Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-13-07038/USCOURTS-caDC-13-07038-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

---

The attached material is cited in Grimes v. D.C., No. 13-

7038, slip op. at 4 (D.C. Cir. July 21, 2015); (citing , Henri 

Cauvin, Overcrowding at D.C. Youth Detention Center 

Draws Criticism, Wash. Post, Jan. 21, 2010, available on 

7/21/15 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/

content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012004707.html).

Archived by the Circuit Library on 7/21/15

USCA Case #13-7038 Document #1592582 Filed: 07/21/2015 Page 1 of 5
Overcrowding at D.C. youth detention center draws criticism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012004707.html[07/21/2015 3:41:10 PM]

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CORRECTION TO THIS ARTICLE

The article about overcrowding at the District's Youth Services Center misstated the month in which the facility's population

peaked at 156 detainees. The peak occurred in November, not in August

Overcrowding at D.C. youth detention center draws criticism

By Henri E. Cauvin

Washington Post Staff Writer 

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The District's youth detention center in Northeast

Washington, which is supposed to house no more than

88 juveniles, has had to cram as many as 156 into the

facility in recent months during a protracted period of

overcrowding that has drawn stern criticism from a

court-appointed monitor.

The surge in detainees has strained space and staff at

the Youth Services Center on Mount Olivet Road and

has emerged as a critical roadblock in an effort to end

a 25-year-old class action suit over the District's care

of juveniles charged with crimes.

In recent years, the court monitor has reported

progress by the Department of Youth Rehabilitation

Services in addressing some long-standing

shortcomings. But persistent overcrowding at the

detention center in Northeast and a string of security breakdowns at New Beginnings, the

agency's new long-term detention center in Laurel, haven't helped the agency's effort to

end court supervision.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Herbert B. Dixon Jr., who oversees the class action case, is

scheduled to hold a hearing Tuesday on the overcrowding at the Youth Services Center,

where the population early this week stood at 110, below a peak in August of 156 but

well above capacity. The center houses boys and girls and was designed for single-room

occupancy.

In a recent report to Dixon, court monitor

Grace M. Lopes said the Department of

Youth Rehabilitation Services and its

predecessor agencies have long struggled to

manage the juvenile offender population

and adequately staff the District's juvenile

detention facilities. Those failings, she said,

have potentially perilous consequences.

"Individually," Lopes wrote, "each of these

problems can create significant safety risks;

in combination, they can give rise to

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USCA Case #13-7038 Document #1592582 Filed: 07/21/2015 Page 2 of 5
Overcrowding at D.C. youth detention center draws criticism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012004707.html[07/21/2015 3:41:10 PM]

circumstances that pose substantial risk of

harm to youth and staff."

When it closed its notorious Oak Hill facility last spring and opened the more modern

New Beginnings, the department accomplished an important goal. But the transition to

the much smaller, 60-bed facility compounded the agency's long-standing population

management problems, and the effects continue to ripple through the District's juvenile

justice system.

The overcrowding at the Youth Services Center is a particularly complicated problem for

the department. As the short-term juvenile detention facility, its population of mostly

pretrial detainees is driven in part by factors that are not directly under the control of the

agency, such as juvenile arrests and judicial decisions. By contrast, the department has

broad discretion in deciding which sentenced offenders it holds at New Beginnings and

which it supervises in the community.

Whatever the underlying causes, Lopes has made it clear that overcrowding at the Youth

Services Center and security gaps that allowed two escapes at New Beginnings last year

must be resolved if the District expects to bring an end to the class action suit.

"Addressing these problems in a more permanent, sustainable way is the sine qua non for

the successful resolution of this lawsuit," Lopes wrote in her report.

In a report to the court late last month, the District said City Administrator Neil O. Albert

had taken a leading role in resolving the overcrowding at the Youth Services Center.

Albert has been receiving daily reports and reviewing the issue at his weekly human

services staff meeting. At Albert's direction, top officials from the Department of Youth

Rehabilitation Services, the police department, the D.C. attorney general's office and the

child welfare and mental health agencies are meeting regularly to work on the

overcrowding issues.

A number of steps are being taken to reduce the population, the District said in its report.

The city, for example, is expanding diversion programs for youths with no prior arrests

and is bolstering in-school mediation programs. It is also urging alternatives for juveniles

who violate probation, and it is expediting and improving psychological assessments.

The success or failure of the efforts is likely to determine the course of the class action

suit, which is known as the Jerry M. case, for the name of the lead plaintiff.

Filed 25 years ago, the case has defined juvenile justice in the District for more than a

generation and has dogged one mayoral administration after another. The Department of

Youth Rehabilitation Services was created as a Cabinet-level agency several years ago to

give its mission a more prominent place in the District government, and a reform-minded

director, Vincent N. Schiraldi, was brought in to remake the city's juvenile justice

system.

With his emphasis on a more rehabilitative approach to dealing with juvenile offenders,

Schiraldi has drawn a lot of praise but also criticism, not least when youth under the

agency's supervision, but not in detention, have ended up involved in homicides --

sometimes as perpetrators and sometimes as victims. Last year, 10 youths under the

department's supervision were homicide victims or arrested in a homicide, compared

with a total of 14 in 2008.

USCA Case #13-7038 Document #1592582 Filed: 07/21/2015 Page 3 of 5
Overcrowding at D.C. youth detention center draws criticism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012004707.html[07/21/2015 3:41:10 PM]

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With Schiraldi departing at the end of the month to run New York City's probation

agency, it will be up to his successor to guide the department through what it hopes is the

last leg of the Jerry M. lawsuit. This month, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) named one of

Schiraldi's top aides, Chief of Staff Marc A. Schindler, to serve as the agency's interim

director.

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USCA Case #13-7038 Document #1592582 Filed: 07/21/2015 Page 4 of 5
Overcrowding at D.C. youth detention center draws criticism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012004707.html[07/21/2015 3:41:10 PM]

USCA Case #13-7038 Document #1592582 Filed: 07/21/2015 Page 5 of 5