The video clip lasted less than two minutes, but Tonya Webb remembers every second as heartbreaking.

The grainy surveillance footage, dated June 29, 2024, showed a teenager in an anti-suicide smock being dragged violently by other teens across the floor at Middle Tennessee Juvenile Detention Center. As guards watched, the teens pulled the smock over the boy’s head, exposing his naked body. Then they stuffed him, limbs flailing, into a cell.

One guard pushed the door closed, locking him in, and the boy pressed his face against the sliver of a cell window. The guard flashed the teens a thumbs-up.

Webb, a medication supervisor at the facility, saw the video when a co-worker showed it to her and knew she was looking at a serious violation of state policy. An incident like this one, in which employees encouraged youths to restrain another youth, would require staff to notify both the state and the boy’s family within 24 hours.

Webb said she raised questions about the incident with the compliance director for the facility. The director said she’d handle it, but after weeks went by with no sign of a state investigation, Webb confronted the deputy to the facility’s executive director.

“I know you’ve seen the video,” Webb recalled telling her. “Nothing’s being done about it.”

According to Webb, the deputy said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Webb found her response baffling, as word of the attack had spread rapidly among staff and the footage was stored on the facility’s own security system.

WPLN and ProPublica obtained a recording of the video; Webb did not provide it. We asked the state’s Department of Children’s Services if it received an incident report from the facility on or around June 29, 2024. The department confirmed it did not. Webb later reported the incident to DCS.

A Tennessee businessman named Jason Crews was the executive director of the private company that ran Middle Tennessee Juvenile Detention Center at that time. He’s also the CEO of Wayne Halfway House, a separate company that had employees overseeing the detention center and that contracts with the state to operate other juvenile facilities. Crews did not reply to written questions about this incident, nor did his deputy and compliance director.

Interviews with dozens of former staff and youth, along with a review of emergency call logs, company records and state documents, reveal how Wayne Halfway House’s leaders failed to report suspected physical and sexual abuse to state officials across Crews’ facilities and prevented the public from learning about violent attacks by reducing the number of 911 calls. The state is now investigating incidents we uncovered.

Get in Touch

Do you know a young person who was detained in a Wayne Halfway House facility, including Mountain View Academy, Standing Tall Music City, Duck River Youth Center or Hollis Academy? Contact reporters Paige Pfleger at paige@wpln.org and Aliyya Swaby at aliyya.swaby@propublica.org.

According to Wayne Halfway House and Middle Tennessee Juvenile Detention Center employees who worked closely with corporate executives, there was an expectation that serious incidents be kept secret, and the directive came from Crews.

“You always call Jason and nothing gets reported without his permission — and that’s wrong,” said Kim Watts, the company’s former human resources director. She was fired in 2024 when “the company decided to go in a different direction,” according to her termination paperwork.

Liz Ryan, who oversaw juvenile justice programs for the Biden administration, reviewed a detailed summary of the incidents WPLN and ProPublica compiled, the corresponding state laws and policies and the company’s responses. “Wayne Halfway House Inc. and its leadership, including CEO Jason Crews, appear to have demonstrated a documented pattern of disregard for state law, federal law and professional standards,” said Ryan, who provided training and guidance to state and local governments about best practices for youth in the system.

“They’re putting kids’ lives at risk,” she said. “Absent immediate and vigorous state oversight and intervention, this seems like a disaster waiting to happen as allegations of this nature are warning signs in need of immediate examination.”

In a statement, Wayne Halfway House said the company follows state policy and law and “vehemently denies” that Crews or his company have ever discouraged staff from reporting serious or life-threatening incidents to the state or 911. It described its former employees as “untrustworthy sources” with a “clear bias” against the company and their allegations as “substantially flawed.”

Crews briefly spoke with the news organizations in April during a guided tour of one of his facilities, but he subsequently declined multiple requests for a formal interview. Wayne Halfway House provided detailed responses in writing to three rounds of questions.

DCS said that confidentiality laws limit the agency from commenting publicly about specific youth or investigations, but that it is looking into these incidents. “DCS is comparing the information provided with Department and provider records to determine whether required incident and abuse reports were made, whether appropriate medical care and notifications occurred and what actions were taken in response,” the agency said in a written statement. The results of its investigation will not be made public, it said.

Over much of the last decade, Tennessee has pushed to expand juvenile prison capacity — and to do so, it turned to Crews. Most youth in state custody for committing crimes are held in his facilities, which accommodate nearly 300.

About six weeks after the incident with the teen in the video, the state gave Wayne Halfway House a more lucrative contract to turn Middle Tennessee Juvenile Detention Center, located an hour south of Nashville, from a juvenile jail into a prison. Crews now runs all three of Tennessee’s highest-security youth prisons.

The youth in the video,........

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