The escape of four teenage boys from a Nashville detention center last week is the latest high-profile incident to spotlight the city's persistent failures to address troubled youth.
The boys burst out the front doors of the east Nashville detention facility a block away from Nissan Stadium just before 10 p.m. last Saturday night.
By Tuesday, two of the teens — Decorrius Wright, 16, and Calvin Howse, 15 — were caught in a parking lot in Madison. Wright was charged with homicide, while Howse was charged with auto theft and gun possession.
A third teen, Morris Marsh, 17, was captured Friday. Marsh was charged with homicide. Brandon Caruthers, 17, remains at large. Caruthers was charged with armed robbery.
The escape was a result of multiple lapses by staff at the privately-contracted detention center.
But youth advocates, and family members of two of the teens, say the incident highlights the city's broader failure to provide — and fund — meaningful behavioral, mentoring and mental health interventions for children in their schools and communities.
"I feel like my son got failed before he even got to juvenile," said Martine Wright, whose son, Decorrius, was charged in the February shooting death of Nashville musician Kyle Yorlets.
Wright said she has not been allowed to call or visit her son since his recapture.
On Friday, she recounted a years-long effort since Decorrius was in elementary school to enlist school officials, mental health counselors and court officers to intervene to keep her son out of trouble.
Decorrius was repeatedly suspended from school starting in fifth grade for fighting and talking back, she said. He missed school so often he got behind academically.
He ran away frequently to meet friends in the J.C. Napier neighborhood where the family once lived. Martine Wright moved her three children to a safer neighborhood in Antioch, she said, and pursued mental health treatment for her son through the Mental Health Co-op.
But Decorrius kept getting into trouble.
He refused to take his medications for ADHD at school, a dose his mother said she couldn't administer herself because of her early morning work shift. He ran away from home so often to be with friends that his mother asked juvenile court officials to lock him up for a month so he understood how serious his actions were. She said they refused.
He was expelled from McGavock High School in 2018 after repeatedly missing classes, she said. So Martine Wright enrolled her son in the only option she had left: Johnson Alternative Learning Center, a school that Metro Police in February deemed too dangerous for their officers to enter.
When that didn't change his behavior, she sent him to live with his father in Mississippi in April 2018 to get him away from a "bad crowd he got mixed up in," she said. He returned to live with his mom in December 2018.
Then Decorrius and four other teens were arrested for the murder of Yorlets, shot to death on February 2019 outside his north Nashville home.
Experts have long identified a link between repeated school suspensions and expulsions leading to future incarcerations in the juvenile justice system.
In Nashville, a court review of 23 youths arrested in 2018 for crimes serious enough to transfer to adult court found all had a history of suspensions — some as many as 35 suspension days in one school year, according to court data.
A Tennessean analysis in October found Metro Schools suspended African-American students at three times the rate of white students — even after a five year effort to close the racial gap through an initiative called Passage. All four of the youth who escaped the detention center last week are African-American.
Many of the recommendations of the Passage initiative were halted because of ongoing budget battles with the city, including a plan to hire 12 behavioral specialists to help elementary teachers address students' underlying problems. The faith-based group, NOAH, or Nashville Organized for Action and Hope, is advocating for Metro to fund that plan next year.
Metro schools have made some progress in shifting to a less punitive approach to student misbehavior, but they have further to go, said Marcel Hernandez, founder of the nonprofit Be About Change.
"We need an increase in budget for restorative practices in public schools," he said.
Howse, who was caught with Decorrius, also had a lengthy history of suspensions beginning in elementary school, according to his mother. Howse had been arrested for armed robbery before his escape.
Danielle Horton, his mother, said she tried to get school officials to help with her son's behavioral issues instead of suspending him. Horton on Thursday was arrested for assisting her son after he escaped.
Elementary school suspensions have since been barred by Metro officials except for the most serious offenses.
Advocates for adults who have spent time in prison also point to schools as a critical role in providing interventions before kids get caught up in the criminal justice system.
"One common denominator that we see is early breakage in education and lack of literacy," said Bettie Kirkland, executive director of Project Return, which works with adults released from prison.
"And then, once things have gotten to the point of alternative schools, there needs to be an educational environment with actual learning," she said. "It's painful because people are so talented and capable, but in too many cases have missed out on the basic tools and opportunities.
Other youth advocates stressed that low teacher pay in Nashville public schools, neighborhood community centers closed on weekends and a lack of funding for mental health treatment all impact youth behavior. Schools with high teacher turnover create instability for children.
Few recreational options mean kids have no safe places to play. Nashville's development boom has displaced low-income families in gentrifying neighborhoods, adding stress to already unstable home lives in some cases while increasing economic disparities.
"Our youth are being overlooked," said Bishop Marcus Campbell, who operates a gang intervention program in collaboration with Davidson County Juvenile Court.
"We're the It City and Nashville's booming and growing, but there's still things that need to be addressed," Campbell said. "It takes money. When are we going to start funneling money into the things that help our youth?"
Mental health resources are critical — and lacking, for the city's youth.
"We drastically and urgently need the commitment of the community and the financial commitment for early mental health supports for those kids," said Roger Dinwiddie, CEO of STARS Nashville, a nonprofit that provides in-school programs to address bullying, substance abuse and violence.
Even with high profile juvenile crime cases, juvenile arrests are down 34 percent this year as of November 30, compared with the same period last year, according to Metro Nashville Police crime reports.
"We see a few things on TV with teens breaking out of the detention center or committing murder, but for every five or six we see there's 50 or 60 we don't see who are doing good," Campbell said. "Those kids, all of our kids, need help staying on the right path."
Reach Anita Wadhwani at awadhwani@tennessean.com; 615-259-8092 or follow her on Twitter @AnitaWadhwani
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