Employees at Colorado’s juvenile detention facilities violated insurance policies meant to guard youth throughout strip searches greater than 1,000 occasions throughout 9 months between 2023 and 2025, in response to a brand new evaluation by the Child Protection Ombudsman of Colorado launched Tuesday.
There isn’t a efficient oversight to make sure strip searches at juvenile detention facilities are justified and correctly documented, the evaluation discovered, and the overwhelming majority of youth strip searches didn’t reveal any contraband, elevating questions on how Colorado Division of Youth Services workers members are utilizing the invasive process.
In a single occasion, 5 youth in a detention heart have been strip-searched as a result of considered one of them may need been charging a vape pen in a pc classroom, the evaluation discovered. In one other occasion, a 14-year-old boy was held in a room by himself for greater than 10 hours till he consented to a strip search. One other time, a youth was strip-searched thrice in in the future as a result of workers believed he possessed drug paraphernalia, the report discovered.
Nothing was discovered throughout any of these searches, the workplace reported.
AnneMarie Harper, a spokeswoman for the Division of Youth Companies, mentioned in an announcement Tuesday that the company would examine the ombudsman’s findings.
“In relation to searches of youth in our care, DYS workers is skilled to steadiness private privateness whereas additionally taking a trauma-informed method,” she mentioned. “These efforts assist to make it possible for harmful supplies and substances that might put all youth and workers in danger will not be in our amenities.”
The ombudsman’s workplace found 1,006 coverage violations throughout 1,009 youth strip searches statewide throughout three three-month stretches in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Division of Youth Companies workers members didn’t doc supervisor approval for searches, carried out searches with only one workers member current when two are required, and failed to obviously doc the explanations for searches or the outcomes, in response to the report.
“If you end up speaking concerning the strip search of youth, we’ve to be extremely cautious that we’re documenting each element and attempting to deal with these youth as safely as attainable,” mentioned Stephanie Villafuerte, the kid safety ombudsman.
‘Cheap suspicion’ for search
About 2,000 youth between the ages of 10 and 21 are housed at juvenile detention facilities statewide, in response to the report. They’re strip-searched once they arrive on the amenities, after visits with household, and after returning to the detention facilities from courtroom or different appointments. However they’re additionally topic to strip searches when a workers member has “affordable suspicion” to consider a juvenile may need contraband.
The ombudsman’s evaluation centered solely on these searches for affordable suspicion, which the report famous is “arguably probably the most subjective” cause for a search, a course of throughout which youth totally undress and an grownup workers member appears at their bare physique.
The apply is inherently traumatic, even when executed utterly inside coverage, the report famous. Youth who’re dedicated to a detention heart are extra seemingly than different juveniles to have suffered abuse and neglect, and strip searches can retraumatize them.
“Strip searches are traumatizing for anybody, and maybe notably for youngsters,” mentioned Jessica Feierman, senior managing director at Juvenile Law Center. “They’re very conscious of their our bodies, their our bodies are altering, so it’s a second the place a strip search can have distinctive hurt.”
Strip searches ought to be used sparingly, she mentioned, and ideally in no way — options like handheld metallic detectors or airport-style physique scanners can typically be simply as efficient at revealing contraband, Feierman mentioned.
The sheer variety of strip searches of Colorado youth, the lacking documentation about how the searches have been carried out and why, and the low quantity of contraband recovered increase concern, she mentioned.
“All of these issues recommend a heavy overreliance on strip searches, regardless that they’re so dangerous to younger individuals,” she mentioned.
On common, DYS workers members discovered contraband in simply 10% of the 1,009 strip searches for affordable suspicion that the ombudsman’s workplace reviewed.
That low proportion means that detention heart workers are misusing strip searches, mentioned Dana Flores, senior supervisor for youth justice in Colorado on the National Center for Youth Law.
“The report signifies that DYS workers are treating strip searches as a mechanism to say energy and management, and that’s not rehabilitative,” she mentioned. “That’s simply an abuse of discretion by adults who’re alleged to be offering trauma-informed care to younger individuals we all know have already skilled trauma. If solely 10% are turning up contraband, and that’s the rationale behind strip searches… there should be a motivation for workers to maintain doing this that goes above and past merely in search of contraband.”
Contraband — particularly, cocaine and fentanyl — is a ubiquitous drawback throughout Colorado’s youth detention facilities, she added, noting that children who’re jailed typically seek for methods to flee actuality. Strip searches of youth don’t handle the big-picture drawback, she mentioned.
“That in the end isn’t going to handle the basis reason for the issue, which is that this youth has entry to contraband,” she mentioned. “So you possibly can strip search a child on Monday and discover medicine on their individual — the bigger query is what are you doing to supply that younger individual with the suitable behavioral well being therapy and training to handle what could also be a substance abuse dysfunction?”
‘We don’t have documentation’
Division of Youth Companies staff doc strip searches in handwritten logs, the evaluation discovered. That log is meant to incorporate info on when the search was carried out, who accredited and carried out the search, the aim of the search and the result.
Nevertheless, the Baby Safety Ombudsman’s evaluation discovered the data within the log was typically lacking, Villafuerte mentioned.
“We don’t know whether or not these searches are being carried out in a means that’s incorrect, as a result of we don’t have documentation,” she mentioned. “Oftentimes, we don’t know who carried out the search, we don’t know if a number of individuals have been current, we don’t know the underlying affordable suspicion behind the explanation to go looking. With out having the data, it makes it extremely obscure whether or not these searches are being carried out in a means that’s efficient, and if not, what can we do to make them efficient.”
The workplace’s evaluation was prompted by a youth who filed a grievance wherein he alleged he was being wrongly focused for weekly strip searches. The dearth of correct documentation in that youth’s case led the workplace to conduct a statewide evaluation, which confirmed comparable issues.
The ombudsman’s workplace really useful that the Division of Youth Companies maintain digital data about strip searches as an alternative of handwritten ones. The workplace additionally really useful extra oversight of strip searches for affordable suspicion by the Division of Youth Services Quality Assurance, a unit throughout the state Division of Human Companies that’s tasked with oversight of the juvenile detention facilities.
The unit has beforehand reviewed strip searches for youth once they enter a detention heart, however has not usually reviewed practices round strip searches for affordable suspicion, the ombudsman’s workplace discovered.
The ombudsman’s report comes because the Division of Youth Companies shut down the long-troubled Lookout Mountain Youth Companies Heart in Golden final month amid escalating issues with violence and medicines.
Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day.
Initially Revealed:
