The juvenile justice system and jail of Rutherford County, Tennessee became a subject of state-wide,[1][2][3][4] national[5][6][7][8][9] and international controversy[10][11][12][13] in the 2020s, when a journalistic investigation revealed a pattern of abnormal and illegal incarceration of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children in the county's juvenile jail at a rate ten times the state's average.
The post was filled by then-Democrat (later Republican) elected Judge Donna Scott Davenport,[5][9] who was scheduled to (and did) retire at the end of her eight-year term, in August 2022.
[1][6] In 2003, Judge Davenport issued a memo which was interpreted to order that, after a summons is issued, law enforcement officers must always physically arrest the child, and take them to the county's detention center—despite Tennessee state law which requires that, for many juvenile misdemeanor offenses, police officers must release children with a citation or a summons, and not take them into custody.
[1][5][9][20] Once delivered to the jail by law enforcement officers, the children were evaluated through a filter system designed by Davenport and implemented by Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Center Director Lynn Duke, in 2008,[21] to determine the level of risk they were thus deemed to pose, and the level of restraint and duration of confinement for the child to be subjected to.
[1][5][9] In 2016, 11 African-American elementary school children in Rutherford County, ranging in age from 8 to 12, were detained or jailed, or both, after allegedly witnessing a fight between a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old.
[5] Class action federal lawsuits resulted, and though not admitting fault, the county accepted a ban on any further solitary confinement of children in its custody.
[5] In May 2017, a federal court ordered Rutherford County to stop using their "filter" system,[5][9] noting that it "departs drastically" from ordinary juvenile detention standards.
[29] In January 2023, State Representative Mike Sparks introduced House Bill 720[30] to the Tennessee General Assembly, undertaking to protect juveniles from interrogation without a guardian present.
Davenport created a "process" different from federal or local norms that asks law enforcement to arrest, transport to the detention center for screening and then file charging papers.
[1][28][34] In February 2022, Kyle Mothershead, a lawyer representing the 2017 class-action plaintiffs, stated that Rutherford County had illegally arrested and incarcerated minor children prior to Davenport's appointment as its juvenile court judge in 2000.
[36] Released in October 2023, the series is produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times in partnership with ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio, and hosted by Meribah Knight of WPLN.