Better juvenile facilities are only a start
It doesn’t take much to figure out that a building erected during the Depression to house juveniles isn’t suitable for them today.
It doesn’t take much to figure out that a place where youths have to deal with broken toilets and showers, and a climate control system that often leaves them shivering isn’t where they should be.
So, it’s easy to get on board with Shelby County commissioners who want to build a $54 million juvenile detention and assessment center to replace the facility on Adams Street — an idea that was proposed last year. It is, in fact, long overdue. What’s difficult, though, is trusting the same system which allowed youths to languish in a building constructed in 1935 to do the right thing by them in a new one, especially since the U.S. Justice Department had to intervene with a memorandum of agreement in 2012 to force it to fix the problem.
To get past such distrust, the new facility will have to be heavier on assessment than detention, because most of the problems driving youths to commit crimes here won’t be cured by locking them up.
Many youths who wind up in the system here, for example, struggle with mental health issues, issues which stem from being exposed to violence and abuse, and childhood traumas that lead them to lash out with criminality.
But as Dr. Altha Stewart, associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Health in Justice Involved Youth at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, has written: The current system doesn’t do enough to address their needs, even though many youths in the juvenile justice system have mental health problems and trauma histories that can be revealed through diagnosis.
Yet in the juvenile court system, some aren’t getting to the diagnosis stage.
Sandra Simkins, the DOJ process monitor, recently wrote that the court was falling short when it came to psychologically evaluating juveniles. She wrote that in 2018, attorneys in eight “documented” cases requested psychological evaluations before a transfer hearing and their requests were denied.
In another case, she said, the court held a child’s transfer hearing while the psychological evaluation was pending.
Simkins said she found such practices troubling. They are, because they raise the specter of whether they will continue if a new facility is built. And her concerns are exactly why the county shouldn’t be released from DOJ oversight yet.
So yes, Shelby County needs a new juvenile facility. But that facility shouldn’t be more focused on confining youths than getting them the services they need.
In fact, the best way to deal with juveniles grappling with mental health issues is to focus on diversion programs, says Jeff Kretschmar, a research associate professor and managing director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
“We’ve done that here in Ohio,” said Kretschmar, who said the state now has three youth prisons instead of 10. “But as we’re diverting them out of the system, we’re ensuring that they have adequate community support ... You also have to have a good relationship with service providers in the community, so that they don’t get flooded with kids ...”
It’s troubling that Shelby County commissioners have to even consider spending millions to build a facility to house juveniles when that money could be used to create jobs or bolster education or fix the broken families and communities from which they come.
But being humane — as well as being in compliance with the DOJ — compels the county to stop housing youths in an 83-year-old building.
So, that new building should come with a new approach, one that ultimately helps these youths receive the services and the compassion they need to live in their communities — and not just exist behind prettier walls.