Juvenile detention bedrooms at the C.A. Dillon facility each have a window. There are 10 to a wing in one building and 12 to a wing in another. (Photo: Melissa Boughton/NC Newsline)
Monitors with Disability Rights NC were so alarmed by what they found at a juvenile detention center in Madison County in December 2024 that they immediately called state officials.
Youth were being tased, pepper-sprayed — sometimes for no apparent reason — and were put on “lockdown” in cells for days or months at a time, according to the Disability Rights report.
After a separate investigation by a local child welfare agency, youth were removed from the Madison detention center the following month.
“When we left Madison, our thought was, ‘That was horrific’,” Cari Carson, supervising attorney at Disability Rights, said in an interview Monday. “I am very glad that the young people have been removed from that facility.”
Conditions that led to the closure of the Madison detention center were part of a larger Disability Rights report on juvenile detention centers statewide.
Its report said five of the state’s 13 juvenile detention centers were using solitary confinement: Cabarrus, Cumberland and Dillon, which are state-operated; and Durham County Youth Home and the Guilford Juvenile Detention Center, which are operated by those counties according to state rules. Youth at those centers said they were locked in their cells from 20 to 24 hours a day.
Youth sent to detention are waiting for their juvenile court cases to be heard, or for sentencing in adult court, or placements in group homes or psychiatric residential treatment facilities.
Deputy Secretary for Juvenile Justice William Lassiter denied that centers use solitary confinement in a December letter to Disability Rights.
But the state has faced persistent questions about keeping youth locked in cells nearly all day.
A year before the state removed youth from the Madison County center, three teenagers held at Cabarrus filed a federal lawsuit claiming that they were allowed out of their cells only for a few minutes each day. They said they were told they had to stay locked in because of understaffing. That lawsuit is pending resolution.
The state said in its response to the lawsuit that it does not use solitary confinement.
But in a written court filing, Lassiter expanded on times when youth are confined to their rooms. With approval from the center director, youth can be placed in administrative room confinement for up to 24 hours if the center is understaffed, he wrote.
“Unfortunately, there are still instances when some facilities have to use Administrative Room Confinement to maintain appropriate ratios and otherwise safely and securely operate the facilities,” Lassiter said in the statement. “Staff aim to minimize these instances to the greatest extent possible.”
The Division of Juvenile Justice said in an email Monday that it is reviewing the Disability Rights reports. It said it could not respond to questions about administrative room confinement because of the pending lawsuit.
Carson said youth at some centers consistently reported that it was routine for them to be locked in their cells most of the day. She said she wasn’t sure how the state can claim it’s not using solitary confinement “when we heard the opposite time and time again.”
For example, youth in Cumberland County reported being locked in their cells 22 ½ hours or more, she said.
“It’s not called administrative room confinement,” she said. “That was just how the facility was operating.”
The level of abuse at Madison set it apart, but youth at other centers are living in dire conditions, Carson said. “Hearing from multiple kids, we know that there is solitary confinement happening.”
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