Commissioners move to restore youth detention center

The Berks County commissioners Thursday unanimously approved an emergency declaration allowing officials to expedite the restoration of a former youth detention center.

The move will allow for the rapid rehabilitation of the facility so it can once again be used to detain juvenile offenders. County officials have said there is a desperate need for access to juvenile detention space amid a severe statewide shortage and a recent increase in young offenders.

The topic was discussed in detail during an operations meeting Tuesday.

At that meeting, several county officials directly involved in the juvenile criminal system sounded the alarm that Berks doesn’t have access to enough juvenile detention options to handle the growing need.

And, they said, the problem needs to be fixed.

Daniel Heydt, chief of the Berks County Probation and Parole Office, said the number of violent crimes committed by juveniles was dropping before the COVID-19 pandemic. And the numbers bottomed out during the pandemic.

But things have changed over the past year or so, he said.

Last year, the probation office saw 525 new juvenile referrals from various law enforcement agencies. That was up 159 — or 43% — from the previous year.

The number of juveniles needing detention also rose last year, he said, increasing by 38%.

There were 85 juveniles detained last year, Heydt said. But there were actually 117 who needed to be detained because they were deemed public safety risks.

The 32 undetained juveniles were instead released and subjected to electronic monitoring. The results were dangerous.

“Of those 32 who could not be detained, 22 committed new felony offenses,” Heydt said. “And those offenses included robbery, aggravated assault, firearms charges, burglaries, possession with intent to deliver and rape.”

Heydt said that if something doesn’t change soon, it’s only a matter of time before a juvenile who should be in detention does something catastrophic.

“This is an imminent public safety risk,” he said.

District Attorney John T. Adams said he has seen an influx in the number of juvenile offenders recently and in the severity of the crimes they commit. He said that of the 47 homicide cases pending in the county nine of the defendants are teenagers.

Adams said Berks — like most other counties — is in a tough spot. There’s just simply not enough juvenile detention space across the state to accommodate the need.

Heydt said Pennsylvania only has 513 licensed juvenile detention beds, and only 354 of them are actually operational. That means that 67 counties are competing for those 354 beds.

The closest option for Berks is Abraxas Academy near Morgantown, but the county only has three beds available there and they don’t accept females. And the facility has been inundated with problems, including recent riots and escapes that made national news.

“Abraxas cannot handle our problems,” Adams said, going on to lambast the facility’s poor record.