Juveniles in Adult Facilities
My 16-Year-Old Is in an Adult Jail and Being Hurt. Where Do I Turn?
He is sixteen. He called once and said he was fine in a voice that was not fine, or he has stopped calling. Somebody has already told you there is nothing to be done, because his case is in adult court, so he is treated as an adult and that is that.
That is not that. The federal standards have a name for him, a written definition, and a housing rule about children held in adult jails. That turns "is my son safe" — a question a jail can answer with a shrug — into a question it has to answer in writing.
The rules have a name for him, and it is not just "inmate"
"Youthful inmate means any person under the age of 18 who is under adult court supervision and incarcerated or detained in a prison or jail."
28 C.F.R. § 115.5 (definitions). If he is sixteen and his case is in adult court, that is him — whether he has been convicted of anything or is still waiting for trial.
The rule about where he sleeps is one sentence:
"A youthful inmate shall not be placed in a housing unit in which the youthful inmate will have sight, sound, or physical contact with any adult inmate through use of a shared dayroom or other common space, shower area, or sleeping quarters."
28 C.F.R. § 115.14(a). Outside the housing unit the facility has two options and only two: "Maintain sight and sound separation between youthful inmates and adult inmates, or ... Provide direct staff supervision when youthful inmates and adult inmates have sight, sound, or physical contact." § 115.14(b).
So ask the specific question in writing, today: where is my son housed, who else is in that unit, and is he sharing a dayroom, shower area or sleeping quarters with adults? You will get a written answer or a written refusal, and the refusal is often worth more. These standards are the measuring stick the facility is held to, not a lawsuit in themselves — but they give you something precise to demand, and a record when it is ignored.
Do not let them "fix" it by locking him alone
A jail told it cannot house a sixteen-year-old among grown men sometimes solves that by putting him in a cell alone, all day, for weeks. The same standard anticipates it:
"Agencies shall make best efforts to avoid placing youthful inmates in isolation to comply with this provision. Absent exigent circumstances, agencies shall not deny youthful inmates daily large-muscle exercise and any legally required special education services to comply with this provision."
§ 115.14(c). So what you are asking for is separation, not isolation. If he is already being held alone, ask in writing how he is getting daily exercise and, if he has an education plan, how that is being met. If a move somewhere safer is what he needs, how to ask for protective custody for someone inside walks through the request.
If another inmate hurt him
In Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), the Supreme Court said "prison officials have a duty ... to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners." But an official is responsible only if he "knows that inmates face a substantial risk of serious harm and disregards that risk by failing to take reasonable measures to abate it," and staff "who actually knew of a substantial risk to inmate health or safety may be found free from liability if they responded reasonably to the risk."
Here is the part families are almost never told. Nobody has to produce a confession: "a factfinder may conclude that a prison official knew of a substantial risk from the very fact that the risk was obvious." A child in a unit with adult men is the kind of risk a court can find was obvious.
So every warning you ever gave anybody is worth something — if it was in writing and it has a date on it. Write down tonight what you already said and to whom. When another inmate assaults him, is the jail responsible goes further into how that gets proven.
If it was staff who hurt him
Which question applies turns on something you need to find out: has he been convicted, or is he still awaiting trial?
For someone already convicted, the Court asked in Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1 (1992), "whether force was applied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm." And do not let it be waved off because nothing was broken: "The absence of serious injury is therefore relevant to the Eighth Amendment inquiry, but does not end it."
For someone not yet convicted the bar is lower. In Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389 (2015), the Court held that "a pretrial detainee must show only that the force purposely or knowingly used against him was objectively unreasonable." Most sixteen-year-olds in an adult jail are waiting for trial. Ask his defense lawyer today which he is, and write the answer down.
The two walls nobody warns you about
The complaint process inside has to finish before a federal lawsuit can start. "No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted." 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a).
Do not assume being sixteen exempts him. The same statute defines the word: "the term 'prisoner' means any person incarcerated or detained in any facility who is accused of, convicted of, sentenced for, or adjudicated delinquent for, violations of criminal law or the terms and conditions of parole, probation, pretrial release, or diversionary program." 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(h).
The word doing the work is available. In Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632 (2016), the Court held that "an inmate is required to exhaust those, but only those, grievance procedures that are 'capable of use' to obtain 'some relief for the action complained of,'" and that a process is not available "when prison administrators thwart inmates from taking advantage of a grievance process through machination, misrepresentation, or intimidation." That is not a loophole to lean on by choice. It is the reason to write down every refused form and every unanswered request, with dates, so that if a court is ever asked whether the process was really open to a frightened teenager, your notes are the answer.
Fear and distress are not enough on their own. "No Federal civil action may be brought by a prisoner confined in a jail, prison, or other correctional facility, for mental or emotional injury suffered while in custody without a prior showing of physical injury or the commission of a sexual act (as defined in section 2246 of title 18)." 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(e). That is the whole reason to get his injuries seen, photographed and written into a record this week, while they are still visible.
What to do today and this week
- Ask the housing question in writing. Where he is housed, who is in that unit, whether he shares a dayroom, shower area or sleeping quarters with adults. Quote § 115.14(a) back to them. Certified mail, and keep your copy.
- Ask for separation, not isolation. In the same letter, ask how he is to be separated without being held alone, and how he is getting exercise and any schooling he is owed.
- Report the danger from the outside, and date it. Ask the facility how a family member reports a threat or an assault, get the name of whoever answers, then send the same thing by email so it is timestamped.
- Get the recording held before it is gone. Cameras get recorded over, often within weeks. Send the preservation letter now — what to send so the jail cannot erase the video has wording you can copy.
- Get him seen, and get it written down. Ask that he be examined and that any injury be photographed, and send a written records request for his file, so the injuries exist on paper and not only in his memory.
- Help him get the complaint in, on the facility's own form, on time. You can draft it; in most systems he has to be the one who signs and files it. How a grievance actually gets filed, step by step covers the mechanics, and our grievances and appeals hub keeps the rest in one place.
- Keep one dated log. Who you called, what they said, what you sent, what came back.
None of this requires hiring anybody. It requires asking precise questions in writing, sending them so a record exists, and not stopping when nobody answers.
The First 72 Hours
We put the whole checklist in one place — the preservation letter you can copy, the records request, what to write down, and the order to do it in. It is free and it comes by email, so you have it on your phone when you are standing in a parking lot outside a facility.
Send me the First 72 Hours guide →
If you would rather just talk to a person, call 786-408-5073 and ask for Charles Christopher. If it is the middle of the night, send the email instead and it will be read in the morning.
Prisoner Legal Aid prepares documents, requests records, explains deadlines, and connects families with independent civil rights attorneys, under the oversight of a licensed attorney. Nobody can tell you how this ends. What a second set of hands can do is help you write the letters that make a jail put in writing where it is keeping your child.