NKY police, lawmakers: Reopen juvenile detention facility immediately

BURLINGTON, Kentucky – Police officials and Kentucky lawmakers are demanding Northern Kentucky's only juvenile detention facility reopen immediately despite low staffing levels that prompted it to close last month.

Last year, Northern Kentucky police could bring all juveniles to the Campbell Juvenile Detention Center in Newport. But it was designated a girls-only facility in December, and then just last month partially shut down.

Getting juveniles to detention facilities hours away has been a hardship for local police, they said.

"The call to action is to reopen it immediately … they need to find other alternatives to make sure they can staff it appropriately and keep the thing open," state Sen. Christian McDaniel, R-Ryland Heights, said at a news conference.

'A step that no one wants to take'

Last fall, Gov. Andy Beshear announced the 35-bed juvenile facility in Newport would be the sole all-girl detention center in the state. It began operating as such in December. But five months later, he announced the partial and temporary closure of the facility because of a "crisis" in staffing levels.

"This is a step that no one wants to have to take – to move juveniles to different facilities – but this is our best opportunity to provide the most safety for them and for the staff,” Beshear said in a press conference last month, adding that some workers from the Department of Corrections have been volunteering their time on days off to staff the facility.

Young people 11 to 18 years old in Kentucky can be sent to juvenile detention centers while awaiting trial or after being convicted of a crime.

Females are now temporarily being housed at the Boyd Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Boyd County and the males are at the Breathitt Regional Juvenile Detention Center.

The Enquirer reached out to Beshear's office for more details prompting Morgan Hall, Justice & Public Safety Cabinet communications director, to provide the notification sent to police officials last month about the temporary closure of the facility.

Police sometimes stuck with six-hour transports

While Beshear said transportation to and from those facilities would be provided for by the Department of Juvenile Justice, police and lawmakers say that's not the case.

"We live in a real world. We don't live in a make believe world," Senator John Schickel, R-Union, said at Tuesday's press conference, which comes amid a nationally-watched gubernatorial campaign in which Beshear, a Democrat, is running against GOP Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

Schickel said that while police have the option to call the Department of Juvenile Justice for help with transportation, officers or deputies are sometimes waiting hours for someone from the department to meet them for a transfer.

He also said housing youth hours away from their families, attorneys and church leaders puts the juveniles at a disadvantage because they can't as easily get help from trusted adults.

"They should be housed right here in our community with our people," he said.

'We don't just close down facilities'

Schickel said police departments and dispatchers are also short staffed "but we don't just close down facilities because we have shortages of personnel."

For police, the issues of staffing and finding ways to pay for overtime is a big factor when it comes to transporting juveniles to temporary facilities.

For instance, Bracken County Sheriff Robert Boody's deputies have to drive almost two hours to transport a female to Boyd County, making for a four-hour round trip. He and three deputies currently work the roughly 8,500-person county, so losing a deputy for half the day means there either aren't enough people to run the department or the department has to find ways to pay people overtime to cover shifts.

Boody says the department is fortunate to not have to handle juvenile transfers often. But other county sheriffs said they are transporting juveniles at least once a week.

Is the money and time worth the safety benefit?

Separating male and female juveniles is part of a statewide effort to improve the juvenile justice system.

In March, Beshear signed Senate Bill 162 into law, which provided $25 million to the Department of Juvenile Justice for staff salaries, upgrades to facilities and transportation.

Beshear said providing defensive equipment to protect staff from attacks, nearly doubling the pay for some workers, and separating boys and teens by the seriousness of the crimes they're charged with have also been part of the effort to improve safety for juveniles and staff.

Safety in youth facilities is at the forefront after a riot at Adair Regional Detention Center in Columbia injured young people and staff last fall and a riot at Warren Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Bowling Green that caused property damage last summer.

According to reporting from WAVE-TV, Louisville, a female juvenile was "violently" raped during the riot. Current or former workers also told the news organization that staff abused the incarcerated youth, used food deprivation as punishment, refused to allow medical staff to provide care and barred showers for weeks at a time.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: NKY police, lawmakers want to reopen juvenile detention facility