Washington will open a new juvenile detention center on the campus of a prison in Aberdeen, an attempt to ease overcrowding at two existing state facilities for young people convicted of crimes.
Gov. Jay Inslee on Monday said that the facility will be adjacent to Stafford Creek Corrections Center. It will house 48 young men who choose to move out of Green Hill School in Chehalis, where officials say overcrowding has led to unsafe conditions.
Although the new juvenile detention facility will be on Department of Corrections property, it will be operated separately from the state prison.
Since 2023, Washington’s juvenile justice population has increased 60%, according to Inslee’s office. Most of that is due to a rise in crime among young people that Inslee said Monday was “unpredicted and unpredictable.”
DCYF also points to recent legislation that extended the juvenile age to 25 for some offenses and allowed young people convicted of crimes to remain at juvenile detention centers — as opposed to going to prison — until their 25th birthday.
“There is only one short-term solution to this, and that is additional capacity in the system to absorb this huge number of juveniles coming into the system,” Inslee told reporters.
Inslee ruled out releasing young people from the facilities, noting most people held at the detention centers have been convicted of serious felonies, like armed robbery and murder.
Green Hill has a safe operational capacity of 180 but currently houses about 240 people. These kinds of occupancy levels are unsustainable, according to the department, and have led to difficulties retaining staff, offering rehabilitation programming and keeping residents safe.
Earlier this year, the Department of Children, Youth and Families suspended admissions for about a month and temporarily transferred 43 young men to an adult prison to ease some of the overcrowding. Those decisions led to an outcry from lawmakers and a lawsuit from the Washington State Association of Counties.
The new facility will be smaller than the state’s other juvenile centers and will focus on leadership training and employment opportunities.
The Department of Children, Youth and Families plans to lease an empty building at Stafford Creek from Corrections. The juvenile residents there will not have contact with Corrections staff or prisoners.
Other than some work on food preparation, the new facility will be operated by juvenile justice staff, Inslee said. The state is in the process of recruiting those workers now.
The details of the new leadership curriculum that will be offered at the site are still being finalized, but it will likely be a six-month program. Those interested can apply to move to the facility, will live there for six months, and return to Green Hill to likely receive a paid job.
“This is going to be unique in this system,” Inslee said. “It gives people new options.”
The new site will not be inexpensive to set up or operate. Even though it’s a tight budget year, the Legislature will have to find a way to pay for it, Inslee said.
As of Monday, Inslee did not have an exact dollar figure for the price, but he said he will release a budget proposal in the coming weeks that will outline a plan for covering the cost.
Earlier this year, the Department of Children, Youth and Families submitted a placeholder budget request to the governor for between $4.8 million and $9 million for bringing a new facility online.
“We’ve been very clear and transparent,” Allison Krutsinger, spokesperson for the department, told the Standard last week. “The solution is more capacity.”
Although additional capacity is a short-term solution to overcrowding, Inslee and Democratic lawmakers said Monday that more needs to be done to ensure fewer people end up in the juvenile justice system.
Rep. Tana Senn, D-Mercer Island, said lawmakers need to look at flexibility in sentencing and put a stronger emphasis on rehabilitation and prevention.
“Let’s be clear, this is not the only step that’s needed, just a critical and an immediate one,” Senn said. “We must look further upstream for prevention and diversion.”
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