Ohio’s youth prison and juvenile detention centers are failing.
Kids in the state’s juvenile justice system often face violence and neglect, while guards remain overwhelmed, understaffed and in fear for their own safety.
Rather than rehabilitating and educating teens, more than four in 10 of them end up returning to the youth system or entering Ohio’s adult prisons. Those who don’t return to prison face a higher chance of an early, violent death.
Journalists from the Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Akron Beacon Journal and Canton Repository spent months investigating and documenting what happens to kids behind bars.
[ Reporters with USA TODAY’s network of Ohio newspapers spent eight months investigating the state’s juvenile justice system. Consider supporting their work with a subscription. ]
Here’s what they found.
Kids behind bars: Chaos, violence and neglect plague youth prisons and detention centers
Ohio’s juvenile prisons and detention centers are supposed to be safe places, where the state’s most troubled children are sent for what might be a last chance to turn their lives around before adulthood.
But instead of finding refuge from crime and mayhem, kids in juvenile detention often encounter a world more dangerous than the one they left behind.
Because chaos is so rampant, the investigation found, local juvenile detention centers and the state’s juvenile prisons consistently fail in their most basic mission: to provide a safe environment for young offenders while trying to turn them into productive members of society.
Juvenile justice in Ohio: How the system is supposed to work
Ohio operates a complex system of services for kids accused of delinquent acts. The goal is to give children as many chances as possible to avoid delinquency charges, detention, court appearances and even time in prison.
Kids who get into trouble may be on a road to prison, so the state builds off-ramps to divert them to a different course. Often, diversion starts when a police officer decides whether to arrest a child or bring them back to their parents. But there are many other exits.
However, when children are accused of serious, violent offenses that endanger the public, they can end up in juvenile detention and, eventually, youth prison. Some go to adult court and then adult prisons.
It’s a complex system, so let us explain how the Department of Youth Services is set up.
Paralyzed but still wearing an ankle monitor, Ohio teen works to rebuild life after jail
Damarion Allen sits in his wheelchair, shoeless and half-dressed, an ankle monitor strapped to his right leg.
The skin around his ankle is red and scabby, rubbed raw by the monitor, which a judge has ordered him to wear as a condition of his release from the Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center.
When he went into the center, Damarion, 15, was an athletic kid who loved football and lacrosse. When he came out on May 7, he was on a stretcher, paralyzed from the waist down.
Juvenile prison guard David Upshaw wanted to make a difference, but attack changed his life
It was like any other night on the late shift at Indian River Correctional Facility. David Upshaw, a retired cop, arrived at the Massillon facility on Oct. 18, 2022, and began working on the Bravo unit, notoriously known for housing teens with behavior problems.
With the nightly head count complete, Upshaw stopped to talk to one of the young men on his unit. Nineteen-year-old Demetrice Taylor was standing in the doorway of his cell. The two had a good relationship. Taylor joked with Upshaw and called him “Pops” as many of the other kids did.
But that night something was different. It wasn’t long before things took a turn for the worse.
Is Ohio inadvertently creating new generations of criminals?
Ohio incarcerates a couple dozen kids age 17 and younger at any one time at the Correctional Reception Center south of Columbus in Pickaway County.
The teens are kept in a unit separate from adults, a change implemented after Daniel’s attack, when the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act became law in 2003. But on the day those kids turn 18, they’re moved into the general prison population, housed alongside some adults who view them as prey.
This is a story about bindover, Ohio’s legal process of moving children who are disproportionately Black and brown out of a juvenile justice system aimed at reform and into an adult system built for punishment. It’s also a story about how adult incarceration impacts kids, their families and all Ohioans, since kids who go to prison return to their communities older, with more criminal connections and with a felony record that makes it hard to find work.
‘We need to break the cycle and give kids hope.’ How Marion County closed its juvy lockup
When “J.E” first showed up at the Marion County Family Resource Center, the scrawny 13-year-old suffered from multiple traumas, had been removed from his parents via child protective services and was facing arson charges in juvenile court.
The resource center, which replaced the county detention center, provided structure, intensive intervention and services to get J.E. on a path to normalcy. The teen is now in foster care, earning good grades and playing football. “He’s thriving,” Leffler said.
Leffler points to J.E. as a success story for the Family Resource Center, which seeks to divert kids from the juvenile justice system and provide needed services.
Confidentiality cloaks what happens in youth prisons
The responsibility for running Ohio’s youth prisons and local juvenile detention centers rests with elected officials: the governor at the state level and juvenile court judges at the local level.
The Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, a bipartisan panel of lawmakers, inspects the youth prisons and publishes reports about its findings. But it has no authority over the 33 local juvenile detention centers, which are largely run by county judges and their hired staff.
And because the juvenile system operates under confidentiality laws, it’s exceedingly difficult for the public to see what’s happening behind closed doors.
From the editor: How and why we did a statewide investigation into Ohio’s youth prisons
From Beryl Love: More than a dozen journalists from The Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Akron Beacon Journal and other news organizations in the USA TODAY Network Ohio, spent eight months investigating what happens to kids behind bars. The journalists found a system plagued by violence, chaos and neglect.
By many measures, teens aren’t being rehabilitated. Instead, they’re coming out worse.
So where does the buck stop? Who’s accountable for Ohio’s youth prisons and juvenile detention centers? Our special report answers that complex question,
Ohio is creating ‘monsters’ at youth prisons. DeWine must act now to save kids. | Our View
From the USA TODAY Network Ohio editorial boards: Instead of rehabilitation and human dignity, youth offenders housed in Ohio’s dangerously shattered Department of Youth Services facilities are often exposed to violence and neglect.
We realize the youths imprisoned in DYS facilities are no angels — they were sentenced for crimes as despicable as armed robbery, rape and murder — but these kids are not disposable. They are human. They deserve a shot at rehabilitation. Their parents deserve to see them come home as healthy as they entered. The families of DYS staffers have the same expectation for their loved ones.
It is the governor’s responsibility to make sure that happens. His administration is failing the youths, their families, DYS workers and the people of Ohio.
Ohio Politics Explained: Chaos in Ohio’s Youth Lockups
A USA TODAY Network Ohio investigation found Ohio’s youth prison system is plagued by violence, staffing shortages and a failure to rehabilitate kids.
We broke down the project’s findings and what needs to change.
Meet the USA TODAY Ohio team
Reporters
- Laura Bischoff
- Amanda Garrett
- Kevin Grasha
- Amy Knapp
- Cameron Knight
- Jordan Laird
Visual journalists
- Courtney Hergesheimer
- Doral Chenoweth
- Phil Didion
- Ben Duer
- Liz Dufour
- Phil Masturzo
- Mike Nyerges
- Lisa Scalfaro
- Carter Skaggs
Editors
- Anthony Shoemaker
- Cara Owsley
- Dan Horn
- Erin Mansfield
Designers
- Rebecca Boneschans
- Keely Brown
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