Ignored warnings about Court Social Services are having deadly consequences for DC kids
Ignored warnings about Court Social Services are having deadly consequences for DC kids
Staff have been trying to raise the alarm about a broken division for years
“In just the last five weeks, five youth under the D.C. Superior Court of the District of Columbia’s Family Court Social Services Division (CSSD) electronic monitoring have been killed.” That is one of the data points included in Mayor Bowser’s “Public Emergency on Juvenile Crime” and it suggests that there is something wrong with how CSSD supervises juveniles in the criminal justice system. Over the last month I’ve been contacted by multiple CSSD employees who have shared serious allegations against CSSD Director Terri Odom and shared ways that her approach is failing to prevent recidivism. This post is a review of these allegations and the limited available data on CSSD’s operations. With juvenile crime, especially recidivism, being a significant public concern these credible and serious allegations warrant thorough investigation. Here are some of the major alleged problems at CSSD:
~65% of youth are not home when CSSD probation officers (PO) perform curfew checks and there are rarely consequences for curfew or GPS violations
Staff allege that the Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) Drop In centers are used by fewer than<10% of the juveniles CSSD supervises, have no impact on recidivism and have serious sanitation problems (rats, unclean food prep etc.)
Despite significantly reduced caseloads there still seem to be major operational gaps in truancy referrals, GPS monitoring, diversion programs and absconder enforcement
CSSD staff sent a 15 page “Letter of No Confidence” in Director Odom to the Clerk of the Court in 2021 but little remedial action has been taken
Staff allege that Director Odom has shared false data to the Court and Congress to overstate the impact of her favored initiatives and CSSD’s annual reports do seem to have significant mistakes
Staff allege that Director Odom told staff to inappropriately use government issued nutrition debit cards to pay for catered food and special events
Staff allege that Director Odom instructed staff to not cooperate with other agencies, to include the United States Attorney’s Office and the Interstate Compact Administrator
Staff allege a hostile work environment with discriminatory hiring, promotion and disciplinary practices and there have been several EEO lawsuits against Director Odom
Before diving into these allegations it’s worth briefly covering CSSD’s varied and important responsibilities:
Supervision Services: These Probation Officers (POs) manage youth both pre-trial and post-sentencing. In this regard CSSD in the juvenile system has combined roles that are separate and specialized in the adult system between the Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) and Community Supervision Program (CSP). This part of CSSD handles home/school visits, curfew enforcement and runs the 6 Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) Drop In centers across DC.
Delinquency Prevention Unit: This unit fits GPS monitors onto youth and orients them to their responsibilities (i.e. stay within X area and charge the battery). They then monitor youth and service the equipment as needed. However their website suggests they don’t monitor the GPS units 24/7 (“The unit’s hours of operation are Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; after-hours servicing from 5:30 to 11:00 p.m.”) and CSSD staff confirm that there are significant gaps in coverage.
Intake Offices: These staff screen arrested and referred youth and make recommendations on the course of action (i.e. hold at the Youth Services Center, release with GPS monitoring etc.).
Child Guidance Clinic: These staff provide “comprehensive clinical and forensic psychological evaluations” for the court as well as “individual and group psychotherapy” for kids under CSSD supervision.
Status Offender: These staff handle truancy and Persons In Need of Supervision (PINS or “runaways”) referrals. For truancy they are responsible for trying to address the causes and if necessary referring cases to the Attorney General for prosecution.
Juvenile Behavioral Diversion Program: As the name implies this is an “intensive non-sanction-based program” where their case is diverted if a juvenile successfully completes treatment and complies with other conditions. According to CSSD data only a single juvenile completed the program in 2022.
The only apparent public source of CSSD operational data is the Family Court’s Annual Reports to Congress. One of the first key points is that CSSD’s supervision caseload has been declining for years. This decrease is a combination of fewer pretrial and post-disposition (i.e. sentencing) youth being assigned to them by the juvenile justice system:
It’s also the case that CSSD is reporting fewer truancy screenings and GPS installations (for youth ordered into electronic monitoring) in recent years:
The truancy screening numbers are especially concerning since they have declined during the same years that truancy has skyrocketed in DC schools. It doesn’t appear that CSSD’s reported “239 truancy screenings” in 2022 comes even close to covering the referral volumes from DC Public Schools (DCPS), let alone DC Public Charter Schools (DCPCS):
DCPS in the 2022-2023 school year reported that they referred 1,138 students to CSSD for truancy (which is still only 44% of the students meeting the referral requirements):
We don’t have 2023 CSSD data yet but it appears that there are at least 4 steps in this process where truant kids fall through the cracks:
DCPS is failing to refer most truant youth to CSSD as required by DC law
DCPCS is probably also not compliant with this requirement but they don’t share this data in their reports
CSSD’s own data suggest they do not actually screen or serve all of the referred truant youth from DC schools
There are serious concerns about how effective CSSD is when they do handle truancy cases
It’s unclear how and when CSSD is referring truancy cases to the Attorney General (OAG) for prosecution; according to NBC4 they sent “about 300 referrals” to the OAG last year
While addressing truancy (and the associated problems in a child’s life that may cause truancy) is one of the key ways that CSSD is supposed to prevent crime, its highest-profile role is in supervising youth who are on the juvenile equivalents of pretrial release or probation. This population of kids runs the spectrum from very minor crimes to repeat carjackers. Many of the higher-risk juveniles have to wear GPS monitors but there are huge gaps in this system:
As stated above, CSSD doesn’t monitor the GPS devices 24/7 and their weakest coverage is during late night/early morning hours when violent crimes are disproportionately likely to occur. As one CSSD staff member described it: “PO’s usually get alerts for low batteries, tampers etc. The DPU [Delinquency Prevention Unit] tech is assigned to a unit but there is nobody monitoring 24/7. In Maryland, there is a unit dedicated to GPS monitoring that actually monitors 24/7 (not the PO).”
A CSSD staff member said “Court Social Services essentially has nothing in place to address these issues” when juveniles do not comply with electronic monitoring or other release conditions. Another said “There really aren't any consequences.”
Another CSSD staff member said “despite judges ordering electronic monitoring Director Odom wants to personally approve anyone put on electronic monitoring, which means they are waiting days if not weeks to be placed on GPS.”
Given these massive gaps in the GPS system no one should be surprised to hear about juveniles on “electronic monitoring” sneaking out after curfew and engaging in criminal activities. Even basic curfew enforcement seems to be lacking:
According to CSSD data on average they make a curfew visit (in-person or video) or call about every 6-8 days for each juvenile under supervision. In practice this likely varies quite a bit from kid to kid but the point is that it’s somewhat infrequent.
More importantly, CSSD staff report that supervised juveniles are not present during curfew checks ~65% of the time. According to staff this has increased since the pandemic when it was “only” 40%-50%.
When juveniles violate curfew there are reportedly little to no consequences
While some CSSD staff are very concerned about the failures to keep kids out of trouble they claim that CSSD Director Odom is focused primarily on getting kids to attend the 6 Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) Drop In centers throughout DC. The BARJ centers feature prominently in a 15 page CSSD staff “Letter of No Confidence” in Director Odom and Acting Deputy Director Roberson-Adams:
The letter contains a number of accusations related to the BARJ centers. These facilities are billed as a place for “mentoring, counseling, and other pro-social activities”:
On paper, these centers sound like great resources for DC youth. The alleged problem is that almost none of the CSSD-supervised youth are actually going to the BARJ centers so their impact on crime is negligible. The No Confidence letter cites: “each BARJ unit averages approximately 5 youth nightly however the Director reports that we serve hundreds of clients weekly. This is simply not the case.” One CSSD staff member said “Attendance at the BARJ centers has typically been at around 10% for the total caseloads in the different units. BARJ centers do little to nothing to address crime (I am unsure of any data to track the effectiveness of the BARJ programming including the impact on recidivism and further penetration of the criminal justice system). There is no emphasis on restorative justice which is essentially the bedrock of the BARJ philosophy.”
These allegations both question the effectiveness of the BARJ centers and the accuracy of CSSD’s data. When I was digging through their annual reports, I did notice some blatant copy/pasting of data from year-to-year. In the example below they updated the number of supervised youth but copy/pasted the numbers of home visits, curfew visits and curfew calls (alongside some comically triumphant language):
This and other examples of suspicious data lend credence to the CSSD staff accusations. The No Confidence letter goes on to allege that the BARJ centers are unsanitary:
One of the main staff complaints is that CSSD Director Odom applies a one-size-fits-all approach to both the department itself (combining pretrial and post-disposition supervision into the same role) and to each juvenile even though they have very different case histories and present very different levels of risk:
“A young person pending sentencing for an Armed Robbery is supervised the same as a young person pending adjudication on a charge of shoplifting (misdemeanor). Director Odom believes that all youth should be referred for her BARJ Drop-In Program where they receive “mentoring and tutoring” regardless of the offense or the posture of the case. Young people pending adjudication for the more serious offenses are treated no differently from those on probation for Simple Assault.”
The No Confidence letter describes a “cookie cutter” approach and a focus on “Optics”:
Beyond these questions of CSSD’s focus and efficacy, the No Confidence letter and staff make a number of allegations of impropriety:
Alleged “Misuse of Court Issued Nutrition Debit Cards: There have been a number of time Supervisory Probation Officers were directed to pay for catered food used primarily for staff orientations and when dignitaries visit the BARJ facilities. It has also been standard for “special request items” to be purchased specifically for the Director’s Office. Some examples include purchasing smoked salmon, birthday cakes and the like.”
A CSSD staff member shared an email of a “Food List for the Director’s Office” and a picture of smoked salmon with a “Please do not touch, for the Director’s office” sticky note as corroboration of this accusation.
Accusations from an employment discrimination lawsuit alleging Director Odom pressured a CSSD employee not to cooperate with a USAO investigation in sexual harassment of a child: “plaintiff states that she was identified by the U.S. Attorney's Office as a witness to a D.C. Superior Court criminal proceeding against Anthony Brooks, a CSSD-affiliated mentor accused of sexually harassing a child. See Tennant Decl. ¶ 15. According to plaintiff, Terri Odom, the director of CSSD and one of plaintiff's supervisors, resisted plaintiff assisting in the case until “a judge for the Superior Court intervened” and she was allowed to participate.”
The lawsuit also describes incidents that occurred at one of the BARJ centers where "No children were present at the BARJ that day" which lends credibility to the staff accusations that the centers are severely underutilized
Allegations that Director Odom “has directed staff not to communicate with the [Interstate Juvenile] Compact Administrator which oftentimes hinders their work and/or places the District of Columbia in jeopardy of being fined.”
A lengthy list of accusations related to discrimination in hiring, promotions and retaliation against employees
The sheer volume of staff allegations against Director Odom and CSSD overall should compel some official investigation. The operational failures to keep kids out of trouble and rehabilitate them should make fixing this division a priority for the court even if they disregard the workplace problems in CSSD. Given the number of people willing (even eager) to talk about CSSD it seems that its dysfunction has been a bit of an open secret. One CSSD staffer said “The Mayor and her team know all about Terri [Odom] and CSSD. Terri doesn't play well in the sandbox, so no one likes to collaborate with us. DYRS, CSOSA, OAG, MPD, they all know that she lies and can't be trusted.” Another staffer said “The staff concerns are well known by the Court’s Executive Office, Clerk of the Court, and the Judiciary.” Unfortunately CSSD is overseen by Congress who thus far has not exhibited much interest in how juveniles are supervised and rehabilitated in DC (though maybe some readers could help change that). It does beg the question of what Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton could have done, or could do, to improve oversight of this key agency. Kids are dying and recidivating on CSSD’s watch and hopefully someone can get to the bottom of its problems.