This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, a 2023-2024 LRN partner. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.
Update, June 25, 2025: Knox County commissioners voted to give power over the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center to the sheriff’s office starting in January 2026. Commissioners voted to dissolve the board of trustees that has been in place since 1977. And the commissioners created a board of directors, composed of four commissioners, who are elected officials, and one juvenile judge appointee. That board will be in charge of oversight. An interim superintendent will be put in place.
For half a century, through scandals, investigations, failed state inspections and even the illegal use of seclusion to punish children, Richard L. Bean remained in his perch of power as the superintendent of the juvenile detention center that bears his name.
Throughout nearly all of his tenure, there was only one body that could remove him from his post: a board of trustees unlike any other in the state. New reporting by WPLN News and ProPublica shows that for decades the voting members of that board were close friends and allies of Bean’s.
Even for Knoxville, Tennessee, a city known for its old-school politics, the relationship Bean has had with board members past and present stands out. His former secretary, his personal lawyer, the judge for whom he served as a campaign treasurer and a pallbearer of his wife’s casket all sat on the board over time as voting members.
“He’s just been allowed to go unchecked,” said Democratic state Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, a critic of Bean’s. “It was just a bad situation compounded by a rubber-stamp board that really was trying to protect him and not protect our children.”
Bean, who did not respond to requests for comment, abruptly announced last week that he is resigning in the wake of a new scandal. Had he not chosen to leave himself, McKenzie said, the board never would have unseated him.
“Watchdogs Over Richard”
Tennessee has 16 other county juvenile detention facilities similar to the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center. Oversight of all of those falls to county agencies, like the sheriff’s department, juvenile court or commissioners. And a few are run by private companies.
In 1972, when Bean started as superintendent, the juvenile detention home in Knoxville was a city-run facility. In the mid ’70s, it became a regional facility that had 40 beds and has since grown to three times that. The creation of the board, through a legislative act, was a way for both city and county officials to maintain some say in the facility’s functioning.
The board’s mandate, as laid out in the Knox County code, is to have “administrative control” over the center, its budget and its superintendent. Though it was constituted to include 10 members, only three have voting power. The county commission appoints two of the voting members. The county juvenile court judge, who also sits on the board as a nonvoting member, appoints the third.
None of the current board members responded to a request for comment. Neither did six current commissioners who helped appoint the voting members now on the board. The juvenile court judge, Tim Irwin, declined to comment.
Knox County lawyer Chris Coffey was a voting board member from 1999 to 2020, according to the Knoxville city website. He remembers the quarterly meetings as small — usually attended by a handful of board members, the juvenile court judge and Bean, plus occasional staff members from the facility.
William DeShazer for ProPublica A cell in the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center.
The board only knew what Bean told them about the facility, he said. The superintendent would give a presentation during each meeting about how many kids were in the facility, what kinds of meals they served or how many books were donated.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM