Well, she's unpleasant.
She's unpleasant.
She's unpleasant to travel with.
Well, sometimes the dog behaves the way the owner.
Well, I have often wondered if she's just a reflection of me.
But that aside.
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Welcome back, everybody, to episode four of the County Connection podcast.
I'm Paul Jewell, your host and government relations director
for the Washington State Association of Counties.
It's Friday. It's a big day at the legislature.
A good day. It's a good day.
And we've got one of our best here in the studio.
Very kind of you, Brad Banks.
How's it going? I'm doing well, Paul. How are you? Good.
I didn't mean to cut off your intro there, but we all just are filled
with a little joy here. It's the exuberance.
It is. It's getting the best of me.
Happy policy cutoff day. Likewise.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Here's here's hoping.
Yeah. If we had if we had whiskey right now, we'd be clinking.
Yeah, we'd be definitely there'd be some ice on the cheers.
Microphones here. Yeah, I totally agree.
I totally agree. Well, it's a big day for everybody.
It is legislature. It's a big day.
Certainly. I've been watching a lot of bills.
I know you've been watching a lot of bills.
We both got out of a hearing.
We did. We just a few minutes ago.
We did. I got out earlier. Yeah, you did.
I wasn't sure how that was going to play out, but I'm glad I won.
I got I had the last bill.
Of course you did see. And that usually is me.
I feel like they see me coming, though.
Well, maybe so maybe they like you just a little less than they like me.
Maybe my bill was right in the middle of the agenda.
She kind of bounced around, though.
I know. I think it's because she saw me coming and she said, there's Jule.
He's got nowhere to be.
I'm sure this is the bill he wants to testify on.
I'm putting that thing right at the end. Yeah.
So two hour hearing and I've got to wait all the way through it.
When I was I was I mean, so I was, you know, I was getting a little fidgety.
You were I think I texted you. I was getting a little fidgety.
I was watching. Yeah, I know. I was getting a little fidgety.
I won't even tell people what you put on my text.
No, no, it was it was all it was all nothing, nothing profane.
Really? Maybe a little.
There are a few initials. There were some initials.
Yeah, no. But yes, no.
So I was pleased when not only because I had two bills that I'd testify on.
Right. Yeah. Both were they were kind of similar local option bills.
But I was pleased because I have a tendency to sign in like just before the hearing.
That's kind of my M.O.
And I don't know why I do that, but it's it's maybe it's a psychological thing.
But I think you're in denial until it could be right.
It's like I don't really have to go do this.
But then I'm like, yeah, I need to go do this.
Yeah. So I end up getting called last because I'm on.
So but today you were first in every panel.
They just called me right up. I was like, this is fantastic.
I was like, did he got some goodwill in this?
Is he slipping the chair?
So I don't know. I know.
I maybe I need to give him a little thank you note.
It was nice of him. Friday.
Well, you did a fine job.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
I didn't stay to listen to you, but I'm sure you are.
I'm sure you did a fine job as well.
I have no doubt.
Thank you for the non-compliment.
I appreciate that.
So what are we here to talk about today, Brad?
We're here to talk juvenile rehabilitation today.
Oh, OK. Something we haven't talked about yet on the podcast.
Yeah, no. I mean, we've touched on on sort of, you know, broader public safety
and criminal justice issues, but but this is one that, you know, is,
I think really was like, it's found itself at the center of lately.
Yeah. Well, we had a big kind of issue this past summer.
That's right. Then DCYF, the Department of Children, Youth and Families,
director Ross Hunter, decided to, you know, basically make a unilateral decision
and suspend all further transfers from counties
into their juvenile rehabilitation facilities at the state level.
Yeah. We hold, you know, counties are responsible for making the arrest
along with cities, and then we hold the juveniles until essentially they're
arraigned, right? That's right.
And then it's our responsibility to send them on to the state
because we don't have the same facilities that the state has.
And so that was a really big deal this summer.
It was huge. I mean, it was a decision, right?
So it was July, I guess, of 24 when when this decision was made.
And, you know, there wasn't any consultation, right, with us in that.
And so I think it really caught us off guard and put us in a
put us in a really sticky wicket, kind of right out of the gate.
You know, I think there was, you know, I think when we looked at it,
there was some understanding of maybe why this had happened.
I think where the counties were sort of, I mean, understanding the reasoning.
What we didn't understand is the fact of why they hadn't planned for it.
Right. I mean, we should have seen this coming. Right.
Yeah, there were definitely reasons behind it.
100 percent. We're not saying there weren't reasons.
We're not even saying the reasons were bad reasons or good reasons.
We're just saying, look, we don't have we weren't consulted.
We didn't know this was happening.
You didn't plan properly for it, probably. Right.
And if you're just going to if you're just going to pause intakes without any
with, you know, and leave everybody kind of in the lurch, not to mention the folks,
you know, the the young adults and youth who are in these facilities.
Right. Sort of being there.
Right. They're caught up in this.
Right. Ultimately, and trying to get them into the right place
was really the most important thing.
So, yeah, it was it was a mess. Right.
And and Wasack, you know, chose at that point to take legal action.
Yes, we did. And and file a lawsuit with some co-adjoining counties.
Right. To sort of try to get this unstuck.
I think that got I mean, I think there was some agreement reached pretty quick.
It was by August or so, I think that it was like, OK, we're going to rescind
the the the pause and allow these these intakes to continue to move back and forth,
which was great. But it but it also didn't solve the the underlying problem of
they're they're massively overcrowded.
Yeah. What happened was the governor's office reached out to us directly.
When we filed the suit and this was just I think when just when you were actually
coming on board. Yeah, I was just caught like right at the end of that.
Yeah. And so I was I was kind of handling this.
Yes. Definitely not my policy area.
But it was I think maybe that was the only reason you brought me on.
You could immediately just transfer it to me.
Well, don't think that that wasn't part of the decision tree.
That's for sure.
Because this thing just dropped into my lap.
No, I have never worked juvenile rehabilitation.
And it's really a complicated issue on top of that.
Super complicated. Yeah.
And what happened was, you know, basically we filed the suit, like you said,
tried to basically get the courts to say, no state, you must continue these intakes.
Right. And the governor's office reached out to us almost immediately.
We were able to come to an agreement around, you know, what the state was going to do.
They were able to stop the order from from then director Hunter
and basically started allowing intakes again at the state facilities.
But we never it wasn't a settlement.
Right. So we never we never really dropped our law.
Right. Still there. It's still kind of hanging out there.
And that's kind of the situation.
Well, that is the situation that everyone's really operating under right now.
And since then, we've had all kinds of discussions with DCYF.
For sure. You're taking the lead again.
But I've been involved in some of those just getting updates from them on kind of
the progress they're making around facilities and addressing the issues that were
really the root cause that led to that order to begin with.
Yeah. And I think and I do think it's important to note they they really have,
I think, tried to step up and be great partners as we go forward here to try to
to hear us hear the concerns, also try to be as proactive as possible.
I mean, I think they've they've gone out of their way to keep us updated, right.
To reach out and say, hey, we've got new, you know, we've got new
we've got new numbers we want to share.
We've got new breakdown data that kind of give you a sense of how this is all
looking. So, yeah, I mean, and there's been a lot of collaboration, I think,
and coordination in terms of how we've been responding to where the legislature
is is trying to find its footing in this space and how they're trying to solve
potentially try to solve this issue.
I think the challenge that we're that we're in right now is because they hadn't
looked at this earlier and tried to address this earlier and try to mitigate
some of the factors that I think they they should have known were coming down
the pike, right, that now we're sort of
caught up, right. It's like even even if there's resources and and and helpful
legislation this session, it's probably going to take a while for that to to
show effect.
So one of the things that led to this, Brad, that we should probably talk about
just really briefly as part of the history of this before we kind of get into
maybe some of the new proposals.
Sure. I assume that's where you're going.
Yeah.
You know, one of the key drivers behind this issue was overcrowding at the state
facilities. And a lot of that was driven by a change the legislature made several
years ago called J.R. to 25, right?
Yeah.
Twenty eighteen, they passed that legislation.
And can you explain to people what that what that legislation was and what the
effect was?
Yeah. So basically what it did was it expanded out even for folks adjudicated
in what we'd say adult court, for example, right?
If you were at whether you were a juvenile all the way up to age 25, you
were eligible for placement in one of these juvenile facilities or one of these
J.R. facilities, whether that was Green Hill School or Echo Glen.
And that depended whether where you went, where you go to either of those places
depends on sort of your age and sex. Right.
But by expanding out that from 21 to 25, you pull in a whole bunch of new folks
who all of a sudden and, you know, and potentially a lot of them adults, right?
Pulling a lot of new folks that then are essentially routed to this part of the
system that it wasn't really built to account for.
And so over the years since 2018, those numbers just kept piling up because we
had older and older.
That's right.
Residents of these J.R.
facilities. That's right.
Wouldn't have qualified before.
They would have just either stayed in a county jail or gone to some other state
corrections. So they were able to go and stay in these facilities and get
services like juveniles would get right up until the age of 25.
That's right.
That there I know that there's a whole lot of you know, what ifs and in this
situation and that's and we don't have to get into all those details.
But I think when you take that and then you compound by the fact that this all
happened. So right. That that bill passed in 2018.
And then we were faced with the pandemic pretty shortly after that, which created
a pretty tremendous case backlog with the courts.
And so you had a lot of youth sort of just churning in one place.
And so then after the pandemic sort of wound down, as they were working through
that backlog, there was sort of a flood, an additional flood of these folks in
this in this, you know, J.R.
to 20. So you had a bunch of pending court.
Right. You had a bunch of these. Right.
And so that combined with everything, it just created this push.
Right. It was essentially a tsunami of folks that you had already had a highly
you had an elevated population of J.R.
25. And then you had this almost like this bottleneck finally broke.
That's right. And you had other youth that were waiting to be sentenced,
essentially got through the system finally.
And so they had a flood of additional residents and it just overwhelms.
That's right. And I think actually and I think maybe the third
the third unfortunate leg of the stool was that we've seen an uptick in
juvenile crime, unfortunately, right, that we've just seen and seen an increase
in that statistics across the right.
It's one of the areas that's sort of rising the most, which is alarming
for a lot of reasons. But so, yeah, so I think when you take those
those three sort of very distinct sort of maybe in independent issues,
but when they all sort of got conflated into one, you know, sort of one set
of circumstances, it just created it just overwhelmed the system quickly.
OK. And that's where we found ourselves in the.
That's right. That's right.
And so since then, like we said, we'd filed the lawsuit.
That resulted in an agreement.
The lawsuit didn't move forward, but it's hanging out there.
And now here we are in the legislative session.
And it looks like you've got some.
Are there some new proposals that are there?
Are I mean, I think so.
I think everybody's trying to grapple with how to do this, right.
And they're also trying to grapple with it in light of the fact that we now have
a different budget situation than we've had over the past several years.
So, again, the yet another sort of strike
in terms of trying to make this, you know, workable. Right.
So, yeah, I mean, I think that the House and the Senate are taking
sort of different approaches to where they'd like to go with this.
We like components of each.
Right. I think maybe to some degree,
I think probably at this moment, leaning more towards where the House is
wanting to go and some of the solutions that they're offering up,
which we think makes sense and in fact, directly, I think, try to get to some
of the some of those factors that we just discussed as to why this population
got the way it got to the where it is.
But regardless of whatever comes out of this legislative session,
while there we hope there could be improvements, it's going to take time,
I think, for for this to get resolved.
It's not like something, you know, if they adjourn at the end of April,
it's not like when this law goes effect in July, it's like everything's
going to be hunky dory.
Well, yeah, I mean, one of the things that they really are,
I'm sure thinking about is, you know, do we need bigger facilities?
100 percent. I mean, you know, and they're going to.
I mean, just flat out. And how big? Right.
And so have they and where have they even done the studies?
Have they even done the location, signing kind of an analysis?
And you mentioned, of course, the budget situation that we're in right now.
How are they going to afford to make those investments? Right.
That's right. Planning for this type of facility, you know, has to take years
before you even break ground.
And then it's not the type of facility this gets thrown up in six months.
This probably takes a year or more of construction time for sure.
And siting, I mean, all of the components that go into.
We're really years away. We are. Right. We are.
And and and I think, right, the the pressure is that these other factors,
I mean, apart if you take sort of the pandemic piece out of it,
but the other factors are still there. Right.
I mean, we still have this law that extended to 25.
And we've we've got this continued increase in youth and youth crime. Right.
And so, you know, addressing those are going to be important.
And I think, in fact, maybe if we want to segue in, right, I mean,
I think one of the approaches the House is trying to take in their bill 1917,
which is a representative Callen bill,
it actually tries to address a few of these.
So the first thing they want to do is is really direct DCYF
to go back and look at what rules need to be put in place
so that these facilities can operate safely. Right.
Because I think one of the I think what's what spook DCYF
and Secretary Hunter when this initially happened was, wow,
we've got this massive overcrowding.
Is this safe? Is this, you know, is this dangerous?
Whatever. Unfortunately, the effect of of stopping intakes was then
you create that same problem at the local level. Right.
We've got all these folks who shouldn't be in, you know, especially
our the younger individuals.
We don't want them churning in a county jail. Right.
We need to or even, you know, we need them in better facilities. Right.
So it just one didn't solve the other. Right.
Well, these Jr facilities are are, you know, they're designed to provide
educational opportunities, right, both traditional and vocational
and things like that.
There's rehabilitation.
There's treatment facilities built into these facilities as well.
And your county juvenile facilities don't typically have that
because they're supposed to be temporary. That's right.
That's right. They are more just holding, you know, they're sort of
transitional places, right, where these folks go.
The other issue that they were dealing with that we didn't touch on
that was a function of the overpopulation and the Jr to 25 back in the summer
was really security. That's right.
And what they what what they were finding or what they were seeing
in their facilities was a lot more violence.
And they think that some of that has to do with the fact that there are now older.
That's right.
They're not really juveniles right anymore.
They're older mixing with that with that younger population.
And there's a really big difference between an 18 year old and a 25
100 percent physically. Yes. Mentally. That's right.
Right. All of that.
And the driving reason behind Jr to 25 was that, look, you know,
cognitively speaking, brain development, especially in males.
But in most younger people, you know, doesn't really mature
until that 25 year old, you know, kind of time frame.
And so trying to give those individuals a little bit more time
with the same type of therapy that they would otherwise that they wouldn't get
in corrections. That's right. Right.
In the juvenile facility could help reduce recidivism.
But at the same time, an unintended consequence was the mixing of these populations.
Put men that's right with boys. Right.
Which which I mean, that's a very and, you know,
and I can imagine how unsettling that might be, especially if, you know,
I mean, to some of the folks who are in these, especially on the younger side.
Right. I mean, and when you're in this facility, like you said, these are
you use the word rehabilitation and that's what these are designed to be.
I mean, I know we want all we want that out of all of our prison system
and our jail system.
But the reality is these are specifically designed to provide exactly
like you mentioned, educational opportunities, growth development,
you know, job skills, you know, some of the things to really try to take
these folks who still have a long life ahead of them, hopefully. Right.
And get them get them squared away and back out and back into the communities
as productive citizens and not back into the system. Right.
That's exactly right. And so but when you start mixing these type of populations,
especially of that kind of age range, it's not surprising, I guess,
I would say that we started to see the challenges that and not only just the
wasn't just the behavior we started seeing
an increase in contraband and issues like that as well being coming into these
facilities, which hadn't really been as big as well.
When you have that much population, it's harder to manage.
It's exactly right to find those things. Exactly right.
So does this House Bill 1917, you said it, you know, was trying to get at
some of the causes. Right.
So trying to get to some of the wants to do to have DCYF,
do some of the rulemaking that it needs to do to figure out sort of what is it?
What kind of sideboards, for lack of a better term, do we need to have in place
so that we can ensure these there's operational safety right in these facilities?
Does address address some of those issues of mixing populations
and the different age groups? It does. Yeah.
I mean, and again, it really requires them to take a look at their two.
You know, they've got two primary facilities that I mentioned, right?
Green Hill and Echo Glen and kind of figure out what's the right mix between that.
The second thing the bill does, though, is try to address.
Once we get to this, a certain threshold and the bill calls out one hundred
and five percent. So when they're when the census, right, is at one hundred
and five percent of what the capacity ought to be,
it triggers a number of things and it actually triggers for those folks
that were adjudicated in an adult court and have sort of the are either
on the older side of things, right, in that 24, 25 range, right,
and have long sentences.
It provides an option or a mechanism for those folks to be rerouted back into
prison or jails. OK.
What's the community?
What's considered a long sentence for one of these individuals?
Well, that's interesting. I don't I actually.
Does it go past the age of 25? Yes, I'm sorry. Yes.
So it's actually I think it's yeah.
So it's basically right.
If if if if you came in at 21 and your jail sentence
or prison sentence would have been put you out past that age,
I think it's 26 actually is the is the number they use, right?
Put you back past that age 26.
OK, then that sort of designates you as a long because inevitably
you're going to be going to go back to the state prison system.
And there's no there's no eventuality that you would be out of the system
before then. OK.
So when the population reaches this hundred and five percent,
threshold, yeah, the probably working backwards in age,
those would just be transferred sooner. That's right.
OK. Yeah.
And then the third thing the bill does actually is go back and
essentially undo parts of J.R.
to 25, the legislation we spoke to and reduces the number back to age 21.
Oh, so it tries to just get to that directly and just say
we're going to discontinue the practice of 21 and older being eligible
for for to be in these facilities and just.
Puts them back into that would definitely solve the population issue.
But what would that do to recidivism rates?
Well, right. I mean, I think that right.
I mean, it's sort of like we're sort of doing this, you know,
sort of circular thing, right, where it's like the whole reason
we went to that in the first place was because of the arguments,
which I think most people agreed with, right, that the developmentally,
as you mentioned, and other other factors really would have provided for more
the bettering the odds of these individuals not finding themselves
back in the system, right. But we get them squared away,
get them services, skills they need and then back out into the community.
This would certainly pull back on that as an approach.
But I think also trying that I think with the legislature is at least
in this particular House bill is looking to do is that they've got a practical
issue they've got to deal with. Right.
Well, right. But I mean, down the road, though, if you're thinking,
I mean, that could get to increase long term costs.
100 percent.
Do we have good data on the success of J.R. to 25?
Yeah. With the years that it's been in place now, have we shown
that it's more successful? Have we shown that it's, you know,
that kind of upstream cost savings, you know, that upstream investment
that results in a lot of downstream cost savings or do we not know that yet?
I mean, I don't know that we can say that definitively, right.
I mean, I think we've seen it.
I definitely think there is data to show that your chances of recidivism
go down, right, if you've received these kind of services.
But I don't know that it's I don't know that we can say that it's at the levels,
right, that really would show a significant impact.
Does that make sense?
Well, I mean, I'd imagine you'd have to have several years of data to really
you would. Right. And by the time that was up and running, we've only,
you know, kind of and again, how do you do that without all these other
mitigating factors that we've talked about? Right.
We had a pandemic and then we had this weird uptick in youth crime.
So, I mean, it sort of skews this right in terms of trying to figure out
from a pure data standpoint, how you look at this.
OK, that's interesting.
So this bill tries to get at some of those core kind of issues
that drove the problem right in with.
But it actually kind of unravels.
It could potentially do that. Interesting. OK. Yeah.
So how do how do we kind of feel about this as counties?
What's our interest here? Yeah.
I mean, I think our interest is obviously not trying to go back to
what led to the problems in in July of last year. Right.
We don't want to go back to that.
But I think at the same time, recognizing what what
what is available at the county level, right?
What type of services and facilities are available at the county level
that could help potentially take on some of this additional capacity.
What would contracting arrangements look like? Right.
Between between DCYF and counties that were wanting to make space available.
Would would those spaces be ready to take on this type of population?
So like we talked about, these are specialized facilities. Right.
So I think those are things we still want to we still would like to explore
with the legislature in terms of of, you know, what are the options locally
in this space and how can how can counties if we're going to go back
to keeping more of those individuals at our level, how are we able to move them
into other places that are better for them while still ensuring we've got
if we need to send folks into us into a state facility that we can do that?
Well, Brad, that's really interesting stuff.
It'll be I'll be excited to see how the legislature handles that moving forward
and whether or not they kind of remember, you know, what happened before.
Yeah. As they're putting new policies together to try to address this moving forward.
Thanks for coming by.
I hope we can talk about this again soon. My pleasure. Thanks a lot, Paul.
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