4 February 13 - 19, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents What Waters and his team wanted was a voice in the hiring process. Somehow, some way. But their collective voice wasn’t wel- comed. Although Waters and his team would meet with Griffiths in the weeks after the press conference, the recruiting process for the new director rolled on without them. Even with the support of Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins and District 2 Dallas County Commissioner Andy Som- mermon, both of whom serve on the Dallas County Juvenile Board, the Dallas Black Clergy was shut out. In December, it was revealed that the ju- venile board had selected someone to offer the director job to. Lynn Hadnot, who was currently serving as the Collin County juve- nile services director, was the final candidate standing after an interview process took place behind closed doors. On Jan. 27, Had- not was officially named as the new director. Those who had spoken most loudly on behalf of the incarcerated youth for so long went unheard in the months their words were arguably most needed. When county juvenile board officials knew the commu- nity was watching, no one was allowed in. Advocates the Observer spoke to are cau- tiously optimistic about Hadnot’s track re- cord and what that could mean for progress in Dallas County, but the way in which such a pivotal hire was made practically in secret gives Waters and others doubts. W ith a juvenile recidivism rate in Texas of around 20% within three years of release as recent as 2022, the notion that a juvenile deten- tion center should be a place for rehabilita- tion is vital. When a juvenile detention center is mismanaged, allowing mistreat- ment to occur, the likelihood of the incar- cerated experiencing anything close to rehabilitation decreases tremendously, ac- cording to advocates. That’s perhaps the biggest of the many big problems Waters sees when a new re- port detailing poor treatment of minors be- hind bars appears. It was certainly a major concern for him when it came to the former director. “We are not strengthened as a commu- nity when we only function with a punitive desire as opposed to being rehabilitative,” he said. “If there was a damning statement that came in this whole process, it came from Director Beatty at the press confer- ence in July when he stated on the record that ‘we are not in the business of rehabili- tation.’ That’s a crying shame and it’s not true. We’re hoping we can continue the work of supporting the deflecting of young people from even arriving at [the detention center’s] doorstep.” Waters has spoken to a number of indi- viduals, including members of his own con- gregation, who now as adults, still suffer from trauma they experienced in Henry Wade. Waters said many of them feel per- manently scarred by their experience there. T hat September day wasn’t the first time the leadership of the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center had been called out by the state. Going back to mid-2023, reports in the media had brought unwanted attention to the facili- ty’s management and employees. Former inmates had detailed a number of prob- lems, including an extreme lack of out- door time while being locked in cells for up to 23 hours a day, as well as a lack of ac- cess to showers. In July 2024, Beatty and other officials denied all allegations relating to poor liv- ing conditions and inhumane treatment, including egregious solitary confinement, in the press conference Waters referred to. Just a couple days before that, however, Waters and the Dallas Black Clergy had gathered in the center’s parking lot, with a few umbrellas propped up for a bit of shade, to call attention to assorted stories of mistreatment inside the center, includ- ing words from a pair of former Wade in- mates who echoed the harrowing stories of mistreatment that had been featured in local news. In June 2023, The Dallas Morning News interviewed a 17-year-old named Mark Halstead who told the paper that he had only been outside once in 11 months. That was just months after one report found that Dallas County was “locking up minors for months longer than national standards rec- ommend and is doling out more punitive judgments than some other big Texas counties.” Just a couple weeks after he issued his sweeping denial of any impropriety at Henry Wade in July of last year, Beatty re- signed from his position as the Texas Office of Inspector General opened a new investi- gation into the center following an unan- nounced visit by inspectors. Because of a long string of damning reports, Waters and other advocates were hardly surprised by what that state inspector general’s report eventually noted in more detail in Septem- ber 2024. What was needed at that point,wasn’t more reporting or more talking, but genuine change. The change, however, wouldn’t in- clude community input. W aters wasn’t looking to conduct any job interviews, nor was he hoping, let alone expecting to have a vote or a say in the matter when it came to deciding between one candidate or another. But he felt justified in demanding that serious candidates being considered for the post meet with the community, for the candidates to hear from them. “We had issued a demand that we be in- cluded as a part of the interview process, but that never materialized,” Water said in De- cember, just after it was reported that Hadnot had been selected for the juvenile board di- rector role. “So we were never brought in to be a part of the process, and that is certainly in keeping with what has been our experi- ence largely throughout this process. We’ve made demands for greater transparency… I also know that [former] Director Griffith had mentioned that in his process of interviewing over the years, he had been a part of a com- munity panel, so this is not a novel idea.” In late December, it was announced that Hadnot had been selected by the nine-mem- ber juvenile board, chaired by Judge Cheryl Lee Shannon. There was no public input ac- cepted, and none of the candidate names had been disclosed before Hadnot’s hire was announced. The board wouldn’t make the appointment official until Jan. 27, but the decision indeed had been made. Although seemingly all of the steps of the hiring process had been carried out without much, if any, transparency, Judge Shannon bristled at the notion of the hire being made in secret when the Observer reached her to ask if announcing the hire after a “closed door vote.” That was one of several questions we asked, but it’s the only one that elicited any response. “I will respond only to the narrative be- ing advanced that there was some ‘closed door vote,’” Shannon said via email. “This is completely false. The vote was taken as posted and per the Open Meetings Act.” Technically, the judge is correct. By the letter of the law, the Jan. 27 meeting fea- tured a public vote in favor of hiring Handot. But no one is disputing the fact that the deci- sion to hire Hadnot had indeed been made a month before that, and the process up until that point was anything but open. Commissioner Sommerman told the Ob- server that the decision to not release the names of the candidates being interviewed for the position was made by a majority of the board “to protect the identity of those who had applied for the job,” as such infor- mation could theoretically harm the appli- cant’s present employment. Sommerman was not part of that majority. “If we were talking about a regular job with ABC Corporation, then yeah, you expect to have a certain amount of closedness to the application process. We all understand that,” Sommerman said. “But this is a public entity, and not only is it a public entity, but it’s one of the most senior , public positions we have here, affecting a great number of individuals. It’s the second largest department we have in the county and it pays a lot of money.” (For- mer Director Beatty reportedly received an annual salary of more than $246,000.) Sommerman describes the effort to offer more transparency when it comes to the workings of the county juvenile department as “an ongoing fight” and said he is working to “reimagine the board” so that greater transparency in these areas will be less of a battle in the future. Sommerman also shed light on the pro- cess leading up to the Hadnot decision that, again, was simply not transparent. “The debate about who it should be is what was closed,” he said. “What questions did we ask, what did we consider, are the community’s concerns being addressed and what are the applicants’ positions with re- gards to what the community concerns are? These are the sorts of things I thought needed to be brought to the forefront and be very open about.” Somerman isn’t even sure where the re- ports of Hadnot being “unanimously” ap- proved as the final candidate came Nathan Hunsinger Michael Waters, the president of the Dallas Black Clergy, called the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center a “house of horrors.” Unfair Park from p3 >> p6
