D.C. Sued Over Treatment of Juvenile Offenders

WASHINGTON -- The District of Columbia government is facing a new lawsuit over its treatment of juvenile offenders.

It accuses the city of violating its own rules by allowing juveniles charged or convicted of crimes to remain incarcerated without rehabilitation services or mental health treatment.

In some cases, juveniles have been kept in detention facilities for as long as a year with no rehabilitation or treatment options despite a D.C. rule requiring the services and appropriate housing in no more than 30 days, according to the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit, filed by the D.C. Public Defender Service and American Civil Liberties Union, says, the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services “utterly fails to meet the duty it owes to children in its custody.”

The lawsuit seeks court oversight of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services and an independent oversight monitor to review the agency’s treatment of youth.

A main focus of the lawsuit is the city’s 99-bed Youth Services Center at 1000 block of Mt. Olivet Road in Northeast. Juveniles can be held there by court order after a conviction until they are 21 years old. Afterward, they are released into the community.

The facility also houses juveniles awaiting trial or sentencing.

Two residents are the 16-year-old boys named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. One has been held there since July 29 and the other since Sept. 4.

Despite the 30-day rule for placement, neither of the boys has been relocated to a long-term facility that offers mental health treatment and rehabilitation.

“While at [the Youth Services Center], children are left in restrictive, often overcrowded settings without access to rehabilitative programming and services, at great harm to their mental, emotional, and physical well-being,” the lawsuit says. “Not only are children left with uncertainty as to their future and forced to endure the stressful conditions at [the Youth Services Center] while awaiting placement, but these delays also unlawfully prolong children’s detention, as they extend the overall time that children are held in restrictive settings.”

Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services officials say they have struggled to find the long-term housing and services they are required to offer but often lack the resources.

For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: tramstack@gmail.com or phone: 202-479-7240.