[NYAPRS Enews] CT: Suicides By Troubled Teens Expose Safety Breakdowns Behind Bars

[Harvey Rosenthal]

'It shouldn't be that easy'

Suicides By Troubled Teens Expose Safety Breakdowns Behind Bars

By Steve Mills and Louise Kiernan, Chicago Tribune  May 25, 2010

 

Sometime before 3:09 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2009, Jamal Miller began to tear
the bedsheet in his room at the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles.

 

The stocky 16-year-old tied the sheet to a sock and tied the sock around
the metal bar at the top of his bunk bed. He attached three notes to the
cinder-block wall with toothpaste and placed another piece of notebook
paper in the narrow window of his door.

 

Since he first threatened to kill himself at age 8, Miller had been
hospitalized half a dozen times for psychiatric problems and made at
least four suicide attempts. By the time he ended up in the state's
juvenile justice system, he had been shuttled in and out of juvenile
detention and treatment so often that his mother couldn't remember the
last time he celebrated a holiday or birthday at home.

 

Officials had placed Miller in a corrections facility for mentally ill
inmates. But in August, after a psychologist concluded that his primary
problem was "criminal thinking," he was transferred to a
general-population institution in St. Charles. Less than four weeks
later, he placed the torn sheet around his neck and hanged himself from
his bed.

 

Miller's death was the seventh suicide in the state's juvenile
correctional facilities in the past decade. Those deaths, as well as 175
serious suicide attempts during the same period, reflect a breakdown in
the system that is supposed to rehabilitate and protect some of the
state's most troubled and vulnerable young people, a Tribune
investigation found.

 

Department officials estimate that about two-thirds of the 1,200 inmates
in the state's eight juvenile justice facilities have been diagnosed
with a mental illness and that half the young men and nearly all the
young women have thought about or attempted suicide before they enter
the system.

 

While it may be impossible to eliminate all suicide risks behind bars,
the state has failed to take simple steps to protect these teenagers
from themselves.

 

The type of metal-frame bunk bed that Miller used to hang himself, which
has a sturdy bar across the top, had been involved in three other
suicides since 2000 and in at least 21 attempts. But until Miller's
death, a lack of urgency and political will kept the bunk beds from
being removed. Although officials are now moving to replace them,
metal-frame bunks still make up nearly 60 percent of the system's beds.

 

Other equipment and furnishings pose similar, overlooked hazards. Since
2000, three inmates have hanged themselves from air vent covers, the
most recent case involving a model the department considers safe. At
least three inmates since 2006 have tried to hang themselves from
ceiling light fixtures at the youth center in Harrisburg. Another inmate
tried to hang himself from a wall-mounted television stand at the
Kewanee facility in February.

 

Investigations into the seven suicides have left key questions
unanswered and failed to resolve inconsistencies in accounts of the
deaths, interviews and a review of documents show. Not once did these
investigations find fault with current procedures or staff, the Tribune
found.

 

Nationally, suicides in juvenile institutions are relatively rare, but
experts say it's crucial to take the threat seriously.

 

"You need to approach everyone in your care as though the risk of
suicide is very, very significant," said Melissa Sickmund, who has
studied the issue as chief of systems research at the National Center
for Juvenile Justice.

 

"Yes, you can say that a kid who is determined to kill themselves will
do it," Sickmund said. "But it shouldn't be that easy in prison."

 

Troubled childhood

The events of Jamal Miller's childhood read like a blur of signposts
leading to trouble: He was born as his mother, a crack addict, faced
murder charges; placed on Ritalin at age 4; suspended five times from
second grade; drinking by age 8; and smoking marijuana at 9.

 

His first major psychiatric crisis occurred when, at 8, he threatened to
kill himself after he was arrested for stealing a bike. He was admitted
for two weeks to Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago,
where doctors diagnosed him with depression and attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder and noted that his "emotional life reflects a
preoccupation with aggression, violence, and misbehavior."

 

Over the years, the diagnoses and the drugs would change - bipolar
disorder, mood disorder, conduct disorder; Paxil, Risperdal, Zoloft -
but Miller seemed unable to control his anger toward others or himself.

 

In seventh grade he was expelled for pulling a knife on another student.
At 13, he was hospitalized after he tried to hang himself with a dog
chain. He made another suicide attempt shortly before his 15th birthday,
when he tried to suffocate himself by tying a pillow to his face while
he was in a residential treatment program for mental illness and drug
addiction.

 

"He used to always say, 'Mama, there's something wrong with me, and I
don't know what it is,'" said his mother, Cheryl Miller, 42. "He'd say,
'I try so hard.'"

 

Cheryl Miller served 21/2 years in prison on a second-degree murder
conviction for shooting a 16-year-old girl in the neck. She stayed clean
for several years afterward but eventually started using crack cocaine
again, even as she steadily worked jobs at fast-food restaurants and as
a home health care aide, often pulling two shifts a day. She also
faithfully attended her two sons' school meetings and, later, their
court hearings. She looked for programs that might help them stay out of
trouble.

 

"Every day she tried to make amends ... to the boys in the best way that
she could as she continued to go through her struggles," said Richard
Wills, a veteran probation officer who worked with the family for more
than five years. "That made that family kind of unique."

 

In July 2007, in the midst of a chaotic period when he ricocheted among
hospitals, the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center and home,
Jamal Miller sent his mother a poem he apparently had copied from a
young-adult novel. Called "Poem of Hope," it concluded: "I cannot see
the future/ and I cannot change the past/ but the present is so heavy/ I
don't think I'm going to last." In the book, "Tears of a Tiger," the
character who writes the poem ultimately commits suicide.

 

The next month, Miller pleaded guilty to attempted robbery and
aggravated battery for breaking the nose of a teenager while trying to
take money from him. Eight months later, after he got kicked out of a
residential treatment center, he returned to court, where Judge Michael
Stuttley offered Miller one last chance before sending him to juvenile
prison: to join his mother in Springfield, where she had moved from Park
Forest and, she said, kicked her crack addiction.

 

But in Springfield there was another suicide attempt, another
hospitalization and then two arrests: for threatening to kill a teacher
and threatening a police officer.

 

"I knew we had exhausted everything we could do at that point," Wills,
the probation officer, recalled. "And not only did I know that, but
Jamal knew it too."

 

Even as Wills reluctantly recommended that Miller be committed to the
Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, he thought the teenager still
could turn himself around. He had seen it happen before.

 

'Criminal thinking, not mental illness'

In late November 2008, Miller was sent to the youth center in St.
Charles, where he spent nine weeks in the special treatment unit. In
February, officials transferred him to Kewanee, the facility for
juvenile offenders with the most serious mental health issues. Shortly
before the transfer, the treatment administrator at St. Charles
described his mental health history as "significant but currently
stable," noting that he had been on at least eight psychotropic
medications and had five psychiatric hospitalizations.

 

Miller's record at Kewanee shows a series of fights and disciplinary
problems. He also once threatened to commit suicide unless he could talk
to a counselor, a threat he later said wasn't serious, and he was placed
on suicide watch for two days after he assaulted another youth and told
staff members: "I'm going to make it worse for myself." His assignment
to the facility's dual mental health and substance abuse treatment
program failed twice.

 

On June 19, a week after he was removed for the second time, a
psychologist at Kewanee concluded that Miller didn't need drug abuse
treatment or intensive mental health services.

 

"Youth's primary problem since his arrival to IDJJ is his criminal
thinking, not mental illness," she wrote.

 

The next month, officials approved his transfer back to St. Charles. The
request cited his "lack of immediate mental health needs or concerns."

 

The department stands by the reassessment of Miller and his transfer.

 

"Hindsight being 20/20, one could go back and second-guess their
clinical decisions. I choose not to do that," said Juvenile Justice
director Kurt Friedenauer. "Clinical staff and doctors were making those
assessments ... based on information they had available regarding the
circumstances and previous history."

 

One expert who reviewed Miller's records at the Tribune's request said
the reassessment "appeared to be an error in clinical judgment."

 

"There's overwhelming evidence he's got a serious psychological illness
that needs to be carefully assessed and treated," said Dr. Bennett
Leventhal, a nationally known child and adolescent psychiatrist who has
worked on juvenile justice issues. "And to ignore that evidence is a
mistake."

 

Juvenile justice and mental health experts have long questioned the
availability and quality of mental health treatment at the state's youth
facilities. Two days after Miller's death, Friedenauer, the department's
director, asked the MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change initiative
to lead a review of mental health needs and care throughout the system.
That report is due soon.

 

Questions about mental health treatment also surround the suicide of
17-year-old Miguel Stone, who hanged himself at the Harrisburg youth
center in 2004. He had made three suicide attempts in the previous 12
months, the most recent just three weeks before entering the downstate
facility.

 

He told a therapist at Harrisburg that he wasn't planning to kill
himself but also described his "lack of hope," records show. The day of
his death, another inmate became concerned about Stone and asked the
center's chaplain to visit him. Stone would not face him or speak to
him. About 45 minutes later, he was found hanging from a sheet tied to
the top of the bunk bed.

 

In Miller's case, he was transferred back to St. Charles on Aug. 5,
2009,and assigned to a special treatment unit. Inmates in special
treatment at St. Charles receive about half the hours of mental health
care as those in special treatment at Kewanee. Miller told a
psychiatrist at St. Charles that he no longer needed psychiatric
medication and refused to take it. Medical staff can force medication in
certain circumstances, but the psychiatrist concluded that was not
called for.

 

The afternoon before he killed himself, records state, Miller argued
with one of the guards at St. Charles. For a troubled young man like
Miller - described soon after he arrived in the juvenile system as
someone whose "suicide gestures all appear to have been impulsive acts
engaged in when youth is angry and frustrated" - that encounter would
apparently be enough to tip him over the edge.

 

When Miller returned that night to his single room, it contained
everything he would need to kill himself: a sheet and his bunk bed.

 

A decade of warnings

Corrections officials had received ample warning that the system's
metal-frame bunk beds posed a suicide hazard. In January 2000, Jason
Doke, 17, made a noose out of his belt and hanged himself from the top
of his bunk at the state juvenile facility at Valley View. A year and a
half later, Kene Tillman, 13, hanged himself from his bunk at St.
Charles. Miguel Stone died the same way.

 

In the five years between Stone's and Miller's suicides, at least 21
other inmates in juvenile facilities tried to take their lives by
hanging themselves from metal-frame bunks, records show.

 

At least one Department of Corrections investigator recognized the risk,
though there is no evidence that he shared his concerns with anyone in
the department. "A child could reach up there," investigator Richard
Harrington testified at a coroner's inquest into Stone's death. "It's
done quite easy."

 

After Miller's suicide, the John Howard Association, a local prison
watchdog group, identified the bunks and other furnishings as suicide
risks, saying the rooms at St. Charles were "rife with self-harm
hazards.''

 

Air vent covers, which the association said should be replaced with
breakaway models, are found across the juvenile system, officials say.
Although light fixtures have been replaced in 119 rooms at Harrisburg,
they remain in 171.

 

Friedenauer said that since the Department of Juvenile Justice was
created in 2006, taking over the youth centers from the Department of
Corrections, it has repeatedly sought money for safer equipment. The
department's 2007 master plan also includes calls for safer rooms. But,
Friedenauer said, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich and state legislators
never allocated the money.

 

"We've time and time again reiterated the safety issue," Friedenauer
said.

 

Benjamin Wolf, the associate legal director of the American Civil
Liberties Union of Illinois, which has studied the state's juvenile
justice system, said the department and its inmates have suffered
because they have long been a "low priority" for the governor and the
legislature.

 

"These kids have about as little clout as you can possibly have, so
getting money for them is difficult," Wolf said. "They're from poor
families. They've committed crimes. They're mentally ill. They don't
vote. So they're at the back of the line."

 

Although experts say the Juvenile Justice Department has improved care
for young offenders, Gov. Pat Quinn recently proposed folding it into
the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

 

After Miller's death, juvenile justice officials made an emergency
request for money to replace the bunks; Quinn's administration responded
with $2.5 million for upgrades, including new beds. Friedenauer said he
hopes all the bunks will be gone later this year, except those in
dormitory-style rooms where inmates are less able to attempt suicide
without being detected.

 

That comes too late for Miller, who sometime before his death on Sept. 1
signaled his intentions and his despair in the piece of paper he placed
in the window of his door.

 

It read: "RIP Jamal Damerco Miller."

 

About this report

The Tribune reported these stories by reviewing thousands of pages of
court papers, prison records, medical and psychiatric records, and other
documents, as well as conducting dozens of interviews. The newspaper
obtained many documents through the state's Freedom of Information Act.
Other documents, including confidential prison and mental health
records, were obtained with the cooperation of inmates' family members,
who shared documents they had obtained and made open records requests to
the Department of Juvenile Justice. The reporters petitioned Cook County
Juvenile Court for records involving Jamal Miller.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-juvenile-suicide--20100525,0,5
320103,print.story 





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