(The Center Square) – Washington lawmakers are exploring a variety of legislative solutions to address chronic issues at its juvenile rehabilitation facilities, in particular Green Hill School located in Chehalis. However, the proposals have received pushback over concerns either regarding the wellbeing of juvenile convicts or the communities they’re expected to reenter once they’ve served their sentence.
A common issue cited within Green Hill School is overcrowding of inmates, which some legislators argue puts both inmates and the staff at risk. Senate Bill 5278, sponsored by Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, seeks to rectify that by allowing some of the inmates, who can be as old as 24, to be housed within facilities run by the state Department of Corrections under certain circumstances.
Speaking on the bill at a Monday public hearing in the Senate Human Services Committee, Braun told colleagues that “wherever we may have been as when we adopted the JR25 policy a few years ago, whether we supported or didn’t support it, we’re in it now and frankly, we’re not delivering on our promise. Our promise was to deliver real-building services to these folks, and we are failing … in large part because of the overpopulation at Green Hill.”
He added that his bill “allows different avenues for the agency to make … reasonable decisions about where they could move folks to deal with overpopulation, but most fundamentally it allows them to deal with it so that we can get the population down. We need to deal with this issue. It’s creating an unsafe situation for the residents. It’s creating probably tens of millions of dollars in tort liability for the state, frankly.”
However, some testifying expressed criticism of the proposal, including Grete Schultz with Teamchild.
“Young people should be in their communities receiving the support, treatment, education, and love that they need,” she said. “But when our state determines that they should be incarcerated, that incarceration should take place at a juvenile facility until they are 25 years old. They should reside with those who are at an equivalent developmental phase.”
“We can all agree that our juvenile rehabilitation system is failing young people right now,” she added. “It’s overcrowded and the treatment and education systems are not where they should be. However, the solution is not to turn our backs on these youth. It’s to invest in this system, to invest in returning young people to their communities without subjecting them to further harm.”
Also opposed was Sarah Nagy with Columbia Legal Services.
“We appreciate the Legislature’s interest in addressing the serious conditions issues that are ongoing at Green Hill School,” she said. “However, respectfully, this bill is not the right solution.”
The opposition prompted a response from Sen. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley, who recently participated in a tour of Green Hill School. He noted that “we’re severely overcrowded. From what I could tell, there was not rehabilitation going on. At what point can we solve this problem?”
In favor of the bill was James McMahan representing the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
“When the Department of Corrections and/or JR, when those systems fail, public safety is jeopardized in our communities. We already struggle, frankly, to find an appropriate place to confine a young person who has shown to be a danger to our communities,” he said.
He added that “let’s not forget that young people go to JR only for the worst kind of crimes that young people commit. We support efforts to ensure that adequate capacity exists in our state systems, including the provisions of this bill, and partnered with efforts to increase capacity, so that we don’t ever have to consider using these provisions in the first place.”
A separate piece of legislation, Senate Bill 5296, would require a court make a finding that committing a convicted individual to a juvenile rehabilitation is “needed” because community-based placement “would not adequately protect the community.”
Sponsor Sen. Claire Wilson, D-Federal Way, told the committee that “you’ve heard me say that before so we need to address this but we also need to address it by finding solutions that meet the needs of our young adults that are in those systems, and so one of those strategies to address that overcrowding is to focus our energies on upstream services that prevent youth from being incarcerated in the first place. Diversion is one of those ways that we can do that.”
However, the proposal received pushback from Christian, who asked, “How does this bill, by allowing more folks back into the community, make the community safe? I just don’t get it. If you’re in a sinking boat, drilling more holes in the bottom doesn’t seem to me that it’s going to help.”
Also expressing apprehension was Russell Brown with the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, who told the committee the bill “puts enormous strain on the back of the local court” by requiring them to prove why juvenile rehabilitation is necessary. He added that it would give courts throughout the state greater discretion compared to the relatively consistent framework they currently employ.
SB 5278 and SB 5296 are scheduled for a committee vote on Wednesday, Feb. 5.
