No juveniles in adult prisons, Washington court orders

A Thurston County Superior Court judge told the state it has two weeks to return 43 young men it suddenly moved last Friday from the Green Hill School juvenile rehabilitation center to an adult prison in Shelton unless it can convince the court that the emergency move was necessary to reduce dangerous overcrowding.

Columbia Legal Services, which represents young men moved from Green Hill, had asked the court for a preliminary injunction to reverse the move by the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), and prevent similar transfers, calling them an “egregious violations of state law."

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Attorney Sarah Nagy argued that the state denied the 21- to 24-year-olds due process, including legal counsel or the required hearings. By law, young adults criminally convicted as minors may stay in juvenile facilities until age 25.

Nagy said if her clients are not returned to the juvenile facility, “they will be unable to complete their degrees, the programming that is unique to Green Hill School, they'll lose the continuity of their mental health programming, their job training.”

One of the young men transferred to Shelton has already been attacked by an inmate and was placed in solitary confinement for his own protection, Nagy said.

DCYF attorney Dan Judge argued that the state made the move without court approval because it is responsible for maintaining order in its correctional facilities, and that asking for emergency hearings to move the men would have given the young prisoners advance notice and “presented a great danger to an already untenable situation at the prison that was on the verge of a riot.”

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Just days before the move, 20 inmates at Green Hill had faced off against staff after a microwave was taken away because an inmate had used it as a weapon and hit someone with it, Judge said.

Judge said Green Hill is now down to 188 inmates, close to its goal of 180, after reaching a population of 240 young people several weeks ago. A court order to return the men to Green Hill immediately, he said, “would be equivalent to throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire.”

Judge Anne Egeler ruled that the state may not move any more prisoners from juvenile facilities to adult prisons without due process, and said an Aug. 2 deadline to return the 43 men from state prison to Green Hill School allows the state time to call for emergency permission to keep the men in prison.

A permanent injunction hearing in the case, which would require the state to return the young men to Green Hill and move no others without due process, is set for Sept. 27 in Thurston County Superior Court.

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On July 5, DCYF told counties it was pausing intake of juveniles sentenced to state rehabilitation until it remedied the overcrowding at Green Hill. That decision has led to turmoil in county courts, many of which say their local juvenile detention facilities do not have capacity or services for long-term confinement of young people.