More talk, but no resolution. King County Council remains at odds about youth jail

The King County Council will consider its official stance on jailing some youths for serious crimes, four years after Executive Dow Constantine pledged to end juvenile detention.

The council’s four-member Law and Justice Committee could not agree Wednesday on legislation from Councilmember Reagan Dunn to support keeping the county’s juvenile detention facility open. Committee members also failed to back two less stringent amendments sponsored by the other committee members.

Instead, the committee voted unanimously to send Dunn’s motion to the full council without recommendation. With work ongoing at the county to craft an alternative juvenile detention system, which may not include locked facilities, the committee agreed that all nine council members should help craft language that reflects the council’s position on secure youth detention.

“[Juvenile detention] is a core service of King County, and if we don't give direction, there'll be a problem downstream,” Dunn said.

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The county’s youth detention facility primarily houses juveniles ages 12-17 facing felony charges. It opened in 2020 following years of protest by juvenile justice reform advocates that locking kids up is ineffective, traumatic and racist, given the disproportionate incarceration rate for youth of color.

As the facility opened its doors, Constantine said that the county would stop locking up young people by 2025, calling it a “system rooted in oppression.”

In January, a county advisory committee proposed an alternative system to actualize Constantine’s promise, although the county executive acknowledged that phasing it in could not realistically begin until 2028.

Under the proposal, youths facing serious criminal charges would be booked into a central receiving and respite center, then either released within three days or transferred to a network of group homes scattered throughout the county. The committee has not yet resolved key details, however, such as whether doors on some facilities should be locked.

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Unlocked facilities for youths charged with violent felonies would be “untenable,” Dunn, a former prosecutor, told the Law and Justice Committee. Dunn argued juvenile crime should be addressed through a variety of approaches, including diversion, restitution, mental health care and substance use disorder treatment.

“The more tools you have, the better we’re able to nuance a solution to this problem. But one of the tools is keeping the incarceration option on the table,” Dunn said, such as for repeat violent offenders, and charges like murder and rape — “the worst of the worst.”

Juvenile crime rates, including violent felonies, have climbed steadily in recent years, surpassing rates from before the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, the juvenile detention center held 34 young people on the average day. This past month, it averaged 59 juveniles per day, nearly all there on felony charges.

Councilmembers Rod Dembowski, Jorge Baron, and Claudia Balducci agreed that the county still needs secure youth detention for the most serious and high-risk cases, but disagreed on what that should look like and whether it would always be necessary.

Dunn’s motion to keep the current youth jail open permanently would be “endorsing the status quo,” said Baron, and “suggests that the council wants to stop the work that has been done so far to explore whether alternatives to the current system of secure detention for youth could lead to a better system in terms of public safety and outcomes for youth.”

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In a co-sponsored striking amendment, Baron and Balducci supported keeping the current juvenile detention facility open, but only unless and until the creation of an appropriate alternative that is not secure.

Dembowski and Dunn voted down that amendment. Suggesting that the county might be able to do away with secure youth detention altogether “sets up false expectations,” Dembowski argued.

“I think we can do better than the facility we have,” Dembowski said. “But I also think we have to have a place in the range of responses for folks to be securely detained.”

Instead, Dembowski offered an amendment that left open the possibility of replacing the detention center with a new secure facility that is more therapeutic and comfortable, such as adding windows, an outdoor recreation area, and shared sleeping areas rather than small cells.

Balducci argued that the county should not invest in yet another detention center, but rather in helping young people stay out of the criminal legal system entirely. She and Baron voted against Dembowski’s amendment, while Dunn voted in favor.

Although the committee failed to recommend any of the motions to the full council, Balducci said she felt they were fundamentally on the same page in wanting to maintain a secure detention facility for the foreseeable future, but making lock-ups a last resort.

The full council is scheduled to consider Dunn’s motion to keep the youth jail open indefinitely on Aug. 20.