Even before nine juveniles escaped from the detention center known as Abraxas Academy on Sept. 17 and spent the night roaming the southern Berks County countryside before being captured, county leaders were hearing the alarm bells for a rapidly growing problem.
For at least a year, officials in Berks and other counties have had concerns about crowding of juvenile detention centers throughout the state, resulting in a critical shortage of available secure-detention beds for youths awaiting adjudication due to the proliferation of criminal offenses involving firearms.
But the issue took on increased urgency over the summer after a riot at Abraxas, a for-profit juvenile detention and treatment facility off Route 10 in New Morgan.
The riot began about 6:30 p.m. on July 4 as a staff member tried to break up a fight between two youths. Other residents began acting in an aggressive and destructive manner.
Police from about 20 departments in Berks, Lancaster and Chester counties rushed to assist state police in quelling the riot. The facility was finally secured five hours later.
The riot ignited calls for the reopening of the Berks County Youth Center, which was shuttered about 12 years ago for the opposite problem: the flow of placements and court-ordered detentions of youth offenders had reduced to a trickle, rendering it an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars.
Berks youths needing to be detained after being arrested for serious offenses have been sent to secure treatment facilities, primarily Abraxas. But as counties throughout the state have closed their juvenile treatment and detention centers for the same reason as Berks, pressure has mounted on the private and state-operated facilities that accept youths who need to be detained.
The resulting shortage of beds for detention has become critical, forcing counties to send the juveniles accused of gun violence, robbery and serious assaults to facilities elsewhere, sometimes hundreds of miles away and at considerably higher costs.
A hidden crisis
The problem just got worse for Berks and nearby counties that send juveniles for detention at Abraxas.
Prior to the escape the Berks County Juvenile Probation Office contracted with Abraxas for six of the 24 available beds, all for boys, said Daniel C. Heydt, chief probation and parole officer.
Since the Sept. 17 escape, he said, Abraxas informed Berks that it was cutting the total number of beds by half, to 12. As a result, Berks will now only have three guaranteed beds at Abraxas, Heydt said.
In addition to Abraxas, Berks utilizes detention centers in Bucks, Chester and Montgomery counties as well as secure detention at the George Junior Republic in Mercer County. The other counties, however, give priority to those referred from their own juvenile systems.
It’s a hidden crisis that calls for immediate action, Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams said in an interview days after the escape.
Between 2006 and September 2021, 15 detention facilities ceased operation in the state, according to the Juvenile Court Judges’ Commission May report, “Pennsylvania Secure Detention Bed Gap.”
“What people don’t realize,” Adams said, “is this a real concerning crisis because the juveniles that we are detaining these days, they’re being detained because they committed generally serious felonies, and many times one of the reasons they’re being detained is they possessed a firearm.”
When the county is unable to secure a bed in a detention unit at Abraxas or out-of-county facilities, it must resort to electronic monitoring when a judge deems a youth deemed dangerous enough to be locked up pending adjudication. Adams said.
That’s been the case recently with some girls who have been arrested for serious crimes, he said, noting that Abraxas and some other private facilities only accept boys.
As of November 2021, there were only 14 facilities providing secure detention services across the state, according to the JCJC report.
Impact of success
The shortage of juvenile detention bed space is the result of the juvenile justice system’s success over the last decade in reducing the number of children who are placed in custody prior to and following the adjudication of charges, according to Chadwick Libby, president of the Pennsylvania Council of Chief Juvenile Probation Officers. Libby discussed the topic before the House Children and Youth Committee in April, according to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
Residential placement declined by 76.7% from 2009 to 2020, according to data compiled by the JCJC. Secure-detention placements declined by almost the same percentage over that period.
Between 2006 and September 2021, 15 detention facilities ceased operation in the state, according to the Juvenile Court Judges’ Commission’s “Pennsylvania Secure Detention Analysis” report.
Staff shortages, lingering impact from COVID-19, the use of risk-assessment instruments and widespread use of alternatives to secure detention are factors in reduced secure detention capacity, said Brandon Cwalina, press secretary of the state Department of Human Services.
As a state-supervised, county-administered child welfare system, juvenile detention is a local responsibility, Cwalino said. Juvenile detention centers are typically operated by a county, though administration of facilities sometimes is contracted out to a private provider.
He said DHS agrees with JCJC’s analysis that as detention center populations decline, the cost per-juvenile to operate the programs increases dramatically. This, coupled with rising overhead costs, has made operating a detention facility costly.
“The Shapiro administration is committed to being a collaborative partner with counties across the commonwealth,” Cwalino wrote in an email, “as well as the Juvenile Court Judges’ Commission, to consider all options to address the shortage in juvenile detention beds, including potential changes to funding and the development of county-operated regional detention centers.”
A regional approach
Regionalization seems to be the way forward.
Adams said he’s been lobbying the county commissioners to reopen the juvenile center as a regional facility with support from nearby counties.
“My No. 1 concern is community safety,” the district attorney said. “We need to address this problem. We need a secure place to put these young offenders so that they are not a threat to the community.”
Many of the most serious offenders who come into the juvenile justice system have ties to gangs, he said.
Nearly a year ago Berks commissioners began discussing the repurposing of the county youth center as a regional shelter care program for children in need of safe housing due to mental health and behavioral issues, said Christian Leinbach, board chairman.
The targeted population for the shelter care program would be juveniles in child welfare systems who are in need of placement outside the home but aren’t suitable for foster care. It would provide them a place to live while their cases advance through family court. In rare cases teens have had to be housed in a hospital emergency department because authorities have nowhere else to place them, Leinbach explained.
Berks leaders have engaged the county children and youth services agency, Berks County Intermediate Unit, Schuylkill Valley School District and the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services in those talks, along with reaching out to nearby counties that have the same needs.
Following the Abraxas riot, Leinbach said, officials began discussing “very aggressively” the inclusion of a secure detention area in a separate area of the center for those charged with serious offenses. The commissioners have had dialogue on that component with the county juvenile probation and district attorney’s office, as well as DHS.
Leinbach said there’s interest from other counties, such as Lehigh, which also sends youths to Abraxas, for those dual components. Berks would therefore not be alone in funding operations.
“Where we are now is we’re reevaluating youth detention while we’re also reevaluating youth shelter,” he said.
The former youth center is designed to handle those two distinct populations under one roof, he said.
Cost an issue
Driving the issue, besides concerns about community safety, is the cost of detaining offenders at Abraxas and facilities outside the county. Last year, Berks spent nearly $1 million to place youths in detention facilities outside of the county, Leinbach said.
“That’s an incredible amount of money to spend for juvenile offender detention.” he said.
Adams said he supports reopening the Berks juvenile center as a regional center. He said he’s lobbying the commissioners to move with haste.
Even if a plan comes to fruition within the next few months, however, the youth center wouldn’t be ready to open until late 2024 at the earliest, Leinbach said.
“The facility as it exists today is in need of major renovation,” he said.
The building was last used as a community reentry center by the Berks County Jail System, housing inmates who had attained trustee status prior to their release from prison.
Last December the shuttered building’s water pipes burst, causing significant damage, Leinbach said.
“They need a number of new systems in place,” he said, “so the timeline to get that facility up and running is not weeks. It’s probably seven, eight months to a year.”
Issues at Abraxas
The Abraxas facility in Berks is licensed for 54 secure-detention beds serving youth awaiting juvenile court disposition and for 70 secure-care treatment beds serving adjudicated youth, according to DHS.
It’s unclear why Abraxas has been making fewer than half of those secure-care beds — and even fewer since the escape — available to counties.
Abraxas officials issued a statement in response to questions about whether it has enough staff at New Morgan to adequately supervise residents. They said the investigation of events surrounding the incident is ongoing and expressed the company’s unwavering commitment to the safety of youth, staff and the community.
“Abraxas is currently applying its advanced compliance capabilities to gain a comprehensive understanding of the incident in question,” the statement read. “Our paramount objective is to institute any requisite changes to prevent the occurrence of similar events in the future.”
Regarding staffing, Abraxas said: “Our institution is fortified by an exceptional cadre of highly trained professionals, profoundly dedicated to furnishing top-tier care to the youth entrusted to our care. The Academy not only aligns with but frequently surpasses the staffing requisites mandated by the state.”
State taking steps
The state is taking steps to alleviate the shortage by making more secure-treatment beds available at state-run facilities, said Cwalina, the DHS press secretary.
DHS does not operate detention-level facilities, but state-operated secure-care treatment centers have beds available for youths awaiting trial, Cwalina said.
To help alleviate capacity challenges, he said, DHS has increased the number of beds available in secure care by opening a new secure treatment unit in northeastern Pennsylvania, using contracted staff as needed and entering into a contract with a privately-operated secure treatment provider.
DHS plans to open a new secure care treatment program in November.
Source: Berkshire mont