This text was produced by WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, a 2023 ProPublica Native Reporting Community companion. Join Dispatches to get our tales in your inbox each week.
Richard L. Bean, the longtime superintendent of the East Tennessee juvenile detention middle that bears his title, abruptly introduced Friday that he might be stepping down. His choice to retire got here the day after the Knox County mayor mentioned he had misplaced confidence in Bean’s management.
Bean, 84, has been superintendent of the juvenile detention middle since 1972. A 2023 investigation from WPLN and ProPublica discovered the power was utilizing solitary confinement greater than different detention facilities within the state. Typically the youngsters had been locked up alone for hours or days at a time. That form of confinement was additionally used as punishment, in violation of state legislation.
On the time, Bean broadly defended the practices on the facility, saying he wished he had extra punitive talents and that individuals who pushed again didn’t perceive what was obligatory.
After the story ran, the top of the detention middle’s governing board informed native TV station WBIR that he thought the Bean middle was “the very best facility within the state of Tennessee.”
Renewed scrutiny on the detention middle started final week when Bean dismissed two staff, together with the power’s solely nurse. The nurse’s termination was first reported by Knox Information, and the mayor described her dismissal as “retaliation” as a result of she had reported to state investigators vital points with medical care on the facility, which she mentioned went unchecked and unaddressed by Bean.
On Wednesday, Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs and juvenile court docket Decide Tim Irwin wrote a letter to Bean demanding he reinstate each staff. Irwin is a nonvoting member of the middle’s governing board of trustees however selects one in all its three voting members.
“These dismissals might properly result in lawsuits towards you and the county,” the letter reads, “which may value the taxpayers a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars}.”
The next day, Jacobs wrote a letter to the governor calling for rapid state intervention and detailing points with treatment within the facility going lacking, errors with treatment reporting and “even treatment going to the flawed detainees.”
In a public video assertion, Jacobs mentioned he had “no confidence that these points might be addressed with the middle’s present management or the governing board that oversees the Bean juvenile detention middle.” He referred to as for the Knox County Sheriff’s Workplace to take over operation of the middle however mentioned he has restricted energy to intervene.
By Friday, Bean introduced that he would depart his submit as superintendent in two months after he will get the power “shipshape,” in keeping with a press launch. He didn’t reply to requests for remark however mentioned within the press launch that his final day might be Aug. 1.
Throughout WPLN and ProPublica’s investigation of the Bean middle, paperwork revealed that state officers repeatedly had put the Bean middle on corrective motion plans and had documented its improper use of seclusion but continued to approve the middle’s license to function with out the power altering its methods.
“What we do is deal with all people like they’re in right here for homicide,” Bean informed WPLN throughout a 2023 go to to the power. “You don’t have an issue when you try this.” A lot of the youngsters within the Bean middle should not in for homicide and as a substitute are awaiting court docket dates after being charged with a criminal offense.
When requested if he was fearful he may get in bother for the way in which he was operating the power, Bean mentioned, “If I obtained in bother for it, I consider I may speak to whoever obtained me in bother and get out of it.”
