Following months of concerns about overcrowding and capacity, D.C.’s juvenile justice agency is opening up more beds at the city’s youth jail. The agency is also contracting with outside providers to increase the number of beds at “shelter homes” where young people accused of crimes are ordered to stay ahead of trials.

The expansion of youth detention capacity comes as D.C. has seen a rise in youth arrests for violent crimes, placing additional pressure on its juvenile justice system. And it comes amid criticism from a D.C. Superior Court judge that D.C.’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services has been slow to add bed capacity in response to these pressures.

Because of capacity issues, the agency has repeatedly housed young people at the Youth Services Center, the city’s youth jail, despite being ordered to place them at a less restrictive setting called a “shelter home.” As a result, the agency remains at risk of being held in contempt of court.

During a contempt hearing at D.C. Superior Court Wednesday, Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services Director Sam Abed testified that his agency had completed renovations of a unit at the Youth Services Center, the city’s youth jail. Those renovations would make 10 additional beds for youth operational by Thursday, bringing the facility’s capacity to 98 youth. Abed said that as of Wednesday, 71 youth were being held at YSC. However, the facility has routinely been near or over its capacity in recent months, straining staff at the facility and contributing to safety concerns and conflicts between young people.

Abed also testified that DYRS was in the process of contracting with outside providers to increase the number of beds at youth shelter homes, a less restrictive form of pre-trial housing than YSC (youth at the homes are allowed to leave the facility during the day to go to their regular schools). Abed testified that “it will take some time for [the providers] to staff up,” so he couldn’t predict exactly when those beds would actually be available.

That shelter bed capacity, in particular, has been the subject of court scrutiny.

Lawyers for a teenage girl accused of a carjacking have been asking D.C. Superior Court Judge Andrea Hertzfeld to hold DYRS in contempt for illegally detaining her at YSC despite Hertzfeld’s orders to hold her at a shelter home.

In a hearing in November, Hertzfeld said that the teen girl was not alone in being detained at YSC against court orders. Hertzfeld said during recent months, because of a lack of capacity at shelter homes, DYRS had held nine different young people at YSC for between two and 15 days, in defiance of judges’ orders to hold them in a less restrictive environment. And she criticized DYRS for making “little effort” to remedy the problem, despite testimony from the agency last December that it was working to free up capacity.

In the contempt hearing Wednesday, Hertzfeld said capacity issues at shelter homes had continued since that November hearing. Just in the last month, she said, there were at least 10 additional cases where DYRS failed to comply with court orders because of a lack of bed space. And while Abed testified Wednesday that DYRS currently had 15 vacancies at shelter homes, Hertzfeld warned that the number of youth ordered detained at shelter homes has been fluctuating so frequently that capacity challenges would be sure to continue if DYRS did not open up new shelter beds soon.

In response to Abed’s testimony and a plan DYRS submitted to the court, Hertzfeld said Wednesday that “it seems…additional progress has been made,” and asked DYRS to provide an additional status report later this month.

Abed said DYRS’s ability to quickly add bed space was facilitated by a Mayoral order from Bowser that declared youth violence a public emergency and allowed for expedited contracting.

DYRS’s attempts to remedy capacity issues come as the city is facing a rise in the number of youth shot and killed and a rise in the number of young people getting arrested for violent crimes. 593 youth were arrested for violent offenses between January 1 and November 30 of this year, according to D.C.’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. That’s a 40% increase from last year’s total, when 425 youth were arrested for violent offenses.

In response, D.C. lawmakers passed emergency legislation over the summer that tilted the law further in favor of pretrial detention for young people accused of crimes. The council is also considering a permanent version of that legislation — pushed by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser – that would go further in expanding the circumstances under which a child could be detained ahead of their trial.