News
Page 4
Street Roots • Dec
‘Heart-wrenching’
‘I ’ve never seen kids in a setting or
environment like this, ’ Disability Rights
Oregon’s Sarah Radcliffe says of youth
detention conditions at NORCOR
BY THACHER SCHMID
T.S.: Tell us about a case study from your
investigation.
STAFF WRITER
S.R.: There was one girl, we actually
ids disciplined for leaving an orange
interviewed her on three occasions, because
pip on the floor, falling asleep, using
she was there on each of our visits. She
a tissue as a bookmark or “being
struck me as a really sweet kid, and in her
needy.”
N O RCOR records, staff noted all over the
Kids locked up for more than a year while
place that she was respectful, helpful, polite,
awaiting trial. Native American youths
doing excellent work in school, and yet she
detained at almost twice the rate of white
was disciplined for multiple weeks for things
youths, and kept much longer.
like falling asleep, even after spending hours
Kids for whom a caseworker is the “only
in her room with no entertainment other
adult in my life that I trust,” yet can’t
than the Bible, for using a piece of clean
remember her name so they have no one to
tissue as a bookmark, for
talk to.
leaving an orange seed on the
Kids who aren’t allowed
floor, for “being needy.” That’s
to touch a doorknob.
a category that we saw written
This might sound like
in multiple records for
“One Flew Over the
multiple kids, no explanation,
Cuckoo’s Nest” or the
just “needy.” Or things like
Indian boarding schools of
* . ♦
doing the minimum, doing just
the late 1800s. But this is
OK, flirting, hands above
state’s sanctuary law are
The Dalles today,
waist, not saying excuse me.
according to the findings
So her story really illustrated
o f an in v e s tig a tio n by
over the Northern Oregon
a kid who was really desperate
Disability Rights Oregon.
Regional Corrections
to find some human
Street Roots spoke to
connection, a positive path
Disability Rights Oregon
Roots’ previous coverage
forward, and yet she was
attorney Sarah Radcliffe
being subjected to such harsh
about the advocacy
conditions.
organization’s recently
There’s also another girl -
released investigation and
we spoke to her right when
its new report describing
she had only arrived a day and a half before.
“inhumane” conditions for youths
She was still kind of reeling, just the
incarcerated at the Northern Oregon
experience of being in jail for the first time,
Regional Correctional Facilities’s juvenile
and the stuff at home that had led up to the
detention. Radcliffe hopes Oregonians
incarceration, and she hadn’t been removed
support the creation of a Children’s Cabinet
yet from the kind of post-booking lockdown.
described in a task force’s
So you have to take this test, and then you
recommendations, an interagency umbrella
have to have people approved on your call
that “would make sure that all child-serving
list by your probation officer, and she didn’t
services commit to a core set of principles.”
have anyone approved on her list. She was
T hacher Schmid: N O R C O R has been
like, “I wish I could just call my
making headlines for its holding of federal
(Department of Human Services)
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
caseworker, because I really like her and I
detainees. Your report notes Disability Rights
wish I had someone to talk to.” And I said,
Oregon made a “spontaneous” decision to
“Well, can you tell me her name? I’ll ask the
investigate it. What inspired that?
administration if they could let you make a
Sarah Radcliffe: Over the past 2 1/2
phone call.” And she was like, “You know, I
years, we’ve been conducting monitoring
don’t even remember her name. That’s the
visits to jails around the state, and we create
saddest thing. She’s the only adult in my life
that itinerary partly based on covering the
that I trust, and I don’t even know her
geographic areas, making sure we visit
name.” That, for me, just really illustrated
places that we haven’t been to in a while,
how desperate these kids are for a positive,
and partly based on complaints we receive
trusted adult figure in their lives.
or coverage that we see in the news.
T.S.: Why is Oregon's youth incarceration
NORCOR rose to the top of that list not for
rate the second highest in the nation?
any particular concern, and when I was out
S.R.: I do think that when you go into
there to see the adult side, I just thought,
jails, adult’s or children’s jails, I think what
well, there’s an adjacent juvenile program;
you see points to failures in our social safety
let’s have a look over there. And when we
net. So when you look at kids who are in jail,
went into the juvenile program, it was
you see a lot of crossover between the
immediately apparent that conditions in that
population of kids in the child welfare
facility were just not right, and potentially
system and those in the juvenile justice
detrimental for kids.
K
ONUNE
P H O T O BY D IE G O D IA Z
Sarah Radcliffe is an attorney with Disability Rights Oregon.
system. So my sense of it is that Oregon’s
child incarceration rate reflects failures in
our child welfare system, our behavioral
health system, and those kind of social
safety net programs.
T.S.: Can you give us a few highlights of
the report?
S.R.: There are two basic concerns. The
first is a statewide concern: Oregon
incarcerates way too many kids. We’ve got
the second-highest rate of child
incarceration in the country. And that’s an
issue that’s reflected statewide, but
especially at NORCOR, the lengths of stay
are shockingly long. Kids are spending on
average 29 days in jail for a technical
probation violation. Nobody would argue
that that’s an appropriate sanction for a
technical probation violation, and that’s
clearly pointing to failures in how our
juvenile justice system is working. We know
that incarceration for kids is hugely
disruptive to their education and to their
home life, and we also know that jail for kids
is not an effective crime deterrent, the
experience of being in jail is actually linked
to future, deeper involvement in the
criminal justice system. So it has the
opposite of the desired effect.
But not only do we incarcerate too many
kids; we confine them in facilities that lack
oversight and accountability. That means
that at N O RCO R a program has been
allowed to continue for decades that is really
psychologically harmful to kids. There are
62 rules that prohibit normal and inevitable
human behavior: things like looking around,
looking out of a window, asking what time it
is, talking, putting your hands above your
waist. And then when kids violate those
rules, which inevitably they do, they’re
subjected to conditions that we believe
amount to solitary confinement. They’re
locked in their cells with nothing but the
Bible for hours on end, they’re denied visits
and phone calls to family, they’re required
to eat their meals alone in their cells, and
they exercise and receive education on a
solitary basis.
T.S.: You're an attorney, so your focus and
experience presumably tend toward the legal
and logical. D id this investigation and report
hit you hard emotionally?
S.R.: I haven’t spent time in a juvenile
See NORCOR, page 5