Revised NH Law Removes Ambiguity Around Use of Dangerous Restraint Technique on Kids
Last week, any confusion around the use of a dangerous restraint technique on children in educational and treatment settings in New Hampshire was officially laid to rest when Gov. Sununu signed HB 491 into law.
As the prime sponsor of the bill, it surprised me last summer when I discovered that New Hampshire appeared to be one of a small number of states that had yet to ban the use of prone restraint on children.
Prone restraint occurs when a person is intentionally placed face-down on the floor, and physical pressure is applied to the person’s body to limit physical movement and keep the person in a prone position. The use of prone restraint by police has resulted in at least 121deaths among adults since 2010, including the 2020 death of George Floyd which sparked protests across the country.
Even more shocking, the use of prone restraint on children in schools, corrections facilities, treatment centers, and other state-run or state-contracted facilities resulted in 79 fatalities among kids under age 18 between 1993 and 2018.
While no known fatalities have taken place in New Hampshire, several incidents have occurred with children suffering serious injuries. As recently as 2018, the use of prone restraint on a resident at the Sununu Center resulted in a child with emotional and behavioral disabilities suffering a broken shoulder after being slammed to the ground and pinned in a prone position. Meanwhile in 2020, the New Hampshire Office of the Child Advocate reported that children were restrained or secluded more than 20,000 times in residential youth behavioral health facilities in New Hampshire over a five year period from 2014 to 2018.
WHAT THE BILL DOES
HB 491 removes ambiguity around the use of prone restraint in our current statute by defining it by name and clearly describing it. Unfortunately, because the original 2010 statute wasn’t as descriptive as it could have been, some providers failed to understand the legislature’s intent. This lack of clarity has resulted in prone restraint continuing to be used despite the law in certain NH schools, treatment centers, and correctional facilities that deal with some of our most at-risk children.
In 2019, aware that some providers were continuing to use prone restraint, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services issued an advisory letter recommending schools and facilities stop using it. But despite the letter, some providers continued to maintain the technique could be used “safely” under certain conditions—an argument that was thoroughly debunked during public hearing on the bill by Dr. Jennie Duval, the current New Hampshire Chief Medical Examiner, and Dr. Tom Andrew, her predecessor in that role.
As the bill’s prime sponsor, I’m grateful to Dr. Duval and Dr. Andrew for their testimony along with Karen Rosenberg of the New Hampshire Disability Rights Center, Holly Stevens of NAMI, Tom Padmore of the New Hampshire Medical Society, New Hampshire Child Advocate Cassandra Sanchez, Beth Margeson of the Division for Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), Sen. Becky Whitley, Sen. Debra Altschiller, and so many others. I’m also extremely appreciative of the role that members of the House Children and Family Law Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee played in vetting the bill and moving it along with bipartisan support.
By clearly prohibiting the use of prone restraint, New Hampshire has put the health and safety of troubled children first. And as a legislator, it’s always a good outcome when you can be part of making something like that happen.