Class action request says NC locks minors in ‘solitary confinement,’ ‘shackle plan’

The moment the 17-year-old walked into a state juvenile detention center, guards placed him in a closet-size room with concrete walls and a metal door that automatically locks when closed.

And there he remained for more than 23 hours a day for much of his stay, the teenager reported in a new court filing. It claims North Carolina is harming detained youth by confining them in their rooms to cope with administrative challenges.

“The guards told me and other kids that they had to keep us in our cells because they did not have enough staffing,” the unnamed Mecklenburg County minor, held at Cabarrus Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Concord, said in his statement.

The filing seeks class-action status for a federal lawsuit filed in January by three teens that demanded the North Carolina Department of Public Safety stop holding them in solitary confinement conditions amid staffing shortages and other administrative challenges. If a judge grants class-action status, plaintiffs in the case could expand to include thousands of minors ordered to juvenile detention.

State juvenile justice officials have said solitary confinement for youth was banned in North Carolina years ago. And that keeping detained youth in their rooms for most of a day isn’t ideal nor the goal, but it’s not solitary confinement, William Lassiter, deputy secretary of North Carolina’s Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, has said.

That’s because youth in custody aren’t being punished or assigned to an isolated unit, Lassiter has said. But at times, youth were not allowed to leave their rooms, which the lawsuit calls cells, after a severe staffing shortage.

North Carolina has taken a number of steps in recent years to address challenges with an increase in the youth detention population amid staffing shortages. Those steps include increasing wages and the number of recruiting events, juvenile justice officials have said in interviews and emails.

But the department declined to comment on the latest court filing, according to spokesperson Matthew Dubnam, who cited the pending litigation as the reason.

Nor did it respond to a request for more current isolation and staffing numbers.

The new court filing indicates that plaintiffs’ concerns about youth being left in their room, sometimes yelling and screaming in frustration, continue.

New filing tells detained teen’s story

In December, The News & Observer revealed that juvenile justice officials were locking youth in small rooms alone for 23 hours for days and weeks to cope with a severe staffing shortage and other issues.

The next month, Charlotte-based attorneys Robert Lindholm, who is in private practice, and Michelle Duprey, an attorney for Council for Children’s Rights in Charlotte, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three minors and their parents.

The lawsuit asked a judge to order the state to stop keeping these and other youth in solitary confinement, violating their U.S. constitutional rights that guarantee due process and protect them from cruel and unusual punishment, the lawsuit states.

The class-action motion filed Thursday includes statements from anonymous teens identified as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2. Both are from Mecklenburg County and were held in Cabarrus Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Concord.

John Doe 2 spent from November 2023 to February 2024 at the facility, which the youth calls jail. He returned March through August and then on Sept. 20, where he remains.

In previous stays, the teen wrote, he had remained in a small “cell” with a bed, sink and toilet.

“There are often bugs in my cell. I regularly kill ants and spiders in my cell and have been bit on the face by insects,” the statement says.

Most days at the jail, he spends in the cell, except for a 10-minute shower and to make a phone call. He occasionally gets recreation, he said, and there are long gaps where he didn’t receive classroom materials or instructions.

“Other than a 10-minute shower and 10-minute phone conversation, I was not allowed outside of my cell even on Christmas day,” the statement says.

‘Shackle plan’

During confinement, guards punish teens for taking too long in the shower by covering the small window on their doors, turning off water in their cell and taking away blankets, the court filing says.

When teens get in more trouble, they are put on the “shackle plan,” where guards clamp shackles on kids’ ankles for days and weeks.

“The last time I was on the shackle plan it lasted about a month,” said John Doe 2’s statement.

During time in his cell, the teen, who is still confined, reads, writes songs and does push-ups. But mostly he lies in his bed, he wrote.

The isolation makes him mad and sad, he said, but he’s not alone.

“Everyone at the Cabarrus Juvenile Jail had it as bad as me or worse,” according to his statement.

Expert: Practice is ‘solitary confinement’

Dr. Louis Kraus, an expert on detained youth and chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, wrote in the new court filing that North Carolina’s “policy and practice is solitary confinement.”

Kraus, who visited state facilities in Concord, Butner and Raleigh, said such extreme isolation exacerbates mental health conditions and other disorders, which has occurred for the lawsuit’s current plaintiffs.

Beyond keeping minors in their rooms with little to no meaningful contact, staff often discipline them for attempting to talk with others, he said.

“It is my opinion, within a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that all juveniles in secure detention who are subject to the Defendants’ policy and practice of solitary confinement, as described above, are at a substantial risk of serious harm to their social, psychological, and emotional development,” Kraus wrote as an expert on behalf of the minors.

Lawsuit filed in January

From 2021 to December 2023, juvenile justice officials recorded locking juveniles in their rooms for administrative reasons, primarily staffing shortages, 274 times, the News & Observer reported last year. Periods of confinement lasted from 60 hours or 2.5 days.

In January, The N&O spoke with a 17-year-old teen who described being kept for months in a cell more than 23-hours a day with worms in his toilet and being fed expired milk at CA Dillon Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Butner.

State law requires that the Department of Public Safety provide education and other services according to the juvenile’s needs, the lawsuit states. But that isn’t happening when youth are confined in their rooms, it states.

“As a result of the persistent use of solitary confinement for children, NCDPS is also denying children in their custody educational services, further harming their development,” the lawsuit states.

Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina for The News & Observer. Her work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The N&O maintains full editorial control of its journalism.