LOS ANGELES (AP) The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday that a civil rights settlement agreement has been reached with county officials over conditions and services at its three juvenile halls.
Federal investigators in April 2003 released findings that showed the civil rights of children were being violated at Los Padrinos Juvenile Detention Center, Central Juvenile Hall and Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall.
Children were subject to pepper spray and hogtying procedures at the county facilities and some went without mental health treatment for days despite threatening to kill themselves and episodes of self-mutilation and razor blade-swallowing.
The settlement agreement between the federal agency, the county and its Office of Education avoids litigation. It forces the county to improve suicide prevention procedures and improve medical, educational and other services for incarcerated youths. The county operates the juvenile halls and the Office of Education provides educational services.
The agreement calls for the juvenile halls to adequately staff mental health specialists to screen and treat the approximately 1,500 youths in the juvenile halls.
Federal investigators notified the county in November 2000 that they were going to investigate its juvenile halls. The federal probe followed a critical county grand jury assessment that found, among other things, that employees frequently overmedicated youths with up to 16 different psychotropic drugs that were used to treat depression, anxiety and mood disorders.
The agreement with the Justice Department calls for the county to train nurses on the side effects of psychotropic drugs and requires nurses to document the side effects.
All staffers who work with jailed youths also must undergo suicide prevention training to better treat suicidal youths, the agreement said.
The agreement also said policies should be developed to restrict the use of pepper spray on children.
Michael Graham, a retired county undersheriff, was named as the agreement monitor and seven people, including mental health and education experts, were named to a monitoring team.
The agreement praised county officials for their cooperation with the federal government.
``Early on we expressed a desire to use this as a resource to improve any shortcomings that we had,'' said Richard Shumsky, the county's chief probation officer. ``I think on virtually every issue there was agreement.''
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