COVID-19 analysis: Juveniles were restrained less; a fraction of parents didn’t know how to contact incarcerated children as in-person visits slowed during pandemic

Fewer juveniles were placed in restraints and more reported that they’ve had positives dealings with staffers at juvenile agencies, according to April 2021 data voluntarily submitted by 148 pre-trial and other short-term detention facilities, longer-term correctional facilities, assessment and in-community residential programs in 32 states.

Released in August by the Performance-based Standards Learning Institute, partnering with Vera Institute, the snapshots of data gauge COVID-19’s impact on  juveniles in those states and on their families who, with in-person visits banned during he pandemic, had to find other ways to connect.

Based on 55,000 incident reports about juveniles either in detention facilities or community-based residential programs from 2018 to 2021, analysts concluded that detention centers, which historically used restraints more than long-term correctional, employed those restraints less often.

Analysts wrote that, during the month of April 2021 alone:

• In detention facilities, physical restraints were used seven or eight times.  Mechanical restraints were used less than three times.
• In an average 39-bed correction facility, physical restraints were used 11 to12 times and mechanical restraints six to seven times during the same period.
• As fewer restraints were used, more youths responded positively to eight standardly asked questions in October 2020 than in the previous two years.
• The relatively small increases — to 4% from 2% — were, nonetheless, worth highlighting.

Results of 2,623 surveys of youths’ family members, conducted from April 20019 to April 2021, found that:

• 8% of family members said they did not know how to call their child.
• 9% said they did not know how to visit their child.
• The proportion of relatives preferring video-calling to stay in touch with their child jumped from 3% to 31% since the pandemic started.
• The proportion of relatives preferring in-person visits dropped to 22% in April 2021 from 52% in April 2019.
• 89% of family members said they felt that their child was safe at the facility.
• 96% said they had spoken to their children, usually by telephone, from October 2020 to April 2021.
• 52% had in-person visits with their children during that period. That compared to 60% during the previous six months, and 79% from October 2019 through April 2020.