PRISONERS
OF PROFIT
day, during a group therapy session, staff told the girls present not
to mention the fight to anyone.
To discourage inmates from
reporting abuse, staff provided
youth with snacks or special privileges, such as being allowed to
stay up late, former inmates said.
Fernandez recalled that before
an inspection by state officials last
year, staff promised to throw a party for the girls if they behaved and
answered questions as instructed.
After state officials left, the whole
unit was treated to KFC, she said.
Phillips, the former shift supervisor at Broward Girls Academy,
said the point of such rewards was
clear to all: It was about burying
evidence of abundant troubles.
“The girls would get pizza or
ice cream after there was a riot,
or some girls would have a fight
and then they would get candy,”
she said. “Why would you reward
them and disregard the fact that
they just had a fight? It was so
you don’t cause a problem, so you
can forget about what happened.”
ENCOURAGING PARTICIPATION
While Florida looked the other
way, the abuse and neglect inside
its juvenile prison system drew
HUFFINGTON
11.03.13
the attention of federal officials.
A U.S. Justice Department report
two years ago found horrific conditions at two state-run programs
in north Florida.
At the Dozier School for Boys
— the same jail that landed the
state in federal court in the
1980s — investigators found
that the Department of Juvenile Justice hired staff members who were abusive and often
failed to document fights. Guards
choked and slammed boys into
the ground without provocation,
according to the Justice Department’s report. Staff often failed
to document these assaults, and
made a point of engaging in violent behavior away from the view
of security cameras.
The central takeaway: problems
had been allowed to fester because of “the state’s failed system
of oversight and accountability.”
“These problems may well persist without detection or correction in other juvenile facilities
operating under the same policies and procedures,” the report
concluded, urging the state to
take “immediate measures” to
improve its policies and hire consultants to rework the system.
By the time the report came
out in December 2011, the state
had already closed Dozier, citing
budget cuts.