I maintain a 1968 newspaper clipping in my workplace, describing a King County juvenile courtroom listening to involving a pregnant 17-year-old runaway who “wept throughout her entire courtroom listening to.” My workplace is on the King County Superior Court docket the place I function chief decide of the Maleng Regional Justice Middle. The 17-year-old was my mom. The clipping jogs my memory how traumatic the prison justice system will be for a kid, one thing I finally realized firsthand.
By 1982, it was me in juvenile courtroom. I dropped out of highschool, with little discover from courts or college. However for the well timed intervention of some caring adults and the benefits I’ve as a white male, I is perhaps in jail right this moment.
As a decide, I presided over the arraignment of some 2,000 individuals in 2024, together with youngsters charged with critical crimes. A few of these younger individuals will land within the Inexperienced Hill Faculty, which serves boys and males ages 17-25, run by the Division of Youngsters, Youth, and Households. My two latest visits to Inexperienced Hill Faculty left me involved for the employees, the younger individuals housed there and the neighborhood these younger individuals will return to.
In conversations with Inexperienced Hill Faculty residents and employees, I heard a remarkably constant narrative. The ability was 30% over capability. There have been so many residents that the employees couldn’t safely transfer them, which means much less of the therapy meant to assist these younger individuals return to the neighborhood. Much less therapy makes issues much less protected at Inexperienced Hill. Employees are reluctant to remain. With much less employees, there’s nonetheless much less therapy.
Having served on a number of nonprofit boards within the juvenile justice area, I’ve seen public sentiment swing dramatically over time, from voting to construct a brand new juvenile detention facility in King County, to wanting to shut it, to eager to fill it. As I mentioned once I not too long ago returned to Inexperienced Hill with outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee and then-incoming DCYF Secretary Tana Senn, we want to have the ability to maintain a number of truths on the identical time — that the detention of juveniles needs to be uncommon, and for these already within the system, we have to safely home and serve them, for his or her sake and for the communities they are going to return to.
What I noticed at Inexperienced Hill is just not sustainable. I’ve few instruments as a decide to assist the younger individuals I see. When our courts refer younger individuals to DCYF, we have to belief that they are going to be safely housed and have entry to the assets they should tackle the problems that introduced them into the system. For now, to meet that promise, we must always make investments upstream and downstream.
On the upstream aspect, legislators might quickly think about proposals for elevated help to handle truancy. Having been chronically truant earlier than dropping out of highschool, I recall spending my trip of college getting in bother and needing help that by no means got here.
The Legislature may additionally have the chance to help diversion of younger individuals from the juvenile justice system. I benefited from diversion a number of occasions when arrested as an adolescent. But, diversion is neither persistently used nor funded all through Washington.
Other than truancy and diversion, legislators might have the prospect to require judges to extra completely look at whether or not an adolescent can stay locally. Relatedly, I not too long ago testified within the Legislature in help of the Youth Hope Act — written partly by younger males housed at Inexperienced Hill — which might enable some in juvenile rehabilitation to hunt evaluate earlier than being moved into the grownup system. Every of those upstream proposals deserves consideration as we work to handle neighborhood security nearer to the neighborhood and farther from incarceration.
On the downstream aspect, our legislators might have the chance to offer extra assets to DCYF to securely home and serve youth. My pal Jeremiah Bourgeois, with whom I served on the Washington Supreme Court docket’s Entry to Justice Board, was quoted in a Seattle Times editorial in December about his expertise with incarceration at Stafford Creek’s Intensive Administration Unit, which has been proposed as a web site for extra juvenile detention: “This unit was designed to accommodate probably the most unmanageable and harmful inmates — not just for safety, however for punishment.” His expertise and perspective are extremely worthwhile on this dialog.
Whereas I help assets for DCYF to handle providers and security for workers and the younger individuals they home, my hope is that as we proceed to take a position upstream and downstream, these extra downstream assets will likely be much less obligatory over time. For now, as a decide, I would like as many instruments as doable to assist our younger individuals and maintain our neighborhood protected, together with a further web site to alleviate overcrowding at Inexperienced Hill, whether or not that be in a modified area on the grounds of Stafford Creek or elsewhere.
After years of swinging public sentiment, I hope we will transfer previous pitting community-based applications in opposition to incarceration and perceive that we have to make investments in every single place within the youth justice system. The latest dialogue in regards to the Patricia H. Clark Youngsters and Household Justice Middle in Seattle is maybe the most effective instance of the lure we fall into once we assume we’ve got solely two choices: Shut the middle or fill it. These aren’t the one choices. As a substitute, if we put money into employees and our younger individuals at each stage within the system, upstream options might finally cut back the necessity for downstream ones, and but we will likely be prepared with all of the instruments we have to maintain our younger individuals and our communities protected if our early interventions aren’t as profitable as we hope.
I believe loads about my mom and her expertise in juvenile courtroom. She handed away in 2024. She lived lengthy sufficient to see me profit from early interventions that took me away from juvenile courtroom, and to see me earn my GED, spend practically 15 years in regulation enforcement and be elected to the King County Superior Court docket. I used to be and am very lucky. My hope for our state is that we’ll put money into our younger individuals and the protection of our neighborhood primarily based on the basic premise that they’re one and the identical.
