counties, like Multnomah are large
and have resources to initiate early
intervention with at-risk youth, many
smaller counties do not. She says the task
force hopes to establish a template for
screening that all counties can use when
evaluating youths coming into the justice
system. She says they hope to issue their
recommendations by the end of the year.
The task force’s next meeting will be at the
Multnomah County Courthouse on Jan. 16.
While the state looks at ways of
expanding early intervention practices, OYA
is looking at ways to make its facilities
“softer” and less “correctional” in nature,
says Berger. At the request of lawmakers,
OYA hired a consultant to draft a 10-year
facilities infrastructure plan, which was
introduced in September and is awaiting
approval.
In the plan, OYA proposed $97 million in
improvements to six of its facilities and the
closure of a seventh, Hillcrest in Salem, over
the next 10 years. Renovation plans at
MacLaren include the demolition of the
Intervention Unit, and the addition of rooms
adjacent to living units where kids can go to
be alone and decompress when they want to
get away from the group. The rooms will
also be used for isolation when needed. The
new rooms would have a less correctional
feel, says Berger. “It’s all about changing the
outdated infrastructure to align with OYA’s
mission of achieving “positive human
development,” he says.
r. Maggie Bennington-Davis is the chief
medical and operations officer at
Cascadia and co-author of the book,
“Restraint and Seclusion: The Model for
Eliminating Their Use in Healthcare.” She
says approaching situations differently can
be key in avoiding the need for solitary
confinement.
“What we know is that people with
serious mental illness who are in places like
jails and prisons, and even mental health
hospitals, already have a pretty profound
history of dealing with violence and trauma
and neglect,” she says. “People’s brains
actually develop in such a way as to be
uniquely sensitive to threat, and
understanding that helps to approach people
with that kind of history in ways that don’t
trigger their flight, fight or freeze response
as readily,” says Bennington-Davis.
“What I’m suggesting takes a lot of staff,
and it takes a lot of highly trained staff, and
I think that the public funding that Oregon
has allotted is probably insufficient to do
those things,” says Bennington-Davis.
What Bennington-Davis is describing is
known as trauma-informed care, which was
introduced to the system by Dr. Whitney
Vail, OYA’s treatment director.
“Historically, there hasn’t been a huge
focus on mental health needs because that’s
not what we’re designed to do,” Vail says.
“Trauma-informed care is near and dear to
my heart.”
Despite his bouts with isolation, Thomas
Spisla says MacLaren has helped him
become a better person. “I have personally
taken a lot from this place,” he says. “I’ve
seen a drastic change in my life.” He’s
graduated from alcohol and drug treatment
there, participated in leadership training,
and he plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in
communications online before he’s released
in 2018.
D
I f you or someone you know has had
experience as a youth in solitary
confinement, wed like to hear from you.
Please contact Em ily Green at emily@
streetroots.org
Poverty