PRISONERS
OF PROFIT
lips, a former shift supervisor at
Broward Girls Academy in Pembroke Pines, northwest of Miami.
“There was no outlet and no stimulation, so they would just turn
on each other, and turn on staff.
That’s how it was day in, day out.”
The company spokesman, Jesse
Williams, dismissed claims that
YSI fails to report incidents, saying the company always complies
with state guidelines. “Our reporting process is the best in the
industry,” he said.
He argued that YSI’s employee
turnover rate and salaries are
in line with the industry average. “The job is a difficult one,”
he said. “Despite our best efforts
to assess a candidate’s fitness for
the position, which include employment and background screening and proper training, we don’t
know of their true suitability until
they are well into the job.”
Local public defenders and
groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center have for years forwarded concerns about YSI facilities to the state, but Florida has
done little to investigate allegations of verbal and physical abuse.
In the summer of 2012, after
the Broward County Public Defender’s Office sent a letter to
HUFFINGTON
11.03.13
the Department of Juvenile Justice outlining issues with food
and fighting at a different facility, the state inspector handed
out a pro-forma questionnaire to
about 20 boys there.
Last year, the state declined
to renew YSI’s contract for that
program, a 154-bed facility called
Thompson Academy where state
officials over the years had documented frequent violence and
failures to report serious incidents. But that decision was not
due to poor performance, according to a letter the state sent to the
company in August 2012. Indeed,
this year, the state awarded YSI
another contract to manage a facility less than a mile away.
“I always think it’s ironic that
you can’t get a job as a janitor for
the Department of Juvenile Justice — understandably so — if you
have any kind of conviction on
your record,” said Marie Osborne,
the chief juvenile public defender
Former
inmate
Chelsea
Fernandez
talks about
her time
at YSI’s
Broward Girls
Academy.
Tap here
for the full
discussion
on HuffPost
Live.