United States Senate Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on the District of Columbia
Testimony of Eugene N. Hamilton Senior Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and Chair of the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Youth Safety and Juvenile Justice Reform of the District of Columbia
March 30, 2004
Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee, I am pleased to speak with you today regarding the District of Columbia’s juvenile justice system. In terms of my personal outlook and with regard to my professional role (as a judge and as the former Chief Judge of the Superior Court), it is not customary for me to testify on matters of public policy. I do not speak here for the Superior Court of the District or as a Judge of that court. I am here today in my status as the Chair of the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Youth Safety and Juvenile Justice Reform, and because I share your concern about the children and families of the District of Columbia.
I would also like to note for the record that I appear before you today at your Committee’s request. I have also recently provided testimony before the Judiciary Committee of the D.C. Council, both at their request and on my own volition, as that legislative body considers proposals related to the District’s juvenile justice system. I say this as I would like to make clear that I am sensitive to issues of “home rule” and believe that the D.C. Council and District agencies are equipped to deal with these local issues of concern, while I also acknowledge Congress’ oversight and funding responsibilities for the District of Columbia.
As I indicated, I recently had the privilege of leading an effort to study juvenile justice reform for the District of Columbia. The Mayor asked me to chair the Blue Ribbon Commission, which consisted of twenty talented people and outstanding staff, and the Commission members represented -- in various ways and from divergent perspectives -- the broad concerns and mixed interests of this community. We worked together for about a year and a half.
The Mayor asked us to offer policy recommendations. More specifically, we were to: assess delinquency prevention strategies and explore model programs, identify strengths and weaknesses in rehabilitative and supportive services and programs, explore the research on youth violence and substance abuse, examine how our current institutions were working, and develop strategies for serving children and youth in their neighborhoods and communities. The Mayor issued an explicit call for the Commission to formulate a vision and seamless network of youth service ideals that “treat children as children.” This is an approach with which I fully agreed, and I was happy to devote time to these critical issues.
The Commission did a comprehensive study of the delinquency system in D.C., examined the research, and looked at promising and effective approaches from around the country. Let me say, parenthetically, that the Commission, with its broad expertise and diversity of viewpoints, worked hard and worked successfully to find common ground, to find compromises and nuanced approaches that balanced the concerns expressed from every conceivable side of these issues. The Commission issued a lengthy report, which I incorporate in my Testimony -- and I ask that it be made a part of the Record. In the Report, we provided many recommendations, which I believe, constitute a solid “blueprint” for effective reform of the juvenile justice system in the District. This “blueprint” is based on research and study, as well as a broad, balanced, and representative inquiry.
I should note that I am pleased that many of the Commission’s recommendations have now found there way into a legislative proposal – the “Blue Ribbon Juvenile Justice and Youth Rehabilitation Act of 2004” -- which is currently pending before the DC Council. This legislation, which seeks to codify many of the Commission’s recommendations, is based on research and study, and a broad, balanced, and representative inquiry. I have testified before the Council in support of this legislation and will continue to encourage its passage. I should also note that there is other legislation pending before the D.C. Council – which among other things would send more youth into the adult criminal justice system and create policies to punish parents of delinquent children in the name of “accountability” – that I believe would be counterproductive, and I have testified against this approach before the Council. I should remind you, in this regard, that as part of the 1997 District of Columbia Revitalization Act, the federal government assumed responsibility for housing through the federal Bureau of Prison all District of Columbia persons who are sentenced to prison through D.C.’s (adult) criminal system.
The legislation recently proposed by the City Administration is completely inconsistent with the Recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission. I have to point out that the proposals in the City Administrator’s bill are also inconsistent with agreements and promises that his predecessors in D.C.’s executive branch made seventeen or eighteen years ago in the context of the Jerry M. class action, a lawsuit regarding both the deplorable conditions at Oak Hill Youth Center as well as the lack of community-based alternatives to incarceration for children in the District of Columbia. After failing for almost two decades to comply with the requirements of the Jerry M. consent decree, which was designed to treat children as children and reduce and prevent juvenile delinquency, the District now seeks to treat more juveniles as adults (assuming, incorrectly, that redefining children as adults and sending them to federal prisons is an effective and humane approach for reducing and preventing criminal activity by children) One of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s primary goals was to set out a plan to get the services and supports in our delinquency system to work. The Commission strongly believed that to accomplish this goal requires putting a sunset on the Oak Hill Youth Center. The Commission has recommended that we all work together to close Oak Hill and to move away from placing delinquent (or allegedly delinquent) children into large facilities. It does not work to put troubled children into a place with 180 other delinquent children. Furthermore, we know that guards are smuggling illegal drugs into Oak Hill and that children who tested negative for illegal drugs before entering the institution are now testing positive. We know also that children are confronted with violence and the risk of serious bodily injury at Oak Hill.
There are better ways to secure children whom we need to constrain. What the Commission found is that the “best practice” is to limit juvenile incarceration facilities to thirty beds. We investigated approaches around the country and settled particularly on what has happened in Missouri. At a time when Attorney General John Ashcroft was the governor, Missouri successfully moved to a system in which children who are incarcerated are in facilities that do not exceed thirty beds. Predictably, following this transformation, the recidivism rate in Missouri has declined significantly.
Before I describe further the Commission’s recommendations, let me underscore another critical finding from the Commission: one hundred percent of the committed youth in the District’s delinquency system are African-American and Latino youth. White children and youth are arrested for a range of delinquent offenses, but they do not end up at Oak Hill. The Commission recommended that we study and understand why this disparity exists and how to get rid of it. With this in mind, any proposed changes to the system should be viewed through a lens which considers whether the proposed change (such as sending more children to federal prisons) would increase and exacerbate the racial and ethnic disparity and injustice that currently exists, and if so that proposed change should be discarded. Rather than increasing the disparate treatment, we should be reforming the system in ways that promote prevention, and, specifically, to promote racial parity and justice, we should be expanding community-based treatment and alternatives to incarceration for minority children.
The Blue Ribbon Commission also identified and promoted for possible implementation in the District of Columbia several model state systems. The Commission identified in Figure 11, the Offenses for Committed Youth, June 16, 2000 to June 15, 2001. The single largest number offenses were unauthorized use of a motor vehicle (U.U.V.). This finding cries out for intensive re-habilitation and treatment programs shown to be effective in rehabilitating juvenile U.U.V. offenders. Over the period of the Jerry M Decree, no such programs existed at Oak Hill. Community Programs, such as the Auto Technician Training Program under the direction of Mr. George Stark, are designed to place juvenile U.U.V. offenders in and around motor vehicles in a positive, productive manner, and Programs of this type should be greatly expanded.
Moreover, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (of the Department of Justice) has developed the Guide for Implementing the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders. The Annie E. Casey Foundation – that funded the Blue Ribbon Commission -- has produced an extensive series of reports for understanding and implementing juvenile detention reform. I understand, as well, that the U.S. Surgeon General issued a report on Youth Violence in January of 2001, and that report contains a listing of tried and true programs, including, for example, multi-systemic therapy and therapeutic foster care. In the Jerry M. case, which is the litigation over conditions at the Oak Hill facility that I mentioned previously, there also exists “Order B” of the consent decree that provides a blueprint for a continuum of community-based services.
The District of Columbia can and now must accomplish the objective of moving away from institutionalizing children. There is, remarkably enough, a consensus among all of the stakeholders in the District of Columbia that Oak Hill should close. Yet, it has not happened, and one can predict that it won’t happen if we continue along the present course. We face the inertia of government and a particularly insidious Catch 22: People believe that we can’t close Oak Hill (and move to the Missouri model) until we have adequate community-based services and alternatives to incarceration. At the same time, we plow the very human and financial resources into running Oak Hill that are necessary for developing the community-based services and alternatives to incarceration. Thus, the Jerry M. parties agree to Order B, and eighteen years later the children still don’t have a continuum of community-based services. I am reminded of what happened with Cedar Knoll. It was a minimum to medium security incarceration facility for D.C. children. Virtually everyone agreed that we didn’t need a large institution for locking up relatively young children who were not dangerous. Yet Cedar Knoll did not close until Congress wrote in D.C.’s 1993 budget that there would be no money spent on Cedar Knoll. Then, finally, it closed.
In addition to setting a date for the closure of Oak Hill, there should be deadlines for establishing a continuum of services in the community. There should be a study to establish the number of secure beds that are needed. And on that point, I can tell you that the number of children at Oak Hill has dropped to as low as 120 in the last year or year and a half. That number – 120 children – includes detained and committed children, and we got to that number – at least temporarily – without having sufficient services in the community to treat U.U.V. offenders and other non-violent children.
With regard to the Jerry M. Consent Orders (and I remind you that a consent order is an order that both parties proposed and agreed to before the judge ordered it), the Blue Ribbon Commission implored the District to comply with those Orders. Unfortunately that has not happened, and the substance of those Orders – particularly Order B calling for the creation of community-based services – has yet to be accomplished.
In sum, I believe the Commission’s recommendations are a solid “blueprint” for reform, and I would encourage any legislators or policy makers considering these issues to support and fund these recommendations to the fullest extent possible.
Beginning at page 27 of the Report, the Commission outlines the specific steps that are needed to reform the juvenile justice system of the District of Columbia. Key to any reform, however, is the closing of Oak Hill, because unfortunately, it has become simply a cruel training place for more sophisticated juvenile offenders. Secondly, there must be a sea change in the philosophy of the District’s juvenile justice system, from primarily large institution custody to only small facility custody and to community-based alternatives to incarceration, together with frequent assessment and continuous treatment.
Thank you again for inviting me to speak with you today, and I would be more than happy to answer any questions.
