Incidents of injury and assault at D.C.’s youth detention facility have reached their highest reported level in nearly two years, according to data provided by an independent monitor.

The release of the new data comes amid intense scrutiny of operations at D.C.’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, the city’s juvenile justice agency; while officials say they are confident they can keep detained youth safe, advocates say conditions are the worst they’ve seen in years.

In October, the Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight – an office Mayor Muriel Bowser has recently decided to sunset – reported 36 injuries at the Youth Services Center, a pretrial detention facility for young people in Northeast D.C. It’s the highest monthly number of injuries (all sustained as the result of assaults) reported since OIJJFO began tracking the data in January of 2022.

The oversight office did a baseline study of incidents at the facility between January and May of last year, and then resumed tracking incidents between January and October of this year — which means that seven months are missing from their data. But their report shows a marked increase in assaults and injuries this year compared to last year’s baseline. Last year, monthly youth-on-youth assaults at YSC ranged between 5 and 13, the office found. In contrast, this October, there were 32 youth-on-youth assaults — their highest reported level in the dataset.

After controlling for population changes, the office found that the rate of youth-on-youth assaults in October was quadruple what it was in January of 2022.

The OIJJFO report also shows that critical incidents – defined as incidents that pose a serious risk of harm to youth or staff, like riots, significant operational breakdowns, or major contraband – have also increased; 35 critical incidents were recorded in October, up from 18 the month prior.

And rates of self-injury are also up this year compared to last, according to the report. Between January and May of last year, DYRS reported between 0 and 2 self-injurious incidents a month. But in June of this year alone, the agency reported 22 instances of self-injury. Last month, the agency reported 11, per the report.

The report comes as YSC — and the city’s juvenile justice system more broadly — faces increasing scrutiny from the public, advocates, and lawmakers. In September, a brawl at YSC that left five staff injured brought the facility’s issues to the fore, although conditions had been deteriorating for months, according to advocates and the city’s independent monitor. Over the summer, DCist/WAMU reported that kids at the facility were being kept in their cells for as long as 22 to 23 hours per day, and denied access to educational programming, lawyers, and families, partially as a result of severe staffing challenges and a rising number of detained youth in DYRS custody.

Earlier this month, following the brawl, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White hosted an emergency tour of the facility, reporting that the conditions inside were “alarming.”

Heightened scrutiny of D.C.’s juvenile justice programs also comes amid an increase in young people involved in violence; between January and October of this year, 97 young people were shot and 15 were killed. In just the last five weeks alone, according to the mayor’s office, five children under electronic monitoring by D.C.’s youth probation agency have been killed. The mayor’s office also states that in the first nine months of 2023, 458 young people were arrested for robbery – a 10% increase from that period in 2022.

Administration officials contend that they have the resources to keep children in DYRS safe. In an emailed statement, DYRS denied claims that staffing challenges or overpopulation issues pose safety risks and affirmed the agencies’ ability to manage children in their custody at YSC.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah echoed a similar stance in a press conference regarding youth violence on Monday. She said the agency has flexibility in how it houses children to ensure their safety, and that she was confident DYRS could reduce the number of assaults and injuries at YSC.

“Sometimes, depending on the population of young people, there may be young people who have beefs with each other or otherwise,” Appiah said. “So as we increase capacity and our ability to move young people around, we have every confidence that just as we always have over the past decade that I’ve been involved with DYRS, we’ll drive those numbers down as well.”

Mark Jordan, the Executive Director of OIJJFO, says he has noticed a change at YSC in recent weeks. (His office has unfettered access to the facility, and the ability to interview kids and staff.) He’s seeing more staff at the facility, and youth out of their cells more often than they were over the summer.

“In recent weeks we’ve seen a change in those operations,” Jordan says. “I think the leadership is trying to get youth out more.”

Still, he says, DYRS is relying heavily on overtime to staff the Youth Services Center – and in general, he says, the facility is being “stress tested” because of a rising number of detained youth. On top of that, 24% of DYRS staff were out on some kind of leave in October, according to Jordan. As of Tuesday, the facility was just under its capacity of 88, according to DYRS data. But in recent weeks, it has hovered around or over that capacity. While DYRS officials insist the capacity is flexible because they can double up young people in rooms, Jordan said bunking kids together is not advisable and a rising population has historically led to a host of problems at YSC.

“Once the population is above the facility’s capacity, there are no good answers,” Jordan said, adding that a higher population can lead to delays in medical care and a decline in the quality of educational programming and behavioral health services. “It’s just the question of what is the least bad answer.”

DYRS’s capacity struggles are also under scrutiny from the courts. The agency is at risk of being held in contempt of court in one juvenile case for housing a teen at YSC despite the fact that they were ordered held in a less restrictive setting called a “shelter home” – where, unlike YSC, they would have the ability to leave the facility during the day and go to their regular schools.

On Monday, D.C. Superior Court Judge Andrea Hertzfeld said during a court hearing that in recent months, because of a lack of bed space at shelter homes, DYRS has detained nine different youth at YSC for anywhere from two to 15 days, despite judges’ orders to detain them in a less restrictive placement. And she said “little efforts had been made” by DYRS to fix the problem, despite the fact that the agency testified last December that it was working to find more shelter home beds for young people.

DYRS Director Sam Abed, who has led the agency since June, testified that DYRS was working to sign contracts with new shelter home providers by next month.

Later Monday, Abed and Appiah joined D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in announcing a new public emergency on youth violence that they say will help speed up the procurement process for those new beds — and allow DYRS to more quickly renovate YSC to open up an additional 10 beds at that detention facility. The public emergency order from Bowser also establishes a “policy and quality assurance team” focused on the operations of DYRS youth detention facilities.

But as that quality assurance team is created, the future of independent oversight of DYRS remains uncertain. Last week, DCist/WAMU reported that Bowser had decided to sunset the OIJJFO – the independent oversight office that released the data on youth assaults and routinely releases data and reports on conditions for detained youth and DYRS operations. In response, three councilmembers – Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White, and At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson – began working on emergency legislation to keep the office open through at least the end of the fiscal year.

On Monday, Bowser said she was still assessing the office’s future. “I’m going to regroup with the team and talk about it,” Bowser said.