Update: Both D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council took action this week to ensure the Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight will remain open past its scheduled sunset date in January. On Monday, Bowser issued an executive order extending the office through the end of September 2024. On Tuesday, the D.C. Council unanimously approved emergency legislation that would keep the office open as well.

The new executive order and council vote came after a bit of confusing back-and-forth. On Nov. 10, a Bowser administration spokesperson told DCist/WAMU it planned to let the office sunset, confirming what both councilmembers and the executive director of the oversight office say they had previously heard from the administration. In a press conference the following week, Bowser walked that back, saying she was “going to regroup with the team and talk about it.” Simultaneously, councilmembers drafted emergency legislation to keep the office open.By this week, both Bowser and the council seemed to reach an agreement that the OIJJFO should remain open for now.

“At this point, it’s what I would call a safeguard that may not be needed,” Council chairman Phil Mendelson said about the legislation during the council’s meeting Tuesday.

Original:

An office that independently monitors conditions in D.C’s juvenile detention facilities will close in January, with the Mayoral order establishing it set to expire and no potential extension on the horizon.

The Bowser administration’s decision to sunset The Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight (OIJJFO) comes at a time when conditions in D.C.’s juvenile detention facilities are under intense scrutiny. Some advocates and councilmembers are arguing against the decision to close the office now, when DC’s juvenile detention facilities are more crowded than they’ve been in years.

In July, DCist/WAMU reported that kids at the Youth Services Center (YSC) — the city’s pretrial detention facility for youth — were being confined to their cells for extended periods of time in part because of extreme staffing shortages. Late last month, a brawl at the facility that injured five staff members received a wave of media attention, once again placing a spotlight on conditions there. And this week, following a tour of the facility, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White – who chairs the committee that oversees youth detention in the District – toured YSC and told reporters afterwards that conditions inside were “alarming.”

Amid these growing concerns about conditions for detained youth, OIJJFO — whose staff have unfettered access to D.C.’s youth detention facilities and the ability to interview both staff and detained youth — has served as a source of independent information about facility conditions for councilmembers, the press, and the public.

The office of the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice confirmed Bowser’s decision to shut the office’s doors Thursday.

“We remain committed to transparency, accountability, and continuous quality improvement in our secure juvenile facilities,” wrote Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah in a statement. “To that end the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services continues to receive oversight from the DC Council’s Committee on Recreation, Libraries and Youth Affairs, Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia Juvenile Services Program.”

The OIJJFO opened in January of 2021 as part of a settlement agreement that ended a decades-long class action lawsuit.

The suit, filed in the 1980s, alleged violent and inhumane conditions for detained D.C. youth at the decrepit Oak Hill facility, which the city has since closed and replaced. Over 35 years of court orders and independent monitoring, conditions for youth in D.C.’s juvenile justice system improved significantly and D.C. became, in the eyes of many reform advocates, a model for the rest of the country. In 2020, the judge and plaintiffs in the lawsuit agreed that D.C. didn’t need  stringent court monitoring anymore. They agreed on a settlement and the consent decree ended. As part of that settlement, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was required to establish an office of independent juvenile justice oversight.

The office was “to investigate complaints and monitor and publicly report on the health and safety of the youth housed in DYRS facilities,” per the settlement. The settlement required that the office remain open for three years, with an option to extend beyond that time period.

Now, Bowser has elected not to issue an extension order. In her statement, Appiah thanked the office for its work to transition the city out of court supervision.

“We thank the office for their contributions to ensure progress made throughout the course of the lawsuit were sustained and continuously improved in the best interest of court-involved youth and their families,” wrote Appiah.

A spokesperson for Appiah did not respond to a request for clarification about when they decided the office should close.

But Mark Jordan, Executive Director of the Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight, said he found out about the closure “several weeks ago.” He added that he wasn’t expecting the office to shutter in January, because it was funded during the budget cycle for this fiscal year — which doesn’t end until September of 2024.

“The Mayor clearly has the authority to sunset it,” Jordan said, “so I feel like it’s really not our call.”

Advocates and councilmembers have expressed concern about the decision to close another avenue for transparency — especially now, when they believe a greater spotlight on D.C.’s juvenile justice system is necessary. Shootings of youth have been rising. Carjackings have doubled this year over last, and youth represent a majority of those arrested for them (though D.C. police only solve about a quarter of cases). And in response to rising crime, Bowser is pushing the D.C. Council to pass legislation that would expand the ability of judges to detain youth accused of crimes ahead of their trials.

“Given recent efforts to transform our juvenile legal system into one that is more focused on punishment than services, and evidence that DYRS facilities are increasingly at or above capacity, we believe that an independent oversight office is non-negotiable,” said Penelope Spain, CEO of Open City Advocates, which represents and advocates for justice-involved youth in the District. “It may be that this is better done through the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children than the OIJJFO, but it’s critical to preserve the office while alternative arrangements are discussed.”

(Bowser officials have pushed back against the framing of their efforts as purely punitive, arguing the proposed changes to juvenile detention are common-sense measures they want to see implemented along with more rehabilitative services.)

Jordan’s office is independent from the Mayor’s office, which means he and the office’s senior analyst, Mia Cara, can produce and publish reports on DYRS’s performance without Mayoral approval — though Jordan said the office always gives DYRS the chance to comment on and respond to its reports before they publish them. Its staff can also speak to the press without approval from the Bowser administration.

In recent years, Jordan has used that independence to raise awareness of an increasingly dire situation at D.C.’s Youth Services Center, where youth are held as they await trials. In D.C. Council hearings over the past year, Jordan has testified about understaffing at the facility – and has warned that as the population of youth at the facility grew, the situation could get increasingly unsafe for both youth and staff.

In a report published in February of 2022, the oversight office wrote that D.C.’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services was “fortunate that at both the YSC and New Beginnings [detention facility] population levels are low from a historical perspective.” But despite relatively low populations at the facilities, the report said, security posts at both facilities were routinely being left vacant — leading to a decline in the availability of education and other programming for youth.

The situation Jordan’s office warned the Bowser administration and public about more than a year and a half ago has now been realized: with continued understaffing and a significant rise in the number of detained youth in the city, advocates and defense attorneys say detention conditions have declined – particularly at YSC. In July, multiple defense attorneys told DCist/WAMU that their clients had been intermittently held in their cells for as long as 11 hours at a time, in potential violation of D.C.’s laws on room confinement for youth.

The population of YSC has been hovering at or above its capacity of 88 in recent days (though officials note that the facility’s capacity is flexible, because they can double up kids in rooms). As of Friday, 90 kids were in the facility, per data from Jordan’s office.

New Beginnings, the Laurel Md. facility where kids convicted of the most serious charges are often sent after their trials, housed 58 youth as of Friday; it is a 60-bed facility, per DYRS.

And, at the same time, Jordan says that last month, 24% of DYRS staff were not available to work because they were on some form of leave.

“DYRS has got a difficult challenge on their hands, and they’re aware of it,” Jordan said, adding that he believed the agency’s new director, Sam Abed, cared about youth in custody and the problems were not “for want of staff wanting to run a facility that works.”

Now, faced with the prospect of his office closing in the next two months, Jordan stood by his work.

“We raised the issue of the rising population at the YSC as a concern. Since that time, the population has, in fact, gone above its capacity,” he said. “I don’t have any regrets. We were given a mandate. We did our level best to do what we were asked to do.”