Young Men Allegedly Starving at Pueblo Detention Facility

Youths are losing concerning amounts of weight at a Pueblo Detention Facility, with parents alleging that their kids are being withheld food. One mother reported to the Denver Post that her 22 year-old son Emmanuel Porter-Taylor lost 20-30 pounds in a few weeks. His eyes were yellowed, and he was unable to keep water down. The staff apparently gave him Tylenol and just told Porter-Taylor to go to sleep. “I think they’re trying to kill me,” his mother recalled her son telling her.

This past Sunday, he was rushed to the hospital suffering from full renal failure and flown the next day to a hospital in Denver. His status is unknown due to the Colorado Department of Corrections claiming that they couldn’t find his “release of information” document—despite the family remembering filling it out.

Other parents of young men in the facility explicitly said they’re concerned about the weight their kids have lost, combined with the yellowing eyes, fainting, dizziness, as well as even blood in their stool. While the YOS operates a three-level model intended to reward good behavior, at the lower levels, these men cannot purchase food nor receive packages from family members, leaving them completely reliant on dwindling sized prison meals—with one to two small items per “meal.”

Recently a group being held at the facility requested more food through a formal letter to leadership and was placed into solitary confinement. A mother followed suit, writing a letter pleading to the DOC that “Adequate nutrition is not a privilege,” and that “It is a fundamental necessity for health and rehabilitation.”

A corrections official did affirm that the YOS did “reduce caloric intake” after “agreeing that the average (body mass index) of YOS offenders was higher than what was considered healthy within the age group.” Some of this behavior unfortunately is reminiscent of the treatment of undocumented people at the hands of ICE and other historical incidents. A senior program manager for the National Center for Youth Law referred to the YOS as resembling a “concentration camp.”

Senator Judy Amabile who works in juvenile justice in Boulder was shocked. “If they’re cutting the number of calories that kids get every day—which includes people of different sizes—I would want to know: Is that healthier for them, or is that a cost-cutting measure?”