Editor's note: All the juveniles interviewed for this story provided their full names and agreed to be interviewed. However, Nebraska News Service is following Associated Press style guidance in not naming juveniles charged in crimes. "AP does not name juveniles accused of crimes unless there are overriding needs, such as warning the public about dangerous situations, e.g., a manhunt.” None of the juveniles interviewed for this story fit those criteria.
Hours turned into days and stretched into weeks as the North Omaha teen sat alone in his concrete-walled cell at the Douglas County Youth Center.
At the two-week mark, the 16-year-old began to feel his humanity slip away.
“It just feels like you’re trapped, like you’re an animal,” he said about his experience in room confinement – more commonly referred to as solitary confinement.
As the heavy metal door to his room banged shut and remained locked for another two weeks, the teen’s mental state deteriorated, he said during an interview at Omaha’s Village Empowerment Center, a community center for employment, health and housing resources.
“I didn’t care about nothing no more,” he said. “I used to just be mad.”
A 16-year-old from North Omaha speaks about his experience in room confinement at the Douglas County Youth Center during an interview on March 26, 2025.Livia Ziskey
In all, the North Omaha teen spent nearly two months at the Douglas County Youth Center on charges of unlawful possession of a handgun and operating a vehicle to avoid arrest. Half of that time was spent in confinement, he said.
Mounting evidence shows that isolating youth can irreversibly harm brain development and can lead to depression, anxiety and increased suicide attempts.
In response, Nebraska senators passed laws throughout the last decade aimed at decreasing the use of solitary confinement for youth.
Instead of decreased use, data and public records reveal that the use of confinement continues to escalate and routinely violates state law, all while the state’s designated child welfare watchdog has limited authority to monitor its use.
Nightmares of lockdown continue to plague a 16-year-old boy from Omaha’s Benson neighborhood, who spent nearly a year at the center after being charged with first-degree assault in 2024.
Locked in his cell for at least 22 hours every day for a month, he said the environment was ripe for injustice.
“Everything about it,’’ he said, “is inhumane.”
Douglas County Youth Center superintendent Rondy Woodard said in a phone interview in May that the facility handles every instance of confinement individually, with the duration depending on many factors, such as how many youth in the same part of the facility were involved in a fight.
‘Not restorative at all’
Defendants as young as 11 can be detained at places like the Douglas County Youth Center for alleged crimes or after they are sentenced. Legislative Bill 530, passed on May 29, lowered the age from 13 to 11. Gov. Jim Pillen is expected to sign the bill.
Seven teenagers – all too young to vote, many too young to legally drive and others still too young to shave – shared solitary confinement experiences at the center that contradict Nebraska law. None remain currently detained there.
Nebraska law defines room confinement as involuntarily restricting a juvenile except during normal sleeping hours. While not an illegal practice altogether, senators unanimously passed a bill five years ago that put restrictions on its use. As of 2020, confinement:
- Cannot be used to punish, discipline, or retaliate against youth.
- Cannot be used due to staffing shortages.
- Must end when a juvenile no longer poses an immediate and substantial risk of harm to themselves or others.
- Must be used for a period that does not negatively impact a youth’s physical or mental health.
The law makes clear that room confinement should only be used when a juvenile presents an immediate and serious risk of harm, and all less restrictive options have been tried first.
It aligns with restorative justice, an approach that focuses less on punishment and more on repairing harm through conversations and accountability.
Douglas County Youth Center’s written policies, obtained via a public records request, mirror Nebraska law.
However, in multiple interviews with Nebraska News Service over several months this spring, youth who spent time at the Douglas County Youth Center said the facility does not follow the rules when putting youth in isolation.
“It’s punishment-based for sure. It’s not restorative at all,” said the 16-year-old from North Omaha.
The law says confinement should last the minimum time required to eliminate safety risks. Douglas County Youth Center's written policies, obtained via public records request, include this condition. However, youth recounted in individual interviews for this article that confinement is routinely used in excess.
“The first fight, the least you’re going to do is seven to eight days,” said a 17-year-old from central Omaha who said he spent more than six months at the center for a robbery charge.
Another youth — a 17-year-old from Bennington — spent about a month at the youth center in 2024 after violating his probation, court records show. He said he doesn’t recall witnessing teens in confinement for less than a week at a time.
'Like it was punitive’
Douglas County Youth Center superintendent Rondy Woodard said the facility does not use room confinement as a punishment, even though he wishes he could in some instances.
“They’re supposed to feel like it was punitive,” Woodard said. “But unfortunately, it was for folks’ safety.”
Before 2020, Woodard said his facility used short-term confinement – up to an hour – to discourage behaviors like verbal threats and drug use.
The new law limits his staff’s ability to manage these types of behaviors, he said, and confinement is now only used to maintain safety, such as after a teen has a violent interaction with another teen or staff member.
“Kids are in their rooms for violence, and unfortunately, we can’t let them out of their rooms until that violence is over with,” Woodard said.
Douglas County leads increase
Juvenile facilities began reporting quarterly room confinement data to the Nebraska Legislature after senators passed Legislative Bill 894 in 2016. Since then, the Office of Inspector General of Nebraska Child Welfare has compiled data in an annual report, which is provided to the Legislature. That four-person office investigates incidents and misconduct in the entire state’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems.
The 2023-24 facility data revealed "concerning trends" in room confinement use, according to the report. Compared to the previous year, there was a 110% increase in total confinement hours and a 48% increase in total confinement incidents.
“Based on the data alone, it appears that these increases are contrary to Nebraska law,” the report said.
Seven of the eight juvenile facilities in Nebraska reported increases in confinement hours, including the Douglas County Youth Center. It alone was responsible for 57% of the total 119,300 confinement hours, according to the report, meaning youth at the Omaha facility spent a combined total of nearly 8 years in confinement.
Douglas County is Nebraska’s largest county by population.
The center also holds youth in confinement for the longest of any Nebraska facilities, the 2023-24 report shows.
Douglas County Youth Center’s average incident time was 145 hours and 42 minutes, or roughly six days, which is the longest average in Douglas County’s history, dating back to 2016 when record keeping began.
‘Making it all worse’
The increases in confinement use raise alarm bells for youth advocates like Anahí Salazar, policy coordinator at the nonprofit Voices for Children. Salazar said the data leads her to believe that facilities aren’t following current law.
“If you're using it as a timeout, then a young person doesn't need to be in there for six hours,” Salazar said.
Facilities are also required to report the reason a youth is in confinement. In 2023-24, Douglas County reported that 221 room confinement incidents were used to address fighting; another 189 addressed assault or attempted assault.
Salazar said she hopes facilities are working to calm youth before putting them directly in confinement after engaging in aggressive behaviors.
Failing to speak with youth about their behavior while keeping them confined only increases the likelihood they’ll repeat the behavior, she said.
“If you're not providing that for these young people...within, you know, an hour, two hours, three,” Salazar continued, “then I just think it's making it all worse.”
The 17-year-old central Omahan, who said he was confined six times, said there aren’t many opportunities for youth to speak with staff about coming out of lockdown.
“We don’t really have much of a voice in it,” he said. “Whatever they say happens. There isn’t really nothing that we can say that’s going to change it.”
Woodard said that while his staff tries alternative methods to resolve issues with youth, confinement is sometimes necessary for safety—especially when violence stems from gang-related issues and conflicts that started outside of the facility.
“A lot of the violence that takes place in the Omaha community is generational,” Woodard said. “It comes from things that have happened years ago.”
If teens get into a conflict over a basketball game, staff can usually help them work it out through conversation, he said.
When a gang-affiliated teen in the facility sees someone they consider an enemy, Woodard said the teen is more determined to cause harm. In these cases, he said, talking things through or using positive rewards often isn't enough to keep everyone safe.
“If a kid is really angry, they really don’t care about it,” Woodard said. “We can only give them so many bags of chips and positive reinforcement.”
A big trigger
Over 70% of youth in the U.S. juvenile justice system have mental health conditions, with 30% of those youth having severe conditions, according to The Council of State Governments Justice Center.
Monica Miles-Steffens, compliance coordinator at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Juvenile Justice Institute, said it’s important that facilities recognize the psychological impact of confinement.
“Putting a kid in isolation can be really harmful,” Miles-Steffens said. “Especially young people who have mental health concerns.”
In 2024, the American Psychological Association formally opposed the use of “harmful individual isolation” in juvenile facilities and adopted 10 recommendations, several of which Nebraska has already incorporated into state law, such as documenting its use and using it in a time-limited manner.
Miles-Steffens said facility staff also need to recognize past experiences of youth, such as trauma during childhood.
“Some of these kids with crossover issues in child welfare, they were removed from their families because of very traumatic neglect and abuse situations where they might have been placed in isolation for extended periods of time,” Miles-Steffens said.
“It can be a really big trigger for those kids in that trauma.”
System crossover is common. A 2021 study led by criminologist Denise Herz found that two-thirds of youth involved in Los Angeles County’s justice system had previously interacted with the child welfare system.
Tarika Daftary-Kapur, a researcher at Montclair State University in New Jersey, has focused her work on juvenile justice and adolescent decision making.
Research shows that confinement can have lasting mental harm on young people, she said.
“Solitary or room confinement for children, and even adults, for long, sustained periods of time can lead to depression, it can lead to anxiety,” Daftary-Kapur said. “Because they have higher levels of developmental vulnerability...they are at an even heightened risk of having these sorts of adverse reactions.”
Access limited
Nebraska law requires juveniles in confinement to have the same access to education as the general population.
Douglas County Youth Center’s daily schedule includes classes in the morning and afternoon, during which teachers instruct youth in person and through learning packets.
The central Omaha teen said teachers were his favorite staff.
“They’ll sit there and talk to you about anything,” he said.
During a 30-day period he spent on lockdown, he said he didn’t interact with teachers or fill out the daily packets, because he wasn’t allowed a pencil in his cell.
Christine Henningsen, associate director of Nebraska's Center on Children, Families and the Law, previously worked as a public defender in Douglas County. She said staff at the Douglas County Youth Center have told her that youth in confinement aren’t allowed to leave their rooms for classes.
“If you're in room confinement, what I was told is you're not let out, but you can listen (to teachers) at the window,” Henningsen said. “And you could knock on the window and hold up a worksheet and try and get feedback from the teacher from the other side of your door.”
Douglas County Youth Center provides additional reading materials to youth through its library services, but the Bennington teen said the library is unavailable to youth while in lockdown.
“You got to just hope somebody will go get a book for you,” he said. “And then hope it can fit under the door.”
Each situation is handled individually, Woodard said. Teens who write on the walls or make weapons with pencils may get items taken away, he said.
“There’s way more factors than this just being simple,” Woodard said.
Family visits
The law also states that youth in confinement must have the same access to visits with legal guardians.
However, the Douglas County Youth Center’s website specifies that youth in “restrictive housing” are only allowed to have visits in the facility’s admissions area, and these visits may be restricted from an hour to 30 minutes due to “space availability.” Youth who are not in confinement receive two one-hour visits each week, according to the facility’s website.
The main visitation area, the North Omaha teen said, has multiple tables and vending machines, and multiple youth are able to have visits at a time. He said the admissions visit area is only large enough for one youth and two visitors at a time.
“In the other room, it’s like the cell,” the 16-year-old said.
Youth in confinement are strip-searched before a family visit, which the central Omaha teen said doesn’t occur with general population visits.
“A lot of kids would miss out on their visit, because they know they’re going to get strip-searched,” he said.
The Benson teen said strip searches are typically only used when youth first arrive at the facility. During his time in confinement, he said he passed up multiple visits with family to avoid going through the experience.
“Some people might not be comfortable with it,” he said. “There may be trauma behind it.”
The North Omaha teen said certain staff members made him feel especially uncomfortable during those searches.
“I don’t know if a strip search is supposed to go like that, but they just get to looking all at you and stuff,” he said.
Woodard said youth in confinement are strip-searched after visits because these visits happen in a room that is not supervised by staff, nor is the room monitored with a camera. Strip searches are necessary to prevent contraband from entering the facility, he said.
“We already have parents who are in regular visitation who are bringing in contraband,” Woodard said.
The Nebraska Crime Commission, a state government agency, defines a strip search as “an examination of a resident's naked body for weapons, contraband, injuries or vermin infestations,” and the commission’s juvenile standards say all searches shall be the least intrusive type necessary for a facility’s safety. A pat search, with clothes on, should be the initial way to search youth, according to the juvenile standards.
Advocates: More oversight needed
Reflecting on her previous work as a public defender, Henningsen said she wasn’t fully aware of the prevalence of room confinement before the annual reports started in 2016.
“Looking back, I wish it was something I would have been regularly asking my clients about, but it was not anything that anyone even talked about,” Henningsen said.
Mandating the annual reports was a step in the right direction in holding facilities accountable to the law, she said.
“That, in and of itself, I think dramatically reduced the amount it was used, because they’re like, ‘Oh, somebody’s looking at it,’” Henningsen said.
While the inspector general for Nebraska’s adult prisons conducts regular in-person facility visits, the child welfare inspector general relies on self-reported facility data when creating the juvenile room confinement report.
“We don't have the authority right now to go in and say, ‘When there was this confinement, what really happened?’ and make sure it was a safety and security reason,” said Jennifer Carter, the state’s inspector general for child welfare. “We're just looking at what the facilities are self-reporting.”
Carter’s job is vast.
Her office provides oversight and accountability for all state systems involving the care of children — not just those incarcerated. While the office does visit juvenile facilities as part of its regular duties, Carter said these visits aren’t specifically conducted to verify room confinement data.
“If the Legislature wanted us to somehow verify that data, we’d need a lot more resources,” Carter said. “We’d have to have people out there on a very regular basis. I don’t even know how exactly you would do that.”
By law, facilities must notify parents and attorneys within 24 hours when a youth is put into confinement. Henningsen said this is not consistently happening.
Her clients informed her about their confinement before the facility did, she said. When Henningsen called to confirm with facility staff, they admitted that failing to notify her was in error.
Without clear and consistent oversight, Henningsen said facilities can continue practices that violate state law.
“Unless someone is advocating specifically for a youth, it’s work as usual,” Henningsen said.
Miles-Steffens, the compliance coordinator at the Juvenile Justice Institute, said she wishes the inspector general had more power to effect change, aside from just creating the annual report and providing recommendations to the Legislature.
“The Legislature requires the OIG to collect this data and to put out this report but doesn’t really give them any teeth to follow up,” Miles-Steffens said. “I think that’s a miss, for sure.”
There are other levels of oversight for juvenile detention facilities aside from the inspector general.
The Nebraska Crime Commission’s Jail Standards Board is tasked with the enforcement of minimum standards for Nebraska adult and juvenile detention facilities. The board can petition courts to close facilities that don’t meet their standards.
However, the juvenile standards have not been updated since they were created in 1993, so facilities are held to standards that fall below current law. Henningsen said the board is in the process of updating standards, but that isn’t happening quickly.
“It’s very slow,” Henningsen said. “And again, they are setting the minimum level of compliance, as opposed to other accrediting standards that are trying to have best practices.”
Juvenile justice across the nation
Not every state mandates room confinement reports like Nebraska, and some are just beginning to collect data. Minnesota, for example, passed a law in 2024 requiring its head of corrections to submit an annual report detailing youth isolation and strip search incidents. The first of these reports was published in February.
Like Nebraska, several states introduced confinement legislation after former President Barack Obama signed an executive order banning juvenile solitary confinement in federal facilities.
Other states did not follow suit. As of April 2025, 37 states place some type of limit on solitary confinement for youth, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.
Looking at juvenile justice altogether, Miles-Steffens said it’s a difficult time to introduce ideas and laws that involve reform.
“We have a climate in our country right now that’s very punitive,” she said.
‘At the expense of young people’
Miles-Steffens said she recognizes that facilities need resources to reduce the use of room confinement safely.
“I remember working in a detention facility, and there are times where kids are acting out,” Miles-Steffens said. “Our statute dictates these things around room confinement, but I don't know that we've given a lot of skills or resources or alternatives for the facilities to use instead.
“I feel like there's kind of a disconnect there.”
Policymakers should be aware of the needs and current practices in facilities to create effective policies they can follow, Henningsen said.
“The worst thing is to say you can’t do it anymore, but not give an alternative,” Henningsen said. “Because then you do see greater instances of dangerous situations.”
Woodard, the Douglas County superintendent, said the intent of current room confinement laws is correct, but he doesn’t think lawmakers recognize the impact on facilities trying to maintain safety.
“When you’re dealing with kids who are having these types of altercations inside a secure facility – and there’s really no place else to separate them – it becomes very dangerous,” Woodard said.
One of the inspector general's recommendations is to increase internal oversight within facilities, such as having staff dedicated to reviewing and monitoring the use of confinement.
Salazar, with Voices for Children, favors external oversight. She said internal oversight could easily form a bias, especially if facility policies don’t match the law:
“If the standards aren’t up to par to where we are in our research and what the data has said, I think we can let a lot of things slide, unfortunately, at the expense of young people.”
Woodard said his staff reviews every case of room confinement, as well as the quarterly data Douglas County sends to the Legislature. They routinely have conversations about reducing the use of confinement and the violence that causes it, he said.
“These assaults and these fights are called a lot of work,” Woodard said. “It would be definitely a lot easier to not have anyone in restrictive housing and everyone to get along. So, yeah, we review that stuff every incident, every single incident.”
Douglas County Youth Center hired a full-time gang violence prevention coordinator in 2024, and Woodard said he’s starting to see some improvement in how youth handle conflict. Real change will come over time, he said, as the skills kids learn inside the facility spread throughout the community.
“Hopefully the little bit of work that we’re doing with this population can start helping,” Woodard said.
Rehabilitation over restriction
While facility leaders work toward improvement, youth who experienced confinement carry those memories after release.
The Benson teen said the psychological challenges, combined with the physical environment of lockdown, became the fuel for the nightmares he still has about the year he spent at the Douglas County Youth Center.
Following a court-ordered transition plan, he moved from the center to Radius, an Omaha group home that helps youth transition back into their communities through restorative practices.
While Radius has helped him rehabilitate, resting his head on his pillow can send him back to the confines of his cell inside the Douglas County Youth Center.
“The walls is always just so cold,” the 16-year-old said. “Everything’s dirty. There’s always some booger, some type of bodily fluid somewhere.”
Rather than relying on lockdown, he said facilities like the Douglas County Youth Center should rely on restorative conversations with youth, like the ones he has at Radius.
“It’s a good method, sitting down and having the youth talk,” he said.
“Lockdown,’’ he continued, “it doesn’t do nothing but just drive you crazy.”
Nebraska Behind Bars
This story is part of a series produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications 2025 in-depth reporting class.
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