The Spring Creek Juvenile detention Facilty in Colorado Springs at the ribbon cutting ceremony and open house in 1998. (Denver Post file photo)

Colorado is closing two youth detention centers after the number of kids being sent to such locked facilities dropped to levels not seen since 1998.

The closures come as the total number of youths in the detention system dropped 32 percent, from 1,480 to 1,000, since 2006. Report by Denver Post.

“That’s a pretty dramatic shift in youth corrections,” said John Gomez, state youth corrections director. “It is good news. There are fewer kids going to detention.”

The reduction in Colorado juvenile detentions follows a national trend, Gomez said.

He credited programs that identified substance abuse, delinquency and familial problems earlier with reducing the number of youths entering the juvenile justice system.

The Division of Youth Corrections will close the 20-bed Sol Vista Youth Services Center in Pueblo and the 24-bed Marvin W. Foote Youth Services Center in Englewood.

The Sol Vista building, which is on the grounds of the Colorado Mental Health Institute, will be used for a substance-abuse program.

Youths now at Sol Vista will be transferred to other detention centers, and those at Marvin W. Foote will go to Mount View Youth Services Center in Jefferson County.

Reggie Bicha, executive director of the Department of Human Services, said the state will try to place employees in vacant department or state positions.

The decrease in the number of kids going to secure youth facilities also happened as the state moved more kids out of locked facilities and into private community-based residential programs.

Youths who primarily have a substance- abuse issue are getting treatment at a community facility instead of going to detention, he said.

“The right kids get the right level of intervention,” he said.

Officials are weighing the risks that kids pose to the community and making decisions whether to send them to detention or treatment based on those assessments, Gomez said.

“We don’t want to over-incarcerate kids,” he said.

Doug Wilson, Colorado public defender, attributed some of the reduction in detentions to a push to reduce the number of juvenile offenders with lesser offenses being sent to locked detention facilities.

“Why would you put truants in there?” he said.

There has been an emphasis on identifying which kids need help when they are very young and addressing their needs before they get deeper into trouble, Gomez said.

Social workers are meeting with juvenile justice professionals to intervene with kids early, he said.

Garcia said closing the juvenile facilities won’t necessarily result in cost savings, however, because the money is being shifted to treatment programs designed to keep kids out of detention.

Tammy Colorado, Juvenile Justice, Prison, Jail, Facility Closures

The Texas House has tentatively approved keeping the Texas Youth Commission a separate entity until 2021, skirting recommendations to roll the duties of the state’s juvenile prison system into a new state agency.  Report from the Dallas Morning News.

The Sunset Advisory Commission periodically reviews state agencies to eliminate waste, duplication and inefficiency. In January, it recommended that TYC and the state’s juvenile probation system by abolished and their duties rolled into a new Texas Juvenile Justice Department.   The House sunset bill instead creates an oversight board to help coordinate and improve the two agencies. The bill also requires the sunset commission to report back to lawmakers in 2011 on where TYC is in enacting reforms.   Those reforms were created by the 2007 Legislature after alleged sexual abuse of inmates by TYC staff.

vericatrajkova Juvenile Justice, Texas

Fresno County CA’s only juvenile boot camp facility officially closed Monday.  Report from KSEE24News.

The Elkhorn boot camp opened 11 years ago.  Cuts in state funding and a lack of county revenue prompted county supervisors to approve the closure in March.  Most of the 100 cadets were transferred to the Juvenile Justice Campus last week.   The remaining youth have been placed in an electronic monitoring program, many of whom are also required to attend school daily.

Chief Probation Officer Linda Penner said her department is working hard to make the best of a difficult situation.   25 Elkhorn employees were transferred to the JJC, but 16 employees were laid off because of the closure.

vericatrajkova CA Fresno City, California, Economic Issues, Juvenile Justice

Indianapolis officials on Monday unveiled their plans for spending $6.4 million in stimulus money earmarked for law enforcement activities, according to the Indianapolis Star.

About $2.7 million would be spent on improvements to the criminal justice system, including $1.3 million to upgrade the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s automated fingerprinting system.  Another $1.5 million would go to employment and prisoner re-entry programs, including $904,000 to place 200 ex-convicts into temporary jobs at the Indianapolis Department of Public Works …

Marion County is proposing to spend $1.2 million on juvenile justice programs, including building two new juvenile reception centers to beef up the services and supervision for young offenders. The county plans to spend $580,000 on a nurse and substance abuse services for Community Corrections inmates; $118,000 on training programs for the Indianapolis Fire Department and Community Corrections staff; and $319,000 to contract with a grant manager.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, IN Marion County, Indiana, Juvenile Justice, Re-Entry

The Heartless Felons, a new kind of prison gang, have brazenly broken away from the unwritten convicts’ code – no rapes, no robberies, no snitching, no group attacks – and raised tensions to alarming rates at the Mansfield Correctional Institution in OH, prison guards and officials say.  Report from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The gang formed in juvenile jails and now, slightly older but no less violent, members have migrated to the state prison system, where the Heartless Felons are wreaking havoc. The Felons, with other gangs stocked from Cleveland streets, have squared off several times against each other, increasing the tensions at the overcrowded state prison in Mansfield and raising concerns of another Easter riot.  Attacks in Ohio prisons have doubled since 2005, from nearly 500 then to more than 1,000 last year …

The Mansfield prison houses 2,475 inmates, though it was built for 1,536, a capacity rate of 161 percent. The prison nearly exploded March 20 when about 10 gang fights broke out.  The fights involved the Heartless Felons, the Up the Way gang and the Down the Way gang, the last two made up of inmates predominantly from Cleveland, prison officials said. In some fights, 25 gang members attacked each other. Guards and inmates suffered minor injuries …

Mansfield faces [familiar] problems of crowding and staff shortages, as the prison has 383 guards spread over four shifts. On a typical weekday afternoon shift, about 80 guards work the prison, creating a ratio as high as 30 inmates to every guard…

About 18 months ago, the prison began seeing a change when the Heartless Felons began filtering into Mansfield.

The [Heartless Felons] gang’s roots go back to the juvenile jails run by the Department of Youth Services, where the gang formed and battled for years with its rival, the Head Busters. As the Heartless Felons left the youth system and continued committing crimes, they were pushed to adult prisons … Older inmates – those in their 20s or early 30s – who tried to steer some of the gang’s 30 or so members away soon regretted it. The gang deals in intimidation, preferring six-on-one attacks, robberies and extortion. Its own bylaws indicate that its members will not fight one-on-one during attacks, guards said.

There is more detail and background in the Plain Dealer article.

vericatrajkova Gangs (STGs), Juvenile Justice, Ohio

North Carolina Governor Beverley Perdue’s budget plan had called for the closure of seven prisons.   Some may be saved however, as reported by the Asheville Citizen-Times.

State Senate budget writers released a spending plan Monday that would save money by boosting class sizes, giving fewer tests and prodding city school systems to fold … But after local protests, budget writers avoided three cuts that Gov. Bev Perdue proposed affecting how criminals are rehabilitated in the mountains.

Haywood Correctional Center, an aging minimum-security prison in Hazelwood, comes off the chopping block — for now. The prison is the only one west of Asheville. Corrections officials have been optimistic that its workers could be reassigned if it closes as proposed by Perdue, but Sen. John Snow said the distance would be too great.  “There wasn’t anywhere for those folks to go,” said Snow, a Murphy Democrat who co-chairs the budget subcommittee on public safety. “The 44 employees that would be lost, would be lost, period.”

The plan also spares Camp Woodson, a Buncombe County wilderness camp aimed at turning around the most serious offenders in the juvenile justice system; and the Young Offenders Forest Conservation Program, also known as the BRIDGE program, which sends young inmates in the adult corrections system to fight forest fires in the mountains. Four prisons in eastern and central North Carolina would close under the plan, down from seven in Perdue’s proposal to the General Assembly.

However, juvenile justice workers criticized other aspects of the Senate plan.

Also tapped for closing: two aging youth lockups that are close to new units and a number of programs that target at-risk youths, like the Center for the Prevention of School Violence. Juvenile Justice Secretary Linda Hayes called those “very shocking” cuts that could cripple public safety efforts.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, Juvenile Justice, North Carolina

The Kansas House has passed a budget that would essentially cut all department budgets by 10% to counter a $680 million deficit.  A large amount of Federal stimulus money has been taken to scale back even deeper cuts.   For the Kansas Department of Corrections:

Public safety spending trimmed by 9 percent. Funding for community corrections programs, re-entry programs for parolees and juvenile detention facilities is sharply cut …

Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican, urged lawmakers to return $5 million to the state’s prison system to avoid reduced funding for community corrections programs and initiatives helping parolees overcome addiction and mental health issues.   Lawmakers credit such programs with reducing recidivism and eliminating the need for new prisons. Now, with funding cut, “crime will increase,” Colloton warned. “Our prisoner population will go up.” Lawmakers agreed to restore about $1.2 million of the funds.

Excerpted from a much longer article on the budget at the Kansas City Star.

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, Economic Issues, Juvenile Justice, Kansas, Re-Entry

Drugs are seized in Scottish jails almost five times a day on average, according to official figures.  This report from the BBC.

There were 2,122 cases of drugs being discovered in prisons from January 2008 to March 2009.   Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie said the problem had doubled in five years, with jails now “awash” with drugs.  The Scottish Government said it had a “zero tolerance” attitude to drug use and was working to limit supply …

Ms Goldie said: “It is nothing short of incredible that the number of drug finds in our prisons has more than doubled in less than five years.  In 2003 there was an average of 2.3 drug finds per day. For the past few years that figure has more than doubled. It is unacceptable and it appears that Scotland’s prisons are now awash with drugs.”  The Conservatives have called for every prison to have a drug-free wing where inmates can go to when they want to come off drugs.  “We should be helping prisoners get off drugs, rather than providing an environment for drugs to flourish,” Miss Goldie said.

vericatrajkova Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Juvenile Justice, Scotland, United Kingdom

A recent upswing in the number of assaults at the Industrial Home for Youth facility in Salem has the West Virginia Division of Juvenile Services looking to make some changes in how its offenders are housed.  Reported by WSAZ3.

Right now, the Industrial Home for Youth has juvenile prisoners along with members of the adult population, ranging in age from 18-21 … They are considering a move that would put all 18-21 year old offenders at the Donald R. Kuhn Center in Boone County … Right now, that facility is a diagnostic center treating offenders …

Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety Spokesperson Joe Thornton said when they looked at their options, separating the adults from the juveniles was the best option, and DRK was the best place to move the adults. The juveniles currently housed there will go to the facility that best suits them somewhere else in the state. It’s not clear just how much it’s going to cost to upgrade the security at the DRK facility, but Thornton says in the end, safety of inmates outweighs the cost. He also says the folks who work at DRK are trained in all levels of security, so the fact that a more violent population is coming to Boone County doesn’t mean changes when it comes to personnel.

Women will also be moved to an all-female facility as a result of these proposed changes.

vericatrajkova Female Inmates, Juvenile Justice, West Virginia

Calhoun County MI Juvenile Home administrators say while their building is structurally sound, it is so far outdated that replacing it would be better than continuing to make repairs.  This 3:00 video is from Battle Creek Enquirer.

vericatrajkova Juvenile Justice, MI Calhoun County, Prison and Jail Construction