Mentally ill teens have struggled in KY juvenile jails. A senator has a solution

Kentucky would build a $22 million, 16-bed mental health facility to treat youths held by the state Department of Juvenile Justice under a proposal unveiled Tuesday by a key senator.

An amended version of Senate Bill 242, sponsored by Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, would update some of the juvenile justice reforms the legislature passed last winter.

But more significantly, it would establish a professionally run facility to help “high acuity” youths in Kentucky’s juvenile justice system who are considered potentially dangerous to themselves or others due to dealing with severe mental illness and childhood trauma.

The Herald-Leader has reported in recent years that Kentucky’s juvenile detention centers typically lack adequate mental health services.

Youths suffering from mental health problems have been locked in isolation cells for days or even weeks, including one girl reportedly left naked in her own filth over the summer of 2022.

Some youths with mental health problems are legally eligible for release from juvenile detention centers, but no hospital or psychiatric program will take them, citing the safety risk because of their past misbehavior.

Sign up for our Bluegrass Politics Newsletter

A must-read newsletter for political junkies across the Bluegrass State with reporting and analysis from the Lexington Herald-Leader. Never miss a story! Sign up for our Bluegrass Politics newsletter to connect with our reporting team and get behind-the-scenes insights, plus previews of the biggest stories.

In emails obtained and published by the Herald-Leader, nurses repeatedly have warned that the terrible living conditions in juvenile detention centers aggravate the youths’ already poor mental health.

“They are confining these kids for basically 23.75 hours of the day,” nurse administrator Deborah Curry wrote to medical colleagues in an email on Sept. 29, 2022. “I fear of the effects this is going to have on these youth long-term.”

This mistreatment of children in state custody can’t continue, Carroll said Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Families and Children, of which he’s chairman.

“We’re not going to have these kids — once we have this facility built — locked up in a cell, naked, sitting in feces, no treatment. That’s just not gonna happen anymore with this,” Carroll told his colleagues.

There was no committee vote Tuesday on the proposed substitute language for the Senate bill, and this winter’s legislative session is entering its final days. But Carroll said he nonetheless expects the measure to advance soon.

Lawmakers are crafting the next two-year state budget into which Carroll’s overall $165 million juvenile justice package could be inserted, covering the costs of the mental health facility; the construction of two new girls-only detention centers in Central and Western Kentucky; and various improvements to existing juvenile facilities.

Under Carroll’s proposal, the mental health facility would be opened by Feb. 1, 2026, on the grounds of Central State Hospital, a state-run psychiatric hospital in Louisville. There would be room to expand beyond the original 16 beds.

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services would provide clinical staff at the facility by entering into a contract with one of the state’s public teaching universities.

Health Secretary Eric Friedlander told the committee Tuesday that he supports the proposal.

The state is failing children coming into its custody, between the juvenile justice system and wards of the state at the health cabinet, Friedlander said. There should be better mental health care provided earlier so that youths don’t end up as high-acuity cases, considered violent and dangerous, he said.

Referring to the proposed 16-bed mental health facility, Friedlander said, “We need to hope we never fill that place up.”

Lawsuit: Mentally ill teen girl abused in filthy cell at KY juvenile detention center

As politicians get tough on KY juvenile justice, what about kids’ mental health?

©2024 Lexington Herald-Leader. Visit kentucky.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.