Jurors say Florida institution operated by controversial G4S security firm behind London Olympics is dilapidated and unsanitary while staff is undertrained

G4S, the controversial British outsourcing firm behind the disastrous security provision at the London Olympics, has been accused of running a “disgraceful” juvenile detention centre in Florida.

The Highlands Youth Academy (HYA) in Avon Park, a facility for young men aged 16 to 19 that was the site of a riot involving more than 130 children two years ago, was described as “a disgrace to the state of Florida” by a grand jury report that called for it to be closed down.

The excoriating 21-page report, unsealed last week, details a string of criticisms, including dilapidated buildings, unclean sanitary facilities, undertrained and poorly equipped staff and failure to report incidents of children escaping.

“What we have discovered at the Highlands Youth Academy simply cannot be what our Legislature and state leaders have intended for our juvenile justice system,” the jurors wrote. “While the citizens are essentially being ripped off – the juveniles are being even more poorly served. The Highlands Youth Academy should cease to exist.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The grand jury called the Highlands Youth Academy’s conditions a ‘disgrace’. Photograph: State attorney's office of the 10th judicial circuit in Florida

G4S, which is set to make a $4m profit from the facility over five years and runs 28 other juvenile detention centres in the state, said the grand jury’s report contained “multiple factual errors and misstatements”.

Photos released to the Guardian by the state attorney’s office reveal living quarters described by the grand jury as “disgraceful”: bedrooms with exposed plywood walls where children slept on steel bunk beds, and bathrooms with unpainted plaster and more plywood with peeling and dilapidated fixtures and fittings.

The grand jury said that some of the facility’s buildings had roof and water damage caused by hurricanes in 2004 that had never been repaired.

G4S said that bunk beds had since been replaced and that a “campus-wide renovation plan” had begun in April 2015. It insisted that the roofs of buildings affected by the 2004 hurricanes had been replaced.

The investigation also revealed that G4S operated a state-wide policy of forbidding staff from contacting police on company time if they were the victims of assault by any of the children housed onsite.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Grand jurors said staff at the facility were required to finish their shifts and leave work before calling law enforcement to report being the victim of a crime. Photograph: State attorney's office of the 10th judicial circuit in Florida

“We learned that it is a felony to batter a detention care worker,” the grand jurors wrote. “But the facility administrator at HYA, and those at other G4S facilities, requires staff to finish their shift and leave work before they can call law enforcement to report being the victim even of violent or sexually-based crime.

“G4S internal policies discourage contacting law enforcement when crimes occur at their facilities. Particularly when offenders batter staff, G4S policy is that such should be dealt with by the facility staff.

“G4S management does not understand that battery on a worker in a residential facility is a felony, and is not aware that policies discouraging reporting are being interpreted literally at the staff level on the compounds of G4S facilities, and in practice function as directives not to involve law enforcement at all, when a crime occurs.”

G4S said the policy banning staff from reporting crimes on company time had been the result of state guidelines and had since been canceled.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest G4S said renovations had been under way since April. Photograph: State attorney's office of the 10th judicial circuit in Florida

In 2012, G4S made international news after failing to provide enough security guards to the London Olympics. The British military had to deploy thousands of personnel to fill the gap.

The grand jury investigation comes just two months after a British child services agency uncovered a series of incidents of gross misconduct by staff, some of whom were on drugs while on duty, at a G4S facility for children in Northampton.

The damning report into Rainsbrook, one of three Secure Training Centres run by G4S in the UK, found that staff had failed to contact outside agencies after serious incidents, and that “data provided by the centre to inspectors during the inspection regarding the number of fights, assaults and injuries was inaccurate”. In one case a child who suffered a fracture was not provided with medical treatment for 15 hours.

In a statement published on Friday, G4S said that while it was “working hard to address the concerns” raised by the Ofsted report into Rainsbrook, it had been assured by regulators that “the centre is not, and was never, an unsafe place.”