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Detention officers at Memphis' juvenile jail are in training this month on how to use a "physical hold" technique to get belligerent youths under control if they are trying to harm themselves or others.

Rick Powell, the head of the Shelby County Juvenile Detention Center, had said in April that he wouldn't authorize use of the method because at least five deaths nationwide were blamed on physical restraints in which officers' surround and tightly hold the detainee. However, at a public meeting earlier this month, Powell said his staff will learn the technique, which he called a "therapeutic hold." The 78 detention officers finished training Friday.

"They're a little apprehensive," Powell said. "If you're holding the kid and they're flailing around, there's a risk someone will get hurt."

Powell said he had no other choice to gain control of youths, including those who repeatedly beat their heads into the wall or chew at their own flesh, because it can take up to two hours for crisis intervention specialists to arrive at the jail.

"What else can I do?" Powell said. "We have to respond if a child is trying to harm themselves.

"All I can do is make sure everyone is trained to the best of their ability."

His staff had been using three restraint chairs, which has straps that cross a detainee's chest, waist, arms and feet. But while inspecting the facility in April, U.S. Department of Justice staff said the chairs shouldn't be used, prompting Juvenile Court Judge Curtis Person to remove them.

Now, three of his staff are certified as trainers by the Crisis Prevention Institute, an international training program based in Milwaukee. Those staffers, in turn, trained the rest of the jail staff last week.

CPI president Judith Schubert said the program's emphasis is on "verbal de-escalation" when possible. And when physical intervention is needed, CPI teaches a standing hold — unlike the more controversial method to wrestle the person to the ground and sit on their buttocks, chest or back.

"A standing restraint is not easy," Schubert said. "The natural reaction is to go to the ground. They need to practice."

Sometimes the belligerent person resists with such force that they end up on the ground even if the worker didn't intentionally wrestle them to the floor, she said. In those cases, CPI teaches staff not to sit on the person, which can compress the chest and cut off the person's airway.

Powell said he expects the technique to be rarely used, a handful of times annually at most, at Memphis' juvenile jail. He said each incident will be scrutinized by supervisors and fellow frontline staff during a peer review.

"It's an emergency response," Schubert said. "We don't want to do it, but we do it to save lives or keep people safe."

During the past decade, physical restraints have been blamed for several deaths — often from asphyxiation — at schools, group homes, wilderness or boot camps and treatment centers.

In April, Corey Foster, 16, died at a residential treatment facility in Yonkers, N.Y., after four staff workers pinned him against the wall and wrestled him to the gym floor in an incident captured on video.

Foster, who had an enlarged heart, complained that he couldn't breath but staff didn't let up and the teen soon suffered cardiac arrest, said New York attorney Jacob Oresky, who filed a civil suit on behalf of the teen's family alleging negligence and wrongful death.

"There's a national crisis where therapeutic holds are involved in deaths," Oresky said.

During his research, the attorney said he found similar deaths but no federal regulations or oversight of holding techniques.

"There has to be additional resources dedicated to proper training and probably money to hire better qualified people" to work around troubled teens. "Kids are being exposed to some people who should maybe be in a different line of work. It's a very tough job."

Other deaths include: a 14-year-old at a group home in Philadelphia, a 15-year-old autistic boy at a Michigan high school, a 7-year-old girl at a Wisconsin counseling center, a 13-year-old asthmatic boy at a Georgia wilderness camp, a 14-year-old boy at a Texas middle school and a 12-year-old girl in a South Carolina group home. A North Carolina teacher was accused of breaking a 5-year-old girl's arm while trying to control the child's outburst with a physical hold.

There is a growing trend to limit restraints and require training for those who do use them, said Maureen Fitzgerald, director of Disability Rights for The Arc, a Washington-based nonprofit organization advocating for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

"You can have a death in any kind of restraint, which is why they are so dangerous," she said.

Twenty-seven states have laws or school district policies either banning holds on the ground or any restraint that restricts breathing, Fitzgerald said.

Lawmakers from California and Iowa have proposed bills to federally regulate restraints in schools. Fitzgerald said she hopes Congress will also order the monitoring of holds and restraints in juvenile detention centers.