The oversight board tasked with reforming Rutherford County’s Juvenile Detention Center met for the first time this week.
The detention center, and Rutherford’s juvenile justice system, have come under scrutiny for illegally jailing children. At one point, the county was jailing juvenile cases at more than 10 times the state average.
The oversight board was put in place to bring greater accountability to the long-troubled system by taking control of the facility away from the juvenile court judge.
The five-member board includes Rutherford County Mayor Joe Carr, retired judge Steve Daniel, longtime juvenile court prosecutor Leslie Collum, pastor and attorney Michael McDonald and school board member Claire Maxwell.
“This is a very, very important board with a very, very important work to do,” says Mayor Carr. “And so I’m really looking forward to working with you, so we can not just better our community but provide a model for the rest of Tennessee.”
The new board is one of the first of its kind in the state, though counties in other states have adopted a similar method for ensuring that children in state custody are not mistreated.
The board has hiring and firing power over the facility’s director. Lynn Duke has been the head of the facility since 2001.
During her tenure, some children were placed in solitary confinement under conditions that a federal judge later called inhumane.
She declined WPLN’s request for comment on the new board and the detention center’s policies.
One of the board’s first tasks will be to review the detention center’s operating procedures. For nearly a decade, that document included an illegal policy for jailing kids.
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