Mother questions policies at youth detention center

Molly Ball

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 | 10:47 a.m.

In the wake of revelations that lapses at the county's juvenile detention facility allowed her daughter to commit suicide and the subsequent firing of one of the employees, a Henderson woman is questioning the assertion that the death was an isolated incident brought on by employee misbehavior.

"I don't see how this one day they just screwed up, out of nowhere, and someone died," said Lynette Kish, whose 16-year-old daughter Brittany hanged herself with a sheet in a cell at the juvenile detention center on April 11.

Kish questioned whether her daughter's death might instead have been the product of a long history of lax adherence to rules and how the county can be sure understaffing didn't play a role.

Brittany was on suicide watch but hadn't been checked on for more than half an hour when she was found dead, according to a police investigation. Detention center policies call for suicidal youths to be checked at least every five minutes.

The investigation also found that a detention worker didn't check in on Brittany after other inmates alerted him that something seemed amiss.

The county has said it is pursuing discipline of some employees, maintaining that human error, not faulty policies and procedures, was to blame. According to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, four people are being disciplined, one of them fired.

But Lynette Kish wondered if blaming low-ranking employees was a way to avoid scrutinizing higher-ups' bad decisions.

In particular, Kish asked whether the detention center's staffing was adequate. According to the police report, no one made the required checks on Brittany because a supervisor had no staff to assign to the hallway.

But the county did not examine the detention center's staffing levels in its review of the incident, said county lawyer Stephanie Barker, chief deputy district attorney in charge of litigation.

"We don't believe that (understaffing) was the case.... This hasn't happened in almost 30 years. That tells me" that staffing levels were generally adequate, Barker said.

Brittany's suicide was the first of a juvenile in detention in Clark County in 29 years, officials previously had said.

Juvenile Justice Director Kirby Burgess said he believed there were enough people on staff that day to conduct the required checks. He wouldn't elaborate on why they weren't available for deployment by the supervisor.

Her mother believes Brittany, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at a young age, was sent over the edge to suicide in 2003, when she was sexually abused while undergoing state-mandated psychiatric treatment at a private facility.

"When kids say stuff, a lot of people don't listen when they're in juvie," Lynette Kish said. "We went through the same thing with her sexual abuse -- 'it's just a crush,' 'these girls are troubled.'th "

Kish believes detention workers who knew Brittany from her many previous trips there didn't take seriously Brittany's potential to harm herself, nor did they listen to the other girls who tried to alert them that something was wrong in her cell.

Kish doesn't think Brittany was ever mistreated at the detention center, but as she looks back, she sees evidence that suggests staffing was thin.

When she went to visit her daughter in detention, she often had to wait, sometimes for hours, because no one was available to escort her back to see Brittany, Kish recalled.

"There's no way they had enough people," Kish said. "I believe they have been understaffed generally."