Watchdogs revealed crisis in Maines youth prison. LePage let them go.
Source: Bangor Daily News
For more than a year, Tonya DiMillo saw tragedy waiting to happen at the state’s youth prison.
Young people diagnosed with severe mental illnesses filled the cells at Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, and corrections staff, who didn’t have the training to know how to respond, struggled to keep them safe.
Then, last October, a 16-year-old transgender boy, Charles Maisie Knowles, hanged himself in his cell while on suicide watch. Soon after, a young girl at Long Creek tried to do the same, strangling herself before being rushed to the hospital.
The second suicide attempt, and its place in the pattern of self-inflicted violence among Long Creek’s scores of young inmates with mental illness, came to light only because DiMillo and the other members of an independent, citizen watchdog group for the prison reported it to the Maine Legislature. Maine has five of these volunteer groups, called boards of visitors, that are appointed by the governor and empowered by law to monitor and inspect state correctional facilities and recommend changes.
<more>
Read more: http://bangordailynews.com/2017/06/08/mainefocus/lepage-quietly-dismissed-watchdogs-who-revealed-a-crisis-in-maines-youth-prison/
= new reply since forum marked as read
