PRISONERS
OF PROFIT
hour abuse hotline that is supposed to be available to youth at
all times, according to state law.
The staffer told her she had to
wait until the facility administrator showed up in the morning.
The next day, the administrator
told Bowers she was not allowed
to call because she had resisted.
HUFFINGTON
11.03.13
shift supervisor at Broward Girls.
One weekend in the summer of
2012, at a time when staffing was
particularly lean, a riot broke out,
Phillips said. Girls began yelling
and hitting one another. The three
staff members on duty intervened,
but the violence escalated until
staff from another facility arrived.
“We were kept like rats in a trap, in a maze. There was
no outlet and no stimulation, so they would just turn
on each other, and turn on staff.”
“We simply don’t believe this
is true,” said Williams, the YSI
spokesman. “There are multiple
ways for detainees to report abuse.”
Former staff and youth at the
facility recalled fights erupting
almost every day.
“They’d never try to do anything, they’d never try to help us,
to keep our minds occupied,” said
Bowers, who was in the program
from December 2011 to August
2012. “We were always bored,
which caused a lot of drama.”
The weekends were a “free-forall,” said Angela Phillips, a former
The morning after, there was blood
on the floors and ceilings, said one
youth who witnessed the fight.
Another large fight broke out in
the showers last fall, said another
former Broward Girls inmate who
asked that her name not be used
because she is under 18. A lone staff
member tried to break up a fight
involving nine girls, she said, while
another staff member walked away.
Williams said there have been
incidents between inmates that
required staff intervention, but
he denied that anything termed a
“riot” ever occurred at Broward
Girls Academy.
In another example of negligence at the facility, staff mistak-