By Kiara Doyal, The Seattle Medium
Green Hill School, a juvenile facility in Washington State designed for older male youth and young adults ages 15 – 24, operates under a mission to protect children, strengthen families, and ensure that all youth grow up safe, healthy, and thriving. The facility pledges to support these young men physically, emotionally, and educationally, with a strong emphasis on family and community involvement. However, numerous families of young men currently residing at Green Hill claim that the facility is falling short on these promises and are raising concerns about the management of the facility and the treatment of the young men housed there.
According to court records, a petition filed by the King County Department of Public Defense on behalf of a resident at Green Hill, young people in Hawthorn, a housing unit inside Green Hill, are being detained in their cells for most or all of the day. Hawthorn is intended to offer pro-social programming and recreation; however, severe staffing shortages and routine imposition of group punishment and individual misbehavior has resulted in solitary confinement for many of the residents.
In a separate petition, the King County Department of public defense said that residents placed in room confinement should be visually checked at least every fifteen minutes and that staff should attend to the needs of the juvenile at that time but goes on to claim that residents at the facility are not receiving this level of care.
Evelyn Naomi, the fiancée of a young man at Green Hill, described the treatment of residents as “horrific.”
She claims that the youth are subjected to physical, emotional, and mental abuse. In addition, there are also concerns about food and nutrition.
“Why are kids losing weight? Why are kids hungry? When I am on a call with my son, and the last thing he says to me is Mom I am hungry, how do I go to sleep after that, how do I wake up and show up the next day for my other son and my job,” says Rashida Robbins, the mother of a 20-year-old man who has been at Green Hill since he was 17.
Safety is another concern at the facility. In addition to concerns about proper discipline for people involved in physical altercations, some family members are also concerned about residents receiving proper medical attention, if necessary, after an altercation occurred in a timely manner.
Naomi claims that one resident “was left there for two hours” after an altercation without proper medical attention.
Andrea Calloway, another mother of a Green Hill resident, alleges that her son to be “attacked from behind” by another inmate while he was in class. Calloway claims that her son was subsequently disciplined for defending himself.
“He was then taken to the hole where he was punished for no reason,” claims Calloway. “All because he was defending himself from another inmate.”
Lack of access to running water and bathrooms is another concern at the facility. The cells in Hawthorne are “dry cells” which means they do not contain a toilet, sink, or any running water and residents must leave their cell in order to use the restroom.
Another petition filed by public defense shed light on the compounded issues associated with staffing issues, dry cells and access to restrooms by the residents.
“Staff will only permit one young person at a time out of their cell to use the bathroom. The same is true during the overnight hours. When bathroom access is so restricted, staff compile a waitlist of young people who have made head calls. This list can get very long, and egregious wait times to access the bathroom and obtain other basic necessities are routine,” the petition reads.
The petition further claims that one resident whose name is being withheld by The Seattle Medium, “typically waits between 60 and 90 minutes to use the bathroom once he has made a request, and routinely—“dozens of times”—has been made to wait four to five hours. The denial of timely bathroom access is so pervasive that the young people detained in Hawthorn are regularly provided with plastic bottles in which to urinate while in their locked cells.”
“The environment they are living in is wrong on so many levels, and it is not the world I want to live in. It is state-sanctioned abuse against youth, and we owe a better responsibility to the community that they are going to be re-entering,” says Robbins. “Being locked inside a cell, with no access to a bathroom or running water, and when they ring for help, they are not answered and then end up having to relieve themselves in plastic bags or bottles. How inhumane is that?”
Despite having children in Green Hill who are dealing with the pain of abandonment and the pain of absentee parents, Green Hill has tightened its visitation rules, now limiting visits to no contact to help prevent drugs from coming into the facility.
“Visitation with family is important, one hour twice a month is sickening. How are you going to allow a mother to not see her baby?” questions the mother of a 20-year-old resident at Green Hill, who wishes to remain anonymous.
According to court records, a petition filed by the King County Department of Public Defense on behalf of a resident at Green Hill, claims the State of Washington is failing the children incarcerated at Green Hill School and this failure has reached constitutional proportions.
Nancy Gutierrez, a spokesperson for Green Hill School, acknowledged that overcrowding has impacted the facility in a number of ways, but claims that they are still able to operate above capacity with the same level of staffing.
“Overcrowding disrupts access to programs and services, including education, therapy, and recreation,” says Gutierrez. “The resulting increase in fights, assaults on staff, and population size makes it difficult to move individuals around safely, requires staff to halt programming as they respond to safety incidents, and increases the number of instances the facility undergoes a lockdown. We share the desire of the young people at GHS and their families to resume safe operations and programming as quickly as possible and have teams working to identify options for additional space and staffing.”
The family’s concerns extend to hindering educational opportunities for Green Hill residents.
According to Naomi, any riot or protest that happens inside the facility, if anyone was involved or not involved and just happened to be out of their room at the time they got their education levels dropped. Both families expressed how Green Hill stripped their education away from their loved ones, despite promising to support all juveniles educationally.
“Because of this incident, my fiancé was kicked out of his college classes. He graduated High School at Green Hill, he was in college, doing a really good job being an honor student for a very long time,” says Naomi. “That is my biggest concern, because how are you going to punish someone by taking their education away?”
Gutierrez expressed that they want to hear from young people and families about any complaints they may have, so that they are investigated and addressed in a swift manner.
“All allegations are investigated from use of force to medical care and all things in between,” says Gutierrez. “Our Incident Command is focused on addressing conditions at Green Hill. The safety and treatment of the young people we house is our priority. This includes conditions of confinement being our absolute priority.”
However, some families fear that without immediate intervention, their loved ones may suffer long-term consequences.
“We need to make these things known, and it is vital for people to find out what is happening in these places, and no one is going to care unless they are affected by it, which is us,” says Naomi.
“We take allegations of staff misconduct very seriously. If the allegations involve any sort of abuse or illegal activities, we report those to law enforcement and Child Protective Services,” says Gutierrez. “Most of our employees maintain the highest standards, performance, and ethic. When there are people who fail to follow those, we immediately hold them accountable, and we collaborate with our law enforcement partners to collect evidence necessary to prosecute those staff.”