What happened to DC's juvenile detention system?

Capacity, safety and accountability problems across the board

DC has been rocked in the last week by tragic and preventable youth fatalities. These needless deaths stem from the myriad ways DC fails to prevent crime in the first place, enforce the laws and rehabilitate offenders.

• A teenage girl died in a car crash where both vehicles had been carjacked by kids

• A teenage boy was shot and killed by his intended carjacking victim

The Washington Post stories linked above get into solid detail about how these children died. The point of this post is to build on these stories to get into why DC’s juvenile detention and supervision system is failing. While the primary DC agency is the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), there is also plenty of blame to go around to Court Social Services (CSS) and DC’s judges.

Kendra Outlaw was just 16 years old when she died in a car crash. Both the vehicle she was driving and another vehicle that was hit had been carjacked by a group of juveniles. Another girl in Kendra’s car had previously been arrested for robbery and theft charges. Her case exposed that DYRS has a “persistent” shortage of shelter home placements for pretrial juveniles:

This anecdote is also one of many where juveniles on “electronic monitoring” simply fail to charge their GPS device’s battery and then go on to commit crimes. These situations highlight two problems with pretrial juvenile supervision and release:

• DC Superior Court Social Services (a Federal entity) is responsible for monitoring accused children who have been placed on electronic monitoring (i.e. wearing a GPS device). We only have data on the number of children they process but nothing about how well they enforce compliance. The anecdotes suggest this is something that policymakers should investigate.

• DYRS has insufficient shelter home/group home capacity and this is pushing judges to release high-risk juvenile suspects. Shelter homes are an intermediate step between full detention at the Youth Services Center (YSC) and releasing a juvenile to their parents/guardian (with or without electronic monitoring).

The decrease in shelter home capacity appears to be a recent phenomenon because DYRS used to be responsible for many more juveniles arrest rates were higher:

Policymakers should probe why this capacity appears to have atrophied and what Acting Director Sam Abed is doing to fix this. It’s also worth investigating why the “Youth Shelter Waitlist” is always reported to be 0 in DYRS’ dashboard despite judges saying there is a “persistent” shortage of slots. Shelter homes are an important tool because they are less traumatizing (and therefore less likely to drive recidivism) than full detention but still provide a more controlled environment. They can’t fully replace juvenile detention facilities like the YSC but they are a critical option for judges aiming to protect the public.

The second needless juvenile death was Vernard Toney Jr., who died at the age of 13. He was shot by an off-duty security guard when he and other boys attempted to carjack the guard. Vernard had previously been arrested on violent crime charges when he was 12 years old and was released to the custody of his parents:

One of Vernard’s accomplices was a 12 year old boy who had “been getting involved in physical altercations since age 5 and began smoking marijuana at 11” who also “repeatedly stayed out past his curfew and had assaulted” his mother. The 12 year old suspect’s mother said she had attempted to get help for her son but to no avail. This tragedy illustrates two other issues:

• Judges are releasing high-risk juvenile suspects that the law permits them to detain. Some (too many) of these juveniles are then going on to commit other crimes while released.

• Parents with troubled kids are unable to get help before their children victimize other people.

While some blame certainly falls on the judges making these decisions, it’s worth looking deeper at the Youth Services Center (YSC) where detained children are held. The most important thing to know is that it is currently over its 88 person capacity and critically short-staffed:

Short-staffing of Youth Development Representatives (YDRs; essentially corrections officers for DYRS facilities) at the YSC has meant that detained children sometimes spend up to 23 hours a day on lockdown in their cells. It’s also made the facility less safe. Five security guards were injured when some detainees attacked a guard and used a stolen ID badge to open cell doors. The ensuing incident was described as a “melee” by City Administrator Kevin Donahue. This capacity crunch at the YSC is probably exacerbated by the lack of secure shelter homes; some youth that should be in a shelter home are being released to their parents while some others end up at the YSC. Increased shelter home capacity would help put more juvenile suspects in an appropriate setting while freeing up space at the YSC. It’s impossible to know how specific judges are weighing decisions to detain or release juvenile suspects. But it’d be surprising if the overcrowding issues at the YSC weren’t discouraging some of them from ordering pretrial detention in cases that are “on the bubble.” It would certainly help explain how juvenile arrests and prosecutions have risen much faster in recent months than the YSC population.

DYRS’ staffing shortfalls also extend to New Beginnings (NB), the District’s facility for committed youth (i.e. those found guilty and committed to DYRS by a judge). As early as February 2022 both the YSC and NB had staffing vacancies after the Bowser administration had ordered a “hiring freeze” for Fiscal Year 2021. During the COVID pandemic and aftermath these shortages have become more critical. As one anonymous DYRS employee told me these staffing shortages are burning out staff amidst a series of problems at the agency (their quotes in italics):

”Staffing shortages have become more severe. Staff members are subject to a 'draft,' which means that if there aren't enough staff to cover the upcoming shift, you may be required to stay at the facility for an additional 8 hours outside of your tour (total 16hrs shift). Youth development representatives (YDRs) are tired and overwhelmed. The youth notice when we are understaffed and use idle time to plan attacks on other youth and staff, unfortunately. DYRS has many hiring initiatives, but given the lack of transparency in the job description, many people quit within the first 3 months.”

“Between the lack of support from leadership, long work hours throughout the week (16-hour shifts), and dealing with defiant delinquents...My mental health has deteriorated. As an employee I have been stripped of my rights to feel protected at work. The kids run this place which is why they always come back.”

This employee also described how management uses perks to placate the residents rather than as rewards for good behavior:

““Juveniles" who are committed are 17-18 with serious crimes have the option to program and go to school. Much of their schedule includes watching YouTube and playing Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty. The game is supposed to be a privilege for residents who have displayed improved behavior. Unfortunately, they’re are not programs in place to occupy the residents’ time. Therefore, management will give them these perks to keep them "busy." Residents use the tv’s to utilize Instagram or YouTube, often watching the news, MPD footage, and music promoting violence.”

The employee shared a number of ways DYRS leadership could improve:

• Improve transparency in the job description. Many people believe they're signing up as counselors, not as Corrections Officers due to the current job description.

• Eliminate the draft to promote a better work-life balance

• Implement vocational programs for residents

• Ensure accountability for the youth. Residents who assault staff should be automatically rebooked.

• Increase security measures. Residents are using street drugs on top of their prescribed medication, which makes it unsafe.

This employee’s testimony is especially credible because their report of juvenile detainees using drugs at New Beginnings has been corroborated by DYRS leadership:

The danger of illicit drug use at New Beginnings is very real. There was a reported fentanyl overdose by a juvenile detainee earlier this year. DYRS Acting Director Sam Abed has at least acknowledged the contraband issue and says they are implementing security changes to fix it. Abed has only been in this role since June 2023 so he largely inherited DYRS’ staffing, capacity and operational problems rather than being responsible for creating them.

The same cannot be said for Mayor Bowser and Councilmember Trayon White (who chairs the committee with oversight of DYRS). DYRS’ growing staffing shortfalls were identified as far back as February 2022 by the “Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight”:

But instead of working to fix DYRS’ staffing problems, Mayor Bowser and CM Trayon White cut DYRS’ budget while adding additional responsibilities:

• Mayor Bowser proposed a $1.7M budget cut

  • Her team also expanded DYRS’ mission into more community outreach and violence prevention that some youth service providers feel would be more appropriate in less stigmatized agencies than DYRS

  • The administration then also tasked DYRS with receiving children that violate the curfew

• CM Trayon White’s committee cut an additional $529K for a total cut of $2.3M

How DYRS is supposed to get back to safe staffing levels, increase its shelter housing capacity and expand its mission with a reduced budget is a mystery. The agency’s “performance plan” (see below) doesn’t instill confidence. If one took the agency’s “plan” seriously it would mean that DYRS wants there to be more assaults, more injuries, more re-arrests, less engagement and more fugitives. In all likelihood they just copy/pasted old targets without any regard for actual performance. The total disregard for any kind of data-driven performance management should be a scandal but this is sadly extremely common in DC agencies’ so-called “performance plans.”

Now that we’ve seen that DYRS is bursting at the seams, it casts the Bowser administration’s effort to detain low-risk juveniles in an even worse light. During the “Safer Stronger” debate Mayor Bowser and Deputy Mayor Appiah argued repeatedly that they needed to be able to detain accused children that the court deemed to be not a threat to the public or a flight risk. This detention was framed as being “for their own good” despite volumes of research showing that pretrial detention is incredibly traumatizing and more likely to increase crime through recidivism when applied to lower-risk juveniles. This was my main concern with “Safer Stronger” at the time:

What would Mayor Bowser's crime bill actually do?

CM Pinto wisely removed this section of the bill in her own emergency crime legislation but the Mayor’s team is continuing to advocate for full passage of “Safer Stronger.” Interestingly, Acting Director Abed clearly did not get the administration talking points before his confirmation hearing because he said it’s “a slippery slope & it is one that is sort of fraught with peril when you start engaging in using incarceration as a means for something helping someone."

Given what we know now, expanding the legal scope of pretrial detention for low-risk juveniles is even more pointless and counterproductive. DYRS barely even has room for objectively high-risk suspects (like the stories at the beginning of this post) and there’s good reason to suspect that judges are often hesitant to order detention when the YSC is at capacity. Throwing more low-risk kids into the YSC (if judges would even use that legal authority) would simply make it more understaffed (relative to detainee population) and make any “for their own good” rehabilitative efforts that much less likely to succeed. The fact that the Bowser administration attempted to dramatically expand juvenile detention without any serious efforts to address DYRS’ staffing and capacity shortfalls is yet another example of not thinking through the real world operational requirements of their “tough on crime” rhetoric.

DC clearly has a juvenile crime problem and to protect the public some accused juvenile suspects need to be either fully detained at the YSC or placed in shelter homes. Making sure DYRS and its contracted providers can detain children in a way that is safe for both detainees and staff deserves more of the Mayor’s and Council’s attention. There also needs to be more media and possibly Congressional scrutiny of DC Superior Court Social Services for their apparent failures in enforcing electronic monitoring rules. Lastly we hear again and again of parents trying and failing to get help before their kids commit a serious crime or after they are released by DYRS. There are clear coordination failures and the lack of a true “no wrong door” policy for getting families to support they need to deal with housing, nutrition, mental health, substance use and other problems. Many Washingtonians are rightfully shocked by the terrible stories where children are hurting others and getting themselves killed. We need to channel that shock into productive pressure on the local and Federal government to fix these critical operational problems in DC’s juvenile detention system.