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House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted:	March 28, 2023 08:48 PM
From:	Representative Carol Kazeem and Rep. David M. Delloso, Rep. Lisa A. Borowski, Rep. Gina H. Curry
To:	All House members
Subject:	Juvenile Detention Facilities Reform

A society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members, especially its children. All of our children deserve the health, educational, and psychological support that they need to grow into happy and productive adults. Unfortunately, the juveniles housed at the now-closed Delaware County Juvenile Justice Detention Center (DCJDC) received far short of the support they needed and deserved. A recently released Grand Jury report found that staff at the facility cursed at, bullied, and sexually harassed the juveniles they were assigned to protect. They also allowed fights to occur between residents of the facility and frequently failed to provide an adequate level of education to residents of the facility.   We cannot remain silent as the very children we need to be nurturing and protecting are being abused and mistreated. For this reason, we will be introducing a package of bills to dramatically increase the standards and oversight of juvenile detention centers throughout the Commonwealth. We have clearly seen that our standards and oversight are lacking and we must take action now to ensure a situation like the one at DCJDC never happens again.   Please join us in ensuring our youth are treated appropriately and provided all the support they need to grow into happy and productive members of society.

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Document #1

Description:	This bill would require that every county have a boards of managers, subject to Department of Human Services (DHS) regulations, to oversee the operation of secure juvenile detention facilities in order to ensure proper oversight.

Document #2

Description:	This bill would expand DHS’s ability to respond to licensing violations beyond simply requiring corrective action to include penalties for violations.

Document #3

Description:	This resolution would direct the Joint State Government Commission to conduct a study and make recommendations regarding best practices for the operation of juvenile detention centers.