JACKSON - Mississippi has reached a settlement with federal officials over allegations of abuse at juvenile facilities, where offenders were sometimes hogtied or forced to eat their own vomit, authorities said Wednesday.
Under the agreement, Mississippi has to improve its special education, mental health, medical and suicide prevention programs at Oakley Training School and Columbia Training School - the two facilities where the abuse was alleged, Attorney General Jim Hood said.
A paramilitary program at the training schools will continue, but students with mental health or physical problems will be excluded.
R. Alexander Acosta, the assistant attorney general for civil rights for the Justice Department, said a juvenile justice expert will monitor the state's progress under the four-year decree.
He said the settlement lays out guidelines, but the Justice Department won't micromanage the state program.
"Mississippi is taking the lead on what works here," Acosta said.
The settlement provisions also include more money for the two campuses, said I. Lanier Avant, chief of staff for Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.
"While the settlement agreement reached by the Justice Department and the state is not perfect, it does represent the return of some semblance of decency to the juvenile justice system," Thompson said in a statement.
The Justice Department sued Mississippi in December 2003 over conditions at the facilities.
A Justice Department report before the lawsuit was filed said young people at the two campuses had been hogtied, shackled to poles, ordered to exercise at odd hours and forced to eat their own vomit when they got sick from the exertion.
The report also said staff members at Oakley and Columbia had used "excessive force with impunity" and criticized inadequate health services.
"This is a very serious, long-standing problem," said Gov. Haley Barbour, adding that the state would provide more money for the system improvements.
He wouldn't say how much it would cost to implement the changes.
Columbia, located in south Mississippi, houses 69 girls, ages 12 to 17.
There are 239 boys at Oakley, located several miles east of Jackson, ranging in age from 12 to 18. The majority of the youth are nonviolent offenders.
Mississippi began making changes in its juvenile justice system shortly after the report was released.
This year, Barbour signed into law a bill that would create more community-based programs as an alternative to incarceration. The law also creates a monitoring unit for the training schools.
House Juvenile Justice Chairman George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg, who has been a staunch advocate of revamping the system, said next year he will file a bill to phase out the paramilitary program at Columbia.
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