by Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio
This article was produced by WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, a 2023 ProPublica Local Reporting Network partner. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.
Richard L. Bean, the longtime superintendent of the East Tennessee juvenile detention center that bears his name, abruptly announced Friday that he will be stepping down. His decision to retire came the day after the Knox County mayor said he had lost confidence in Bean’s leadership.
Bean, 84, has been superintendent of the juvenile detention center since 1972. A 2023 investigation from WPLN and ProPublica found the facility was using solitary confinement more than other detention centers in the state. Sometimes the children were locked up alone for hours or days at a time. That kind of confinement was also used as punishment, in violation of state law.
At the time, Bean broadly defended the practices at the facility, saying he wished he had more punitive abilities and that people who pushed back didn’t understand what was necessary.
After the story ran, the head of the detention center’s governing board told local TV station WBIR that he thought the Bean center was “the best facility in the state of Tennessee.”
Renewed scrutiny on the detention center began last week when Bean dismissed two employees, including the facility’s only nurse. The nurse’s termination was first reported by Knox News, and the mayor described her dismissal as “retaliation” because she had reported to state investigators significant issues with medical care at the facility, which she said went unchecked and unaddressed by Bean.
On Wednesday, Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs and juvenile court Judge Tim Irwin wrote a letter to Bean demanding he reinstate both employees. Irwin is a nonvoting member of the center’s governing board of trustees but selects one of its three voting members.
“These dismissals may well lead to lawsuits against you and the county,” the letter reads, “which could cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The following day, Jacobs wrote a letter to the governor calling for immediate state intervention and detailing issues with medication in the facility going missing, errors with medication reporting and “even medication going to the wrong detainees.”
In a public video statement, Jacobs said he had “no confidence that these issues will be addressed with the center’s current leadership or the governing board that oversees the Bean juvenile detention center.” He called for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office to take over operation of the center but said he has limited power to intervene.
By Friday, Bean announced that he would leave his post as superintendent in two months after he gets the facility “shipshape,” according to a press release. He did not respond to requests for comment but said in the press release that his last day will be Aug. 1.
During WPLN and ProPublica’s investigation of the Bean center, documents revealed that state officials repeatedly had put the Bean center on corrective action plans and had documented its improper use of seclusion yet continued to approve the center’s license to operate without the facility changing its ways.
“What we do is treat everybody like they’re in here for murder,” Bean told WPLN during a 2023 visit to the facility. “You don’t have a problem if you do that.” Most of the children in the Bean center are not in for murder and instead are awaiting court dates after being charged with a crime.
When asked if he was worried he might get in trouble for the way he was running the facility, Bean said, “If I got in trouble for it, I believe I could talk to whoever got me in trouble and get out of it.”
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