Article: Hawaiian Youth Says State Lied to Them

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Hawaiian Youth Says State Lied to Them
Seven girls sent from Hawaii's youth prison to a detention center in Utah say they were told Tuesday that the state has no plans to bring them back after two months as promised.

(Oct 13, 2004) --

HONOLULU (AP) -- Seven girls sent from Hawaii's youth prison to a detention center in Utah say they were told Tuesday that the state has no plans to bring them back after two months as promised, according to an attorney who spoke to them.

State officials, including Gov. Linda Lingle, denied the girls would be kept longer than they were told.

"That's not true, absolutely, unequivocally not true," said Sharon Agnew, director of the state Office of Youth Services. "I don't know who from staff they would even be talking to."

Unrelated to the complaints, Lingle plans to visit the girls on Saturday on her way back to Hawaii from a trip to attend the presidential debate in Tempe, Ariz. She said the state had no plans to keep the girls there beyond the end of November.

Lingle said she wanted to visit the girls both to see how they are doing and to see the facility.

"I wanted to see the kinds of programs they have to determine whether or not we would be able to replicate some of them," Lingle said, noting that national juvenile detention experts recommended the Utah facility to the state.

The girls were sent to Utah two weeks ago to open up more space for overcrowded male inmates at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility.

Agnew, who visited them at the Salt Lake Valley Detention Center on Monday, said there may have been some miscommunication.

But Lois Perrin, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, said the girls were upset when she spoke to some of them by phone Tuesday because staff members at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility told them they weren't coming back.

"They want to know when they're coming home," Perrin said. "They're hearing that they're not coming home. They hear a different story every week.

"Not having certainty about their status is psychologically abusive."

Perrin said she hopes the girls express themselves to Lingle.

"I hope that the girls are as forthcoming with the governor as they have been with me and that they can educate the governor about their concerns," she said.

The girls were sent to the mainland rather than relocated in Hawaii because they were considered high-risk and had run away from treatment programs and group homes here, officials said.

Prison reform advocates have criticized the state for shipping the girls to the mainland and the ACLU has monitored their progress by phone from Hawaii.

Perrin said the girls have been unhappy since arriving in Utah, noting that they haven't yet had the chance to speak with their families using video conferencing as they were promised.

She said the ACLU's other main concern was that staff members at the Utah facility weren't being culturally sensitive, noting some of the girls are being threatened with punishment for speaking pidgin.

"They are repeatedly threatened with lockdown," Perrin said.

Agnew said she didn't believe that to be the case. She said the girls were more likely punished because of their behavior.

"They're asking the girls to participate or behave just like any other resident," Agnew said. "They're being asked to uphold the facilities' rules.

"I wouldn't think that they would be locking them down for speaking pidgin."

Blake Chard, director of Utah Juvenile Justice Services, said the girls were disruptive at first because they weren't accustomed to the Utah center's treatment environment.

The Salt Lake Valley Detention Center isn't a traditional youth prison because even though it is a secure facility, it employs counselors, not uniformed corrections officers, Chard told The Associated Press.

"These girls came over all together, with expectations based on their previous experience, and it wasn't what they expected," Chard said. "They didn't want to follow all the rules at the beginning.

"They wanted to be defiant because that's the way they understood the facility to be and they're finding that to be different," he added. "In the two weeks time frame, I've seen a marked difference in their behavior."

Perrin said the girls she talked to told her they've been allowed to take part in some programs, but they have spent more time in their cells now than when they were in Hawaii.

The girls haven't specified what programs they've been participating in.

"I get the sense that they don't really know why they're there," Perrin said.