When juvenile detention staff were scarce, youth say they were isolated

Early in the morning after his prom, 17-year-old DeShaun sat in the back of a police cruiser, handcuffed and sweating through his tuxedo and new shoes. He had been caught trying to sell a stolen car. Now, Memphis Police Department officers were taking him to the county’s juvenile detention center, the Youth Justice and Education Center. 

It wasn’t the first time DeShaun had been incarcerated, so he thought he knew what to expect. But this time was different. The day after he arrived, a Saturday, guards refused to let him out of his cell with little explanation. He says he spent almost the entire weekend  — 46 hours — in solitary confinement.

Within correctional facilities across the country, solitary confinement is often used as a punishment for bad behavior. MLK50: Justice Through Journalism previously reported that the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, which operated the Youth Justice and Education Center until October 2025, regularly locked incarcerated youth who misbehaved in solitary confinement units inside the center for up to 47 hours at a time for periods of weeks or months. A sheriff’s office spokesperson said that these dormitories were “behavior units,” not solitary confinement units.

MLK50 interviewed over a dozen youth who say they were held in solitary confinement inside the Youth Justice and Education Center. DeShaun — a pseudonym he chose to protect his identity — is one of seven of these youth who were held in solitary confinement even though they say they hadn’t started a fight, cursed at guards, or violated any of the center’s other rules. Instead, these youth say guards told them that there weren’t enough staff members inside the facility to let them out of their cells. These children said solitary confinement was used in every housing unit in the facility, not just isolation units. 

Defense attorneys and parents who also spoke with MLK50 shared similar claims about the conditions inside the center. A sheriff’s office spokesperson did not respond when directly asked whether the facility had enough staff.

Tennessee law prohibits holding children in solitary confinement for longer than two hours at a time, and no more than 6 hours in an entire day. But youth incarcerated in the detention center between late 2023 and October 2025 say they were isolated in their cells for 23 hours a day — with an hour to shower and call their parents — several times each week. They said that while they were isolated, they couldn’t go to school. This claim is supported by inspection reports obtained by MLK50 through public records requests. Attendance records show that students enrolled at the detention center’s school were absent roughly one quarter of the time in the 2023-2024 school year. 

“You put someone in a place like that, and they’ll hate the police.”

DeShaun, 17, on solitary confinement at the Youth Justice and Education Center

These reports of solitary confinement come after the center’s population began to increase in mid-2023. Between June 2023 and July 2024, the average number of youth incarcerated at the center each month increased from 82 to 120, according to Shelby County Sheriff’s Office data. At the same time, the sheriff’s office struggled to maintain enough staff members to manage this growing population, according to letters, inspection reports, and contemporaneous statements reviewed by MLK50. 

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office has repeatedly denied that they ever kept youth in the center in solitary confinement. But a spokesperson did acknowledge that “when the population was between 100-120, the number of youth who could be out of their rooms with officers was more limited.”

Shelby County’s Division of Corrections, which currently operates the detention center, told MLK50 they have ended the practice in the facility. 

Juvenile detention centers are supposed to ensure public safety. But the youth interviewed by MLK50 say that keeping them in solitary confinement did the opposite. They described mounting anger, arguments, and even physical fights exacerbated by isolation. Research indicates that incarcerated people held in solitary confinement, even for short periods of time, are more likely to reoffend than those who were not isolated. 

“You put someone in a place like that, and they’ll hate the police,” DeShaun said.

Sheriff’s office staffing struggles

In October 2024, Commissioner Erika Sugarmon toured a housing unit inside the Youth Justice and Education Center. Each of the center’s housing units can hold anywhere between 12 and 24 children. But when Sugarmon entered the unit, “only three or four individuals were out of their cells,” she said. “The others were in their cells.”

When Sugarmon asked the center’s staff why so many youth were being held inside their cells, they told her they had to maintain the center’s staff-to-youth ratio, she said. Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services, which licenses the center, mandates that all juvenile facilities maintain a ratio of at least one staff member present for every eight children during waking hours. 

Tennessee law explicitly forbids holding youth in solitary confinement in response to staffing levels. When asked about what Sugarmon saw during the tour, a sheriff’s office spokesperson did not respond. 

In 2023 and 2024, a DCS inspector found that the facility had sufficient staffing to comply with regulations, according to inspection reports reviewed by MLK50. But when the state comptroller’s office inspected the detention center in 2025, the documentation they were given was not detailed enough to “determine whether the facility complied with the required staffing ratios,” according to an audit of DCS released in December. 

MLK50 found that the sheriff’s office staff told parents, children, and DCS inspectors that they had too few staff at the Youth Justice and Education Center as early as October 2023.

The facility opened in July 2023 as a replacement for the county’s old detention center, a squat brick building attached to the juvenile court in downtown Memphis filled with mold and asbestos. 

The Youth Justice and Education Center building had once been a CoreCivic facility that housed youth offenders. At least one teen committed suicide in the CoreCivic facility; another attempted to hang himself, failed, and was left with permanent brain damage. The building was bought, renovated, and renamed by the county. 

The Youth Justice and Education Center is bigger than the old detention center. It also holds more children, even after the sheriff repurposed “a number of rooms to ensure they would not be used for housing,” according to letters sent by Sheriff Floyd Bonner to Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon. These letters were provided to MLK50 by a sheriff’s representative. 

The sheriff wrote that his office had been asked “whether allowing the purchase of such a large facility would be granting permission to fill it up.” Almost as soon as the center began operations, the number of children incarcerated there began to increase rapidly, according to sheriff’s office data. 

In January 2023, the county’s old juvenile detention center held an average of 62 children, according to sheriff’s office data. By July 2023 — when the Youth Justice and Education Center opened — that number had risen to 81. And by January 2024, an average of 120 children were incarcerated daily. 

Court data also shows that youth were also kept in detention for increasing amounts of time. In fiscal year 2022, children were held in detention for an average of 33.9 days; by fiscal year 2024, this average increased to 43.7 days. In at least one case, a child incarcerated in fiscal year 2024 was held in the center for 477 days. 

Memphis-Shelby County Juvenile Court magistrates — not the sheriff’s office — choose whether children should be incarcerated at the center. Juvenile detention centers, similar to jails in the adult system, are used to house youth who have been charged with crimes but have not yet had their case adjudicated. Tennessee law makes it easier to detain youth deemed a flight risk or an immediate threat to public safety. 

It’s unclear why court officials incarcerated more youth in this period. Between fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2024, the number of youth charged with serious offenses declined slightly. When asked why court officials had started to detain more children, a representative for the court said that “other risk factors” could explain why a child is incarcerated even when they have not been charged with serious offenses. The representative did not say what those risk factors were, though she suggested that some youth are incarcerated because they don’t have a parent or guardian to pick them up. 

“It is no secret that there are 90 to 100+ youth in the facility every day,” Bonner told Judge Sugarmon in a November 2023 letter provided to MLK50 by a sheriff’s representative. “That far exceeds what was anticipated and planned for by the SCSO and our partners, including the schools, and the food and medical providers.” 

During an Oct. 17, 2023, inspection, Tennessee Department of Children’s Services inspectors found that the Youth Justice and Education Center met the mandated staff-to-youth ratio, according to the final inspection report reviewed by MLK50. The inspector did not describe how she calculated this ratio. 

And yet, during the same Oct. 17 inspection, Assistant Chief Jailer Takietha Tuggle told a DCS inspector that the facility was “short-staffed,” according to the final report. 

In late November 2023, a consultant hired by the juvenile court inspected the center. The consultant’s report, which MLK50 obtained via records request, found that “the most significant challenge identified by the facility leadership team is staffing, the inability to fill the positions at the sight [sic] and retain staff once hired.” 

“… when the population of youth in custody is high, then we do have some staffing challenges as relates to children going outside.”

Shelby County Sheriff Chief Deputy Anthony Buckner

During a March 2024 inspection, Tuggle told a DCS inspector “that she is continuing to have staffing issues,” according to the inspector’s report. Still, in October 2024, a DCS inspector once again found that the facility was in compliance with mandated staff-to-youth ratios. Once again, the inspector did not describe how she calculated the ratio. 

In early 2025, an inspector from the state comptroller’s office visited the Youth Justice and Education Center as part of an audit of DCS’s oversight of juvenile facilities across the state. 

While the facility’s leadership provided the comptroller inspector with evidence of how many staff were on duty and how many youth were housed in the facility each day, it “did not include sufficient detail to calculate staffing ratios for each dorm on any given date or shift,” according to the audit report. 

As a result, the comptroller reported that “we could not determine whether the facility complied with the required staffing ratios.”

A sheriff’s office spokesperson did not respond when directly asked whether the facility had enough staff. They also did not answer MLK50’s questions about the comptroller’s report. 

Every other juvenile detention center inspected by the comptroller was out of compliance with staff-to-youth ratios, the report stated. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a national shortage of correctional officers. In several states, staffing shortages have led prison officials to keep incarcerated people in solitary confinement for months at a time. 

In March 2024, 10 Memphis-area organizations penned a letter alleging that the Shelby County sheriff did not allow children incarcerated at the center to see their parents, go to school or go outside. 

In response, Sheriff Chief Deputy Anthony Buckner said at a press conference that the sheriff’s office sometimes has too few staff to let children go outside. “When the numbers are low, we have adequate staffing. But when the population of youth in custody is high, then we do have some staffing challenges as relates to children going outside.” 

Youth and parents who spoke with MLK50 say Youth Justice and Education Center staff told them that the facility was short-staffed. These children say that they were rarely, if ever, allowed to use the center’s outdoor recreation area. A sheriff’s office spokesperson said that the youth were allowed to go outside. 

Allowing children to leave their housing units, whether for recreation or to attend school, can require more staff than keeping them in their housing units, said Mark Soler, who consulted with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office on the elimination of solitary confinement inside the old juvenile detention center from 2015 to 2020.

Every child inside Tennessee detention facilities must be directly supervised by staff at all times, per DCS rules. As a result, the 1:8 staff to youth ratio must be maintained when children are in their housing unit, when they’re moving around the facility, and when they’re in school, said Anthony Alexander, Shelby County’s director of corrections.

“There may not be enough staff to take a group of eight or 10 or 12 kids to school.” 

Mark Soler, consultant with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office on the elimination of solitary confinement inside the old juvenile detention center

For example, if there are 16 children in one housing unit, at least two staff must be present in that unit. If all 16 children go to school every school day, then both staff members are needed to transport them to school. 

But not all children inside a detention facility go to school each day. Some haven’t been enrolled yet, and some have already graduated from school. As a result, if one of the 16 children does not go to school, the number of staff members needed increases to three: two staff members to transport children to school, and one to remain in the housing unit. 

This is why staffing shortages can affect “every part of the facility,” said Soler. “There may not be enough staff to take a group of eight or 10 or 12 kids to school.” 

Before the Division of Corrections took over the center, Alexander completed a staffing analysis that showed the Division of Corrections would need 148 staff members to maintain the proper staff-to-youth ratios when the center is at maximum capacity. The center is licensed to hold 146 children. In July 2025, the sheriff’s office employed 71 staffers at the center. 

When asked about the discrepancy between his staffing analysis and the number of sheriff’s office staff at the center, Alexander said he “couldn’t speak to what the sheriff is doing.”

When asked to comment on the reporting in this article, a sheriff’s office spokesman said the sheriff’s office never kept youth in solitary confinement inside the center. Still, the spokesman acknowledged that when the detention center population increased, fewer youth were allowed out of their rooms. 

“Youth facilities must have 1 officer for 8 children during waking hours,” he wrote. “That 1:8 ratio drove what happened when the population soared. When the population was between 100-120, the number of youth who could be out of their rooms with officers was more limited.”

“The Sheriff has said repeatedly that we planned for a population of 40-60,” the spokesman added. “With the newly elected Judge came an ever increasing population. The disposition times were lengthy. Youth are held for many months, some for over a year.”

A spokesperson for juvenile court declined to comment on the sheriff’s statement. 

The sheriff’s office spokesperson did not respond when asked why children had to be kept in their cells to maintain the staff-to-youth ratio.

“There ain’t no officers. Ain’t nobody going to school.”

DeShaun organized his days inside the Youth Justice and Education Center around sleeping. Early in his incarceration, he developed a routine: Each morning, he would perform as many push-ups as he could. “With push-ups, your body is going to be exhausted,” he said. “So I just work out, make my body exhausted, and go to sleep.”

He craved stimulation, but there was almost nothing inside his cell. Sometimes he communicated with other children in his housing unit, F-pod, by speaking through a vent, which he reached by standing on top of his toilet. When he was allowed to go to the detention center’s school, Hope Academy, he would stuff crossword puzzles into his pockets to complete later. But he didn’t always feel like talking, and it didn’t take him very long to solve a crossword. His most reliable pastime was sleep. 

“I was taking eight naps a day,” he said. “It’s the fastest way to get through a day.” 

It was often harder to rest at night. The thin mattress in his cell had been laid on top of a concrete ledge that served as a bed, and the fabric of his blanket scratched his skin. He didn’t have a pillow. Sometimes, he could hear the other kids in his housing unit yelling through the cracks in his door late into the night. 

Eventually, he solved this problem. He noticed that each night, some other kids in the center got a pill that sent them into an easy sleep. He realized that if he told the guards he had nightmares, they would give him a pill, too. 

“They give you a glass of water, and they drop a white pill in there,” he said. “And when the pill dissolves underneath the water, they get you to drink.” A few minutes later, he’d fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. 

Two parents, who spoke with MLK50 independently of each other, said that their children were given pills by sheriff’s office staff when they were incarcerated in the center. MLK50 could not independently verify what these pills were. When asked about these pills, a sheriff’s office spokesperson did not respond with a comment. 

DeShaun was incarcerated at the Youth Justice and Education Center until his case was resolved: a week and a half after his arrest. During that period, he was allowed to go to school every other weekday. Every day he wasn’t taken to school, he spent alone in his cell. 

DeShaun said that guards told him that there weren’t enough staff members to let him out of his cell. Sometimes, there was just one staff member to supervise both his housing unit and another, he said. If this happened on a weekend — typically, when parents came to see their children at the center — visitation would be cancelled. 

“Say my mom is trying to come see me, but [the guard] has two pods,” he said. ‘Pods’ is another name for the housing units. “[The guard] would say, ‘Tell your folks to come next Sunday, because I got two pods. I’m ain’t trying to do all that. […] I ain’t trying to take you to the visitation room.’”

A sheriff’s office spokesperson did not respond when asked about this incident. 

Other children who spoke with MLK50 reported similar incidents. One teen who was incarcerated for over a year between 2023 and 2025 said that he was frequently prevented from going to school and held inside his cell instead. 

“There ain’t no officers,” he says the guards told him. “Ain’t nobody going to school.” 

“Sometimes we’d be on 23 and 1 for a week,” he added. “Because there ain’t no officers.”

A sheriff’s office spokesperson did not respond when asked about these claims. 

Inspection reports and attendance records obtained via records request and reviewed by MLK50 show that school attendance was a persistent problem at the Youth Justice and Education Center. 

The consultant hired by juvenile court to inspect the facility in 2023 noted in a final report that “it was observed that a significant number of youth were confined in their rooms,” and that only “55 of the 102 youth were in school (Hope Academy) on the day of our visit.”  Similarly, an October 2023 DCS inspection report reviewed by MLK50 noted that “youths are generally in school two to three times per week.”

These attendance issues are also reflected in Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ own records. On average, 1 in 4 youth enrolled in Hope Academy, the detention center’s school, were absent each day during the 2023-2024 school year. Given that not all incarcerated children are enrolled in Hope Academy — some youth have already aged out of the school system, and others were never there long enough to register — it’s unclear what proportion of the center’s population actually attended school each day that year. 

When asked about school attendance, a sheriff’s office spokesperson wrote, “Staffing issues […] have caused the youth to split their days in school, with half in the morning and half in the afternoon.”

A spokesperson for Memphis-Shelby County Schools did not respond to a request for comment about attendance at Hope Academy. 

Several other children and parents interviewed by MLK50 identified problems with access to education within the center. Most youth said they attended school a few times a week, or every other day, but not every weekday. 

Mark Soler said solitary confinement is a common response to staff shortages. 

“I’ve gone into a state facility and seen terrible, terrible understaffing,” he said. “In order to keep safety in the facility, [staff] just lock the kids up in their rooms, often for long periods of time.”

In Tennessee, seclusion — a synonym for solitary confinement — is defined as “the involuntary segregation of a child from the rest of the resident population, regardless of the reason for the segregation, including confinement to a locked unit or ward where other children may be seen or heard but are separated from those children,” said Zoe Jamail, a former policy director at Disability Rights Tennessee who co-authored a report alleging abuses at the Wilder Youth Development Center in Somerville, Tennessee. 

State law permits seclusion for up to two hours continuously, and no more than six hours in an entire day during waking hours. It is only allowed as “a temporary response to behavior that threatens immediate harm to a youth or others.” Seclusion cannot be used for any length of time for administrative convenience, as a punishment, or as a response to staffing levels. 

“What the young people are describing sounds like exactly what the statute […] aims to prevent,” said Jamail. 

Solitary confinement worsens recidivism

DeShaun grew up in a housing complex on the former site of Dixie Homes, one of Memphis’ first public housing projects. Dixie Homes was created to be segregated housing, and it remained mostly Black even after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. Like other public housing developments across the nation, funding for Dixie Home was cut in the 80s. It had fallen into disrepair by the 2000s and was demolished in 2006. 

A new development was built to fill Dixie Homes’ absence, called Legends Park. But residents still call it Dixie Homes, and it was still “the hood,” DeShaun said. “There were addicts. Everybody wanted to be a gangster.” 

He started carrying a gun when he was 13. As he saw it, “if you want to fight me or play tough, I can do the same thing.” 

“In the long run, we know that kids who are detained have much worse outcomes, and that harms public safety in general.”

Joshua Rovner, senior analyst at the Sentencing Project

This view isn’t unique to DeShaun. A 2024 qualitative study of teenage boys and young men who live in high-crime neighborhoods in Baltimore, Houston, Wilmington, Delaware and Jackson, Mississippi, found that many owned a gun to keep themselves safe. “In their opinion, surviving in this environment required a gun,” the study’s authors wrote. 

That gun led to his first arrest when he was 15 years old. He was charged with the unlawful possession of a weapon and incarcerated at the county’s juvenile detention center. 

Unlike the adult criminal justice system, under Tennessee law, the juvenile justice system must rehabilitate — not punish — children. After he was found guilty, DeShaun was put on probation and forced to attend a class about gun safety.

DeShaun’s stay in the county’s juvenile detention center wasn’t part of this rehabilitation. Juvenile detention centers aren’t designed to rehabilitate youth, said Joshua Rovner, a senior analyst at the Sentencing Project. Children in detention haven’t been found guilty of a crime — they are still waiting for a resolution to their case — and “you don’t offer treatment and you don’t offer accountability to people who didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. 

At the same time, putting youth in these centers might make them more likely to reoffend in the future. Across the United States, “the centers themselves are rife with abuse, and the children are often kept in very traumatic conditions,” said Rovner. “In the long run, we know that kids who are detained have much worse outcomes, and that harms public safety in general.”

A few months after DeShaun was arrested for the first time, he was arrested again — this time, he was charged with vehicle theft. He says he didn’t steal the car, and the charges against him were eventually dismissed. Once again, he was incarcerated in the county’s juvenile detention center. 

He was arrested and incarcerated for a third time two years later, after attempting to sell a stolen car. This time, he was held in solitary confinement. 

Solitary confinement itself is linked with recidivism. For children, solitary confinement can permanently disrupt normal social development, said Dr. Terry Kupers, a professor emeritus at the Wright Institute and expert in solitary confinement. 

“If a 14- or 15-year-old […] learns how to interact socially in a peaceful and productive way, then they do relatively well,” he said. “Whereas, if they’re blocked in those pursuits, for instance, in detention and isolation, then they’re going to have a much more challenged life from then on.” 

Isolation often leads to depression, suicidal thoughts, or psychotic episodes. It also leads to the kind of anger that makes it difficult to interact with others, said Kupers. 

People held in solitary confinement “have an objective reason for their anger,” Kupers said. But they also tell him, “‘I just keep getting angrier and angrier and I don’t know why.’ So laid on top of the legitimate cause for anger, they have an irrational anger that keeps mounting,” he said.

The longer DeShaun spent inside his cell, the angrier he became. When he saw other kids leave their cells while he remained in his, they became the targets of his anger. 

“I couldn’t be too angry with the guards,” DeShaun said. “They got control of me. If I called them the B-word or something, now I can’t call my mom for the rest of the week. But the kids, I’m taking that out on kids, not gonna lie. Everybody takes it out on the kids.” 

Facilities do not have to rely on solitary confinement to control behavior, Soler said. 

“It can be handled totally differently,” he said. “The staff should talk to the kid and ask what’s wrong.  […] Kids do things for all kinds of reasons, but they generally have a reason.”

That was not the approach DeShaun experienced. “Those guards, they don’t be too nice,” he said. “You would think somebody would treat you nice. You in a bad position. But they treat you like nothing.” 

Rebecca Cadenhead is the youth life and justice reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. She is also a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email her  rebecca.cadenhead@mlk50.com.

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