The King County Council will vote in August on legislation some of its members say will affirm the county’s commitment to continuing youth detention at 12th Ave’s Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center.
“Today, the facility is holding 61 young people on charges including murder, manslaughter, rape, child molestation and other serious violent crimes,” Claudia Balducci, Law and Justice Committee vice chair and former director of the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, said in a statement. “It is clear that we continue to have a need for detention. At the same time, our county has long been committed to the success of our young people to keep them out of detention.”
The August vote follows the county council committee’s failure Wednesday to arrive at a consensus on the proclamatory legislation from councilmember Reagan Dunn that creates no new specific policies or programs but would declare the intent of the council to “maintain operations of the youth detention facility.”
The legislation may not be necessary.
In March, CHS reported that Executive Dow Constantine had already backed off his commitments made during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests to achieving “zero youth detention” here by 2025 in favor of an approach focused on alternatives including establishment of “a network of diverse community care homes” in a quest to change how Seattle moves forward on youth detention and addressing its disproportionate impact on communities of color.
The county’s new $200 million youth jail opened in the winter of 2020 with 16-cell living halls designed to look like dorms but secured for incarceration with electronic locks and state of the art surveillance systems, new classrooms, and an expanded visitation areas where youth offenders can meet with family and lawyers. There is a Merit Hall where detained kids can earn TV time and officials repurposed an “interview room” as a video game room. And there are courtrooms where legal proceedings can be carried out.
The Dunn legislation includes no specifics about the operation of the 12th Ave detention facility.
Title
A MOTION declaring the intent of the King County Council to maintain operations of the Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center.
Body
WHEREAS, in 2012, King County voters approved a $210,000,000 levy to construct a replacement Youth and Family Justice Center, and
WHEREAS, in February 2020, King County began operating the Judge Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center, and
WHEREAS, on July 21, 2020, the executive committed to converting youth detention units at the Judge Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center to other uses no later than 2025, and
WHEREAS, the King County council has received and reviewed three reports on the plan for achieving zero youth detention and for instituting a strategic planning process for the future of secure juvenile detention at the children and family justice center, including reports dated September 30, 2021, June 30, 2022, and August 4, 2023, and
WHEREAS, the final of report, entitled Care and Closure: Final Strategic Planning Report on the Future of Secure Juvenile Detention, is submitted by the executive, and
WHEREAS, during the March 27, 2024, hearing of King County council law and justice committee, there were substantial concerns expressed by councilmembers about the direction of Care and Closure Final Strategic Planning Report on the Future of Secure Juvenile Detention, including the proposed secure detention alternatives to the Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT MOVED by the Council of King County:
It is the intent of the King County Council not to close the Judge Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center and keep it open and operating with secure detention services provided.
Black kids continue to be disproportionately detained in King County, making up about half of the population housed at the facility or on home detention.
Constantine has been pursuing three initiatives from a recommendation panel hoped to change the way the county handles youth incarceration while maintaining the youth jail.
The first recommendation is to provide more funding and resources for programs supporting kids when they leave the jail and “return home to their families or are placed in kinship care with extended family members.”
A second is to boost educational and social programs and facilities that provide “culturally responsive and linguistically relevant, developmentally appropriate, and youth-and family-centered supports that address their identified needs.”
The most concrete would be an initiative to “create, contract, and provide oversight to a network of diverse community care homes where youth would stay while their court case proceeds if they are unable to go home because of safety concerns.”
There has been no legislation finalized to achieve any of the recommendations.
The county says more than 60 juveniles are currently being held in secure or standard detention, on electronic home detention, or in group care.
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Disgusting and normal.
Throw the book at anyone who breaks the law.
This stuff has gone unchecked way too long. No more homeless, no more criminals on the streets.
> Black kids continue to be disproportionately detained in King County, making up about half of the population housed at the facility or on home detention.
What, do the courts just look at 80% of defendants and say “Eh, you’re not black, let’s turn you loose”? (Leaving 10% black and 10% non-black to be locked up.)
There’s not even a mention about whether they’re convicted more often, or prosecuted more often, or arrested more often, or commit the crimes more often. When I’ve been able to dig into numbers, it usually comes down to poverty: Black people in America are disproportionately poor, and almost everything else flows out of that. I wasn’t able to find out anything about relative rates of climbing out of poverty and sinking into poverty, but that seems like it would be the next place to look.
But stopping our investigation at the outermost symptom allows the root injustice to grow unchecked.
“When I’ve been able to dig into numbers, it usually comes down to poverty”
Nope. Women are more likely to be poor than men. Whether juvenile or adults, males commit far more crime than females. I’m curious why the discrepancies in racial breakdown of incarcerated people is so disagreeable but the discrepancies and gender breakdown is perfectly acceptable. If it was poverty that was causing it it would be a way more diverse group of people when it comes to race, gender, age.
Of course, more men commit crimes. They are judged on their status and their ability to obtain resources to provide, one way or another. That doesn’t change the poverty element.
Those in favor of closing this youth jail seem to believe that this would magically prevent serious youth crimes. That is naive and dangerous.
The alternative is to just send the offenders directly to prison, skip the youth center.
The term for the people pushing for the closing the youth center is “heartless”, not “naive”.
Time for Dow to go. He pandered to the far left on closing the youth jail while we have juveniles committing crimes they know they will never be prosecuted for and 7 year olds attacking people with machetes.