A US hellhole juvenile detention centre is so overcrowded that young inmates are forced to spend entire days on the floor on mattresses like 'animals'.
The Philadelphia Youth Center is a 150,000 square foot Juvenile Justice Services Center that, officially provides a range of services for teens and young adults, mainly acting as a short-term residential detention facility that offers social and educational programs.
However, the 10-year-old centre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has come under harsh criticism for the conditions there, as one recent report suggests that 246 kids are packed into the facility designed for 184, as pictures released by the city show the dire conditions inside.
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Gabby Jackson, fromthe city's Youth Art and Self-Empowerment Project, said 75% of the inmates were there for probation or house arrest violations. "They feel they treat them as if they're animals," she added.
The facility, reportedly designed to have a 'campus environment', is divided into living, learning, dining, recreation, counseling, judicial and administrative areas, including a 10,000 square foot state-of-the-art medical and dental suite.
So, on the face of it, it should leave former inmates ready for a life on the straight and narrow. But Bre Stoves, a former inmate, claims that the truth is very far from the official line.
"These systems [aren't] here to rehabilitate, they're here to create repeat offenders. Because a lot of times kids come in and once … they say, it's easy to get in, it's hard to get out," the 19-year-old said last year.
Pictures released by the city show the overcrowding, with children snapped on rudimentary mattresses mere inches from one another lined up on the harsh ground. Some kids were even seen sleeping underneath benches inside the facility.
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Children often hide under blankets from the lights, which are switched on 24 hours a day.
Keisha Hudson of the Defender Association of Philadelphia said: "Our children are very frustrated because the time they are sitting in center, or lying on a mattress on the floor with lights on 24 hours a day."
CBS reported this time last year that the centre's overcrowding forced the city to sue the state in an effort to shrink the youth population inside.
A judge ordered youth offenders to be sent to other detention centres, including possible placement in Texas and northeastern Pennsylvania, sometimes hundreds of miles away from their families.
"Sending them hours away where their attorneys have a difficult time reaching them, to a part of the state which they are not familiar with and their families can't go and visit, that's not fair," Nicole El with the Defenders Association of Philadelphia said.
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But Department of Human Services Deputy Commissioner Gary Williams, who runs the Juvenile Justice Services Center, believes that focus should remain on improving conditions at the facility.
He said in July that there’s about one staff member for every 12 to 15 residents.
The effect on kids can be disastrous. Some reports emerged claiming that some children were fashioning makeshift weapons.
A spokesman for the state said it had 'made great progress', and is expecting to open a 60-bed facility in the coming weeks.
But the centre's chief legal officer Marsha Levick isn't convinced.
"Those pictures speak a thousand words. We do not take a particularly humane approach to how we deal with children who come into contact with our justice system."
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