Juvenile center melee carries $5,000 repair bill

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BY CHUCK VANDENBERG
PCC EDITOR

MONTROSE - The South Iowa Area Crime Commission has released information on the melee that took place at the Southern Iowa Juvenile Detention Center in Montrose last week.

According to SIACC director Carrie Folkerts, repairs and cleanup from the facility will cost close to $5,000 including replacing a window that was damaged in the incident.

Folkerts said some of the equipment that was damaged has been repaired. She said this was an issue of kids just not doing what they were told.

"Usually if there's an incident like that, we just tell the kids to go to their rooms and, in most cases, they listen. In this case they didn't want to go," Folkerts said.

She said three of the kids were level three offenders which means they have more privileges because they haven't been problem kids in the past.

Here is the day room at the Southern Iowa Juvenile Detention Center in Montrose after four juveniles ransacked the room causing approximately $5,000 in damage. Several coolers were damaged and a window was broken during the incident. No injuries were reported. Courtesy photo.

"They were just bored I guess and decided to see what they could do," she said. "Unfortunately for us, the detention officers have different standards going hands-on with kids as opposed to adult jail. There are restrictions because of their age. But in these recent instances, when law enforcement showed up, the kids stopped and there was no incident after that."

Folkerts said the staff at the center does a great job but sometimes kids just act up and the center is looking at options to help curtail some of the recent activities.

This Monday's incident and another incident in December that sent a staffer to the hospital with a head wound, all involved overflow offenders from Davenport.

"It does seem like they like to incite things," she said. "We do try to look at what we're taking and when other areas have overflow, they try to send the best behaved kids out."

Another contributing factor may be the kids are suddenly away from visitors and are acting out.

"Maybe some of these kids had a lot of visitors when they were up there and now they don't have that, so it becomes a hardship and could be causing some of the misbehavior. But we're trying to look at all kinds of different factors," Folkerts said.

The funds to repair and clean the facility after the damage will come from SIACC operating funds. Most of the funds received come from the Department of Human Services, but she said the center does make additional revenue off housing out-of-area offenders.

crime, fort madison, iowa, juveniles, lee county, Montrose, Pen City Current, Southeast Iowa Juvenile Detention Center

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