[7/2/04]JACKSON During his three years working in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Brad Schlozman said he has investigated scores of juvenile prisons.

But Oakley Training School in Raymond and Columbia Training School in Columbia, he said, stand out.

“This is clearly the worst two we’ve seen at the Department of Justice,” said the deputy assistant attorney general.

Justice Department attorneys involved in the lawsuit the department filed against Mississippi spoke at a town hall meeting Thursday night called by 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Bolton, in the Hinds County Board of Supervisors Room.

The Justice Department filed the suit against the state last summer after a year-long investigation into abuses and substandard facilities and medical care at the state’s two training schools for juveniles.

Fifteen juveniles from Warren County currently attend either Columbia or Oakley, said Department of Human Services spokesman Janet Mobley. The agency is in charge of the two training schools. Eight Hinds County residents are at the schools. Claiborne County claims two and Sharkey County has one.

Schlozman said the suit is in its discovery stage and the lawyers are still seeking information from citizens.

Several members of the packed audience seemed confused as to what the law allows the Justice Department to do.

Schlozman fielded several questions addressing issues like was the Justice Department was going to shut down the facilities and what the Justice Department could do about fixing Mississippi’s juvenile justice system.

Schlozman emphasized several times that the Justice Department can only deal with issues directly connected to the two schools and that ultimately a judge must decide what the schools will have to do or if they will continue to exist.

Another question was whether the state would turn its training schools over to private prison companies. Some attendees held signs saying “No privatization of training schools” and “Just another way to legalize slavery.”

“Corporations can only make money running large, abusive, cost-cutting institutions,” said Ellen Reddy of the Mississippi Prevention of Schoolhouse 2 Jailhouse Coalition.

Ginger Smith, a teacher in the Henley-Young Juvenile Justice System in Hinds County, said she knows from personal experience that smaller, more individualized programs work because that is what Henley-Young does.

Smith said a lot of her time was spent “de-institutionalizing” juveniles and working on basics like teaching literacy.

Lack of money, Smith said, is what hinders the program. “I can’t get funded,” she said.

The staff, facilities and medical care offered at Oakley and Columbia was criticized by several speakers. Reddy pointed to a recent spurt of staph infections at Oakley and compared the training schools to the Iraq prison, Abu Gharib.

David Wheat, the doctor at Oakley for the past 11 months, responded that staph is common and only one juvenile currently has an infection a percentage lower than in his private practice in Clinton, Wheat said.

“I stay (each day) until every kid that has a problem is seen,” Wheat said.

Wheat suggested a bigger problem is getting psychiatric treatment for suicidal juveniles. Judges are hesitant to allow the juveniles to transfer out of the school for mental treatment, Wheat said.

Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson asked Schlozman if the Justice Department would do anything about the “incipient racism” in the juvenile justice system. Johnson cited statistics saying that while 35 percent of Mississippi’s population is black, 65 percent of the training school population is black.

Schlozman said that race was not a major concern of the Justice Department in the particular case.

“I don’t care if (the juveniles) are black or white. No one deserves to be (abused),” Schlozman said.