DALLAS — A state investigation found that juveniles at the Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center were confined to their cells for multiple days, violating state law, according to a new report released Monday.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department Governing Board also found that staff routinely falsified documents related to the illegal confinement .
Administration and staff at the detention center used a program referred to as the Special Needs Unit to circumvent the Texas Administrative Code and confine multiple juveniles to their cells for up to five days, according to an executive summary of the report released by the OIG. The program was used over multiple years at the Dallas County Juvenile Department’s Dr. Jerome McNeil Jr. Detention Center, investigators found.
"The SNU program was utilized to confine juvenile residents in solitary confinement without due process," the report reads.
Facility observation sheets were falsified, likely to hide the Special Needs Unit, investigators found. Some staff prefilled the observation sheets before the checks were completed, according to the summary.
"There was pervasive falsification of documents regarding observation checks and school attendance rosters implying an intentional attempt to conceal the practice within the facility," the report reads.
The OIG's findings confirm reporting by WFAA published in June that revealed the Juvenile Detention Center was unsanitary and that juveniles housed there were kept inside their cells for long periods, a violation of state law.
Whistleblowers, former and current employees of the facility, provided WFAA with pictures showing filthy living conditions, which sources said was the norm. The facility houses kids as young as 11 years old.
“There was trash piled up and they had gnats flying around,” the former employee said. “There were toilets clogged up... the mattresses were ripped, and blankets ripped. You know, it was pretty bad.”
The former Executive Director Darryl Beatty and Cheryl Shannon, who leads the juvenile detention board that governs the facility, previously denied that conditions inside the center were unsanitary and that juveniles spent too much time in their cells.
Beatty called the whistleblower's allegations "categorically false" in a press July press conference. He resigned from his position later that month. Since then, dozens of staff members have been fired.
"The decision to utilize the (Special Needs Unit) in such a manner yielded the inevitable result of frequent confinement of juvenile residents inside their cells and created systemic neglect in which multiple facility staff, educators, and administrators (past and present) were aware," the report reads.
The OIG investigation was prompted by a series of complaints submitted to the OIG Incident Reporting Center in the Spring and Summer of 2023. Investigators obtained over 18,000 pages of observation sheets from the facility and inspectors conducted multiple onsite interviews with Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center staff and juvenile residents.
Investigators considered 12 allegations and found three to be true and seven to be false. Three allegations, including that a resident was denied food as punishment, toilets were routinely clogged and that residents had rashes due to unsanitary conditions could not be found true or false.
When The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department Governing Board notified the Dallas County Juvenile Probation Department and its former director Darryl Beatty in July 2023 that it would investigate the department, the Dallas County commissioner and juvenile board member Andy Sommerman said he invited the investigation.
"I invite this investigation," Sommerman told WFAA. "We need to have a clear understanding of what is happening over there at the Juvenile Department."