The sun was setting as parents waited for the Christmas Day call from their incarcerated children, unaware of the fraught situation that had broken out hours earlier: a so-called “riot” at New Mexico’s largest jail for kids.
The news media were depicting a violent uprising inside the Bernalillo County Youth Services Center, where a 911 call had sparked a confrontation with kids earlier that day.
For months, advocates and families had predicted trouble, noting the soaring numbers of detained youths combined with persistent issues in understaffing. There was sure to be a reckoning, they warned.
But in the aftermath of the Christmas Day “riot,” Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen cast the event in a less inflammatory light. His deputies, he said, did not see an actual riot. What they saw was a group of 13 teenagers — residents, as the facility calls its inmates — who barricaded themselves behind the doors of a single cell block after demanding to be fed and falsely claiming they had taken hostages.
Their demands: “Fifteen to 20 chicken wings,” reported Allen, adding that the kids were “acting like this is a movie.”
After nearly five hours of negotiations, body-camera footage shows heavily armed sheriff’s deputies, rifles drawn, moving through a cellblock covered in trash and dismantling the makeshift barricades the teens had erected. One deputy is seen using a lockpick to try and gain access to the secluded room where the kids were holed up.
Shirtless boys are seen pushing furniture against the doors as some scream out and call for their parents. “I’m waiting for my dad,” one boy shouts, holding a phone.
Three of the 13 teenagers involved in the protest have since been charged with new crimes, including assault on a jail, criminal property damage, possession of a deadly weapon by a prisoner and assault and battery on health care personnel. Officials say the debacle, which they are now calling an “incident” or a “major disturbance,” resulted in more than $100,000 in property damage.
But at an early January town hall meeting for families of the detained children, officials refused to answer any questions about what actually happened, drawing outrage from parents who say the facility has left them in the dark.
Understaffing, strip searches and hunger
Conditions inside the facility have plummeted in recent months. In July, a Searchlight New Mexico investigation found that the understaffed jail has subjected children, some as young as 12, to mandatory strip searches (despite costly investments in technology meant to reduce that practice). The facility has also placed girls in “essentially” solitary confinement with hallway lights that never turn off; kids routinely wait hours just to use a toilet.
A few weeks after Searchlight’s story published, the Children, Youth and Families Department conducted a facility inspection, which found the jail to be in “partial compliance” with state guidelines. It was the first time in years that inspectors had found so much fault within the facility.
Among other concerns, the inspection report noted that surveillance cameras overlooked showers and toilets which are unblocked by a “privacy box.” It found that many staffers failed to meet training requirements and that the facility appeared to keep incomplete inmate fingerprint records. Detained children told inspectors that they consistently miss out on family visits and that even their clean laundry smells bad.
In letters to Searchlight, three detainees said they routinely go to bed hungry and rarely get to attend classes in the on-site school or get outside.
“Children are enduring these conditions, sometimes for months on end, without the opportunity to step outside and feel the warmth of the sunlight on their skin or breathe in fresh air,” said Vanessa Hulliger, whose son, Noah Duran, was detained in the facility before being sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison.
Hulliger leads a support group – Stronger Together, Never Alone – for mothers whose children are behind bars. Many of those same mothers — flanked by formerly detained children, attorneys, youth advocates, Sen. Linda Lopez and County Commissioner Adriann Barboa — staged a protest of their own outside the facility in early January. They reported that their children are often fed as late as six hours after their scheduled mealtimes, have grown visibly pale and are increasingly medicated without parental consent.
On a recent count, the 78-bed jail held 60 children, a 50 percent increase from last May. Families and youth advocates largely attribute the spike to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s recent health order calling on the state to “suspend the juvenile detention alternatives initiative.” That initiative is part of a national model that emphasizes long-term rehabilitation and community custody programs over more traditionally punitive measures.
“This is not the time to point to our youth as the problem,” Barboa declared from a makeshift podium at the parents’ protest. She vowed to ensure that the jail is adequately staffed. Nearly half of the facility’s guard jobs are going unfilled and children are “doubling up” in cells intended for one. “We can’t place the blame on them when the county was not prepared.”
Sheriff Allen pushed back on such claims in a recent press conference, alluding to the fact that nearly one-third of the children detained here are facing charges of murder.
“The juveniles that are in there are in there for serious crimes,” he said. “I understand that people want to be careful with juveniles. We do. But at the same time, they’re there for a reason. …I’m warning people that if we keep going soft with juveniles, and they’re the most dangerous in our county right now, we’re going to pay the price.”
Allen vowed to “go hard in the paint” with the kids involved in the protest. His remarks did not sit well with the group of parents and lawmakers at the Jan. 9 rally.
“We don’t need to go backwards,” said Sen. Linda Lopez, a Bernalillo County Democrat who demanded transparency and accountability from jail leaders.
According to a Bernalillo County spokesperson, County Manager Julie Morgas Baca has visited the facility nearly every day since Christmas and is drafting a formal plan to improve conditions inside. The spokesperson acknowledged, however, that Morgas Baca’s efforts have not included speaking directly with any of the detained children.
The parents’ group has issued a list of demands to county and jail leaders. They include:
- No new charges related to the Christmas Day protest
- Healthy food, served on time
- Access to bathrooms, water and personal hygiene
- Clean laundry, provided in a timely manner
- Access to school programs and books
- End the use of strip searches
- End practice of prolonged confinement
- End practice of holding girls in the intake area
- Independent investigation into the facility with an enforceable timeline for improvement and community-led oversight
This article first appeared on Searchlight New Mexico and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Searchlight New Mexico is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that seeks to empower New Mexicans to demand honest and effective public policy.