King County Executive Dow Constantine and Superior Court Presiding Judge Susan Craighead were joined by Metropolitan King County Councilmembers Larry Gossett, Joe McDermott and Dave Upthegrove on Tuesday to announce new measures to further reduce both the county’s youth detention population and the unacceptable racial disparities growing within it.
“Racial disparity has no place in our justice system here in King County, especially not in systems responsible for the well-being of our youth,” said Constantine. “That’s why I am taking an aggressive approach to further limit the use of detention for young people. Confronting the causes of racial disparity – in criminal justice and throughout society – will require the partnership of everyone in the community, and we are ready to work with anyone who is willing to work with us.”
“We share these goals, and recognize we need to think of how to create more alternatives to detention,” said Craighead. “Superior Court commits to make every effort to avoid detention for these young people except when absolutely necessary.”
The actions signal a paradigm shift in management of the county’s juvenile-justice system toward restorative justice, a move initiated by the Superior Court bench. In a letter to the Seattle City Council, county leaders wrote, “We commit to ending disproportionality in the juvenile justice system. We commit to decriminalizing homelessness and mental illness. We commit to partnering with our schools and our communities to provide all youth with more options and opportunities.”
In the short term, Craighead said the court has identified two goals for reducing the number of youth in detention: 1) judges and commissioners will avoid the use of detention for status offenders, such as truants or foster-care runaways, except when their lives or safety are in danger, and 2) with proposed new investments in county programs, the bench commits to reducing by half the use of detention for young probation violators, with a goal of reaching the 50 percent reduction within one year.
The county’s outmoded and dilapidated Youth Services Center was built to hold 212 beds. For the Children and Family Justice Center that voters approved to replace it, the current design was for 144 beds. With new judicial actions to divert more youth from detention, Constantine announced the replacement center can be built with 32 fewer detention beds, and on Tuesday capped the number of beds at 112 – thereby cutting the number of King County juvenile detention beds by nearly half.
Due to the need to keep boys and girls separated in detention, as well as the need to separate members of rival gangs, the maximum practical capacity of the replacement center will become approximately 80.
The executive said building 32 fewer beds will free up space in the the center for use by non-profit agencies that can provide further alternatives to detention, for such programs as crisis intervention for homeless youth, or rescue of youth from gangs or sex trafficking.
Councilmembers Gossett, Upthegrove and McDermott said they are committed to funding several programs advanced by the community to shift the paradigm and reduce disproportionality in the juvenile justice system, including investing in innovative public defense programs, community-based efforts to engage youth constructively, and more proactive work with schools.
The Councilmembers outlined more than $4 million in proposed funding for specific programs that will focus on:
• Support to keep kids enrolled in school
• Classes to provide basic financial skills as well as the knowledge needed to interview for employment
• A holistic approach for providing defense resources to youth and their families in the criminal justice system
• A targeted effort to expand alternatives to detention that are culturally responsive, geographically accessible and meaningful to youth.
“King County’s ‘paradigm shift’ will be guided by the premise that we will build a juvenile justice system that values all our children and decriminalizes the misbehavior that some children experience,” said Gossett. “Part of our system must require the decriminalizing of our youth—and that involves shifting towards a restorative and transformative justice model. We must provide the needed services and care to help our young people become productive human beings if our county is to live up to our namesake of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. County.”
“For a lot of reasons, too many kids from communities of color in South King County are being locked up,” said Upthegrove. “We need to take significant action now to keep all kids out of jail and to help all kids succeed.”
King County has been a leader over the last twenty years in creating alternatives to secure detention for youth. When the existing Youth Services Center was built in 1952 and the county held 850,000 people, the average daily population was 127. In 1999, with a county population of 1.75 million, the youth detention population peaked at 205. By 2014 however, with a county population of more than 2 million, the county’s alternative programs brought youth in detention down to a low of 45.
With fewer in detention, however, the racial disparity has grown. While African American youth represent 10 percent of the general youth population in King County, they made up 35 percent of the Youth Center population in 1999, which was already disproportionate. Today African American youth make up around 50 percent of those in detention, or five times their rate of representation in the general population – a situation called unacceptable by county leaders.
Constantine said rooting out the causes of that racial disparity, and addressing them, will require the partnership of everyone in the community, including those involved with youth before they arrive at the door of the Youth Center. He said he would use his place as a convener to bring stakeholders together, including the many school districts and police agencies in King County.
The county on Tuesday submitted its Race and Equity Assessment and Action Plan to the Seattle City Council, under their Statement of Shared Commitment from October 2014.
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