By, George P. Hartwick, III and Chadwick Libby
It’s often said that our children are our most precious resource. But precious resources require care, investment and protection.
In recent years, we have seen a focused investment in our juvenile justice system, which has helped lead to a more than 70-percent drop in the number of kids being admitted to secure detention facilities. As a result, we’ve seen more than a dozen detention facilities close.
Behind the numbers lies a looming crisis.
While we’ve succeeded in reducing the number of kids sent to secure detention facilities, we’ve also inadvertently created a system that leaves hundreds of kids without a safe place to go if, and when, they veer off path and enter the juvenile justice system.
Today, there are 513 licensed detention center beds in Pennsylvania. But, because there are not enough workers to staff those facilities, only 366 beds are actually available to be used – about half of them designated for the state’s largest county, Philadelphia.
Statewide, there are more than 160 kids who are waiting for a secure detention bed to open up. Until that happens, they’re sent back to their communities – sometimes in lower-level shelters, or back home on GPS monitoring.
A combination of factors – from staff shortages to low reimbursement rates – has created a perfect storm that puts both children and the public at risk.
Let’s remember that these are kids. They may enter the juvenile justice system for a variety of reasons. But regardless of why they’re in the system, they deserve care and protection – both for their own safety and the safety of our community.
Today, kids who enter the system are adjudicated based on the type of facility they require. But when no beds are available, the system breaks down, creating a tinderbox just waiting to ignite.
Take Dauphin County as an example.
From Sept. 1 through Nov. 9, Dauphin County had 16 youth offenders whose crimes would have required them to be sent to secure detention facilities. But there were no beds available, so they were sent back to their communities, creating a public safety issue.
These are not low-level offenders. Of those 16 youth offenders, a dozen of them were charged with violent crimes – including aggravated assault on police and a teacher, robbery, aggravated indecent assault, strangulation and other violent offenses.
The picture gets worse over time. Since Jan. 1, nearly 80 kids in Dauphin County committed offenses that should have required them to be placed in a secure detention facility, but none were because there were no beds available.
Many children now wait four to five months for an available bed. While they wait, they’re back in our communities – some of them posing a safety risk to themselves or the public.
At its root, this system fails our kids because it does not focus on their health. It focuses on where they are treated, not how we treat them.
We need a complete shift in the way we think about how we care for children who end up in our criminal justice system. It’s time we prioritize mental and physical healthcare over the type of housing for these children.
We must develop solutions based on acuity of care required to treat the often complex mental, emotional and physical needs of these kids.
Another pressure point in our system is lack of adequate state reimbursement for community-based treatment programs. This has led to fewer providers, with many refusing to treat children with severe behavioral problems.
The situation has gotten so bad that some counties now are forced to transfer children to secure detention centers out of state.
We now have a threefold problem: We no longer have enough secure detention beds to meet the need, we don’t have enough access in community-based programs, and we are not investing the level of resources needed in mental and physical healthcare for these kids to help address their underlying issues.
There is no easy fix to these issues, and we should not continue down the same path that got us where we are today.
Solving this crisis will require the focused attention and collaboration of a wide range of stakeholders – including the Pa. Department of Human Services, the General Assembly, the judiciary, police and district attorneys, county commissioners, victim advocates, healthcare providers and insurers, former youth offenders and the community at large.
We urge Governor Shapiro to prioritize these issues and work with these important stakeholders to transform our juvenile justice system into one that emphasizes access to community-based behavioral and physical healthcare for these children.
Together, we can build a system that truly helps these kids, improves their overall health, and in the process makes our entire community safer.
These are our children – our most precious resource. If we want to save the most vulnerable among them, we must invest in them.
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George P. Hartwick III is a Dauphin County Commissioner and chair of the Human Services Committee of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. Chad Libby is Director of Probation Services for Dauphin County and president of the Pennsylvania Council of Chief Juvenile Probation Officers.