Latest / The SEANC View / Inside Juvenile Justice: Staffing, Safety, and Solutions

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Inside Juvenile Justice: Staffing, Safety, and Solutions · The SEANC View

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  It's their number one challenge, is to adequately fill the positions within
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  our facilities and within court services in the state of North Carolina.
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  Right now in facilities, we have about a 40% vacancy rate.
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  And that's difficult to do the work that we're trying to do with young people
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  with that high of a rate of vacancy.
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  Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
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  I'm Jonathan Owens, Communications Director at Scenic. I'm joined by Artis Watkins,
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  Executive Director, and Suzanne Beasley, the Government Relations Director.
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  And we're on the road today, sort of. We're a few miles from the studio.
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  Our guest today is the Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
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  Deputy Secretary William Lassiter.
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  Or do you go by Billy? I go by Billy, but my friends call me Billy and y'all
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  are friends, so I'll let you do that one.
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  Thank you. He's been gracious enough to join us. We've seen him at a few of our events.
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  I hear we've begged him to come on. Our folks, Scenic folks,
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  love Billy Lasseter, love to have fun with him and give him grief, too.
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  That's how much they like him. In Scenic World, we love you if we give you grief.
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  There you go. So he was nice enough to join us today, and we're going to talk
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  a lot about his department and what all they do and the challenges they face.
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  First off, I guess the Department of Public Safety has a new leader, right? Yeah.
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  Was it this week or last week? Last week he started on the first.
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  Okay. Secretary Jeffrey Smythe. And he took over for Eddie Buffalo. That's correct.
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  So how has the transition been? It's been good.
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  I actually had my first one-on-one meeting with him today, and we went over
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  some of the top issues that are facing juvenile justice and kind of how he can
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  best support us moving forward as the new secretary of the Department of Public Safety.
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  And so he seems really excited about the new role, and I've known him for many years.
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  He used to be the police chief in Burlington, North Carolina,
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  before taking this role, and then he was over at the Criminal Justice Standards
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  Commission for a number of years. And so he's got a lot of experience,
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  obviously, in this area.
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  And he actually helped us with some juvenile justice issues back when he was
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  a police chief with some advocacy that he did over at the Legislative Force.
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  And that's where I first met him. And so I've known him for a long time.
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  And he's a great public servant and looking forward to working with him.
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  I just need to know, you have the most interesting background.
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  And what brought you to your work, which for you, we've watched you for years now.
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  The work doesn't seem like work to you. You're definitely one of those public
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  leaders for whom the work seems to be a passion.
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  And I got to put a plug in right now. You wrote a book in 2009 called Preventing
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  Violence and Crime in America's Schools from Put-Downs to Lockdowns.
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  Now, that was, I didn't even know you wrote this until recently and found out and got a copy to read.
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  I was entranced, though, reading several parts of it. But the part that was
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  most interesting to me was the introduction, actually.
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  Where you talk about what kind of in high school got you interested kind of
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  on the path and then in college, which kind of things happened that firmed up your path.
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  Can you share with the listeners so they know, again, it's sometimes very odd
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  to find out that a public official had things happen to them as a young person
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  that cemented some of the mission of their later professional life?
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  Yeah. So there were really two things that kind of drove me into the field.
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  The first one was that when I was in high school, I had one of my good friends
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  that was shot at high school.
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  We had a fight that occurred at Millbrook High School right down the road in Raleigh here.
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  And that incident, it started out as a fight in the parking lot and the principal
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  came out and said, if y'all want to fight, go over to the park.
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  So everybody moved over to
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  Millbrook Exchange Park and a big crowd followed to go see what was occurring.
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  And my friend was one of those people. He's just a bystander that was going
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  to see what was happening.
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  And a young man that was not even suited at the school pulled out a gun and
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  said he shot it in the air, but my friend got shot in the chest, Brian Green.
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  And that incident actually led then Governor Jim Hunt to establish the Center
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  for the Prevention of School Violence.
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  That was the first center for the prevention of school violence anywhere in the country.
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  And I actually started volunteering at that center when it was created.
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  I was an intern there in college, and that's really what drove me towards wanting
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  to do more on trying to preventing juvenile crime and trying to figure out how
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  do we get involved earlier in the process to prevent these things from happening in the future.
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  The other thing that kind of drove me to it was albino, meaning that I don't
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  have any pigment in my skin or my hair and don't have the best vision in the world.
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  And being albino, that tends to mean that you stand out in a crowd.
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  And I used to get picked on a lot in school, especially in middle school.
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  And I think that I was fortunate because I had great parents at home.
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  And my mom was a teacher. My dad started out as a teacher and started a small business later.
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  But because of that great support structure I had at home, when that bullying
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  instance turned into bigger fangs, I had that support structure to turn to.
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  When I started to work in school safety in school violence prevention,
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  I met some of the kids that were in the juvenile justice system and they didn't have that.
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  They didn't have that parent support structure that was there.
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  And it really made me think, you know, we're not so different than they are.
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  They made a bad mistake that caused them to end up in the juvenile justice system.
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  But they didn't have the support structure to teach them right and wrong.
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  They didn't have that support structure to really be there, to be their support when they needed it.
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  And it made me want it to be a voice for those kids, to give them an opportunity
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  to be successful and turn their life around and be good citizens in our society.
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  And so both of those things kind of drove me towards the system.
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  And we don't have a built-in advocacy system in juvenile justice.
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  We have a lot of people that work with young people in our communities,
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  but a lot of people see these as bad kids, and they're not.
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  If you go and meet them and talk to them, you find out that they made a mistake,
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  but they really want to do the right thing, most of them, and turn their lives around.
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  They just didn't have the guidance at home that you're speaking of,
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  which is interesting that this day and time we hear so much about that,
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  but it's been always. Yeah.
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  And when you were at NC State, you were in a class and somebody came in looking
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  for an intern? Yeah. And that...
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  That stuck out to me, too. Yeah, because the center was actually located on
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  State's campus at the time, and they came in looking for a research assistant.
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  And I just felt very passionate about that issue because of the loss of my friend's life.
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  And it just seemed like sometimes it feels like a calling, right?
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  I was going to say, something's been guiding you this way.
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  Let's get back to what your department does. Can you explain a little bit more
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  about? Yeah, so the Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
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  is one part of the Department of Public Safety. It's actually the largest division
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  in the Department of Public Safety now.
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  We have about 1,900 employees, state employees across the state of North Carolina.
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  And our job is to, when a kid gets in trouble with the law, or even if they're
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  referred by a parent or a teacher or a principal, that they're having behavior
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  problems, they come to the attention of our court counseling staff.
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  And that court counseling staff makes a determination about how this kid should
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  move through the system.
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  Should they go to court? Can they be diverted from court? Can they be handled
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  through a plan or contract that will work with them?
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  And we try to get them involved in services in the local community.
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  So our department also supports almost 600 nonprofits across the state of North
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  Carolina that provide community-based services for kids.
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  And those programs do everything from psychological assessments to residential placements for kids.
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  And so as a kid moves through the system, through the juvenile justice system,
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  if they've done more severe crimes or have been involved multiple times,
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  they may get approved for court.
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  Our juvenile court counselors do that process. So they serve as the magistrate.
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  So you think in the adult process that you go to a magistrate and they determine
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  what happens next, our juvenile court counselors do that.
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  And we have court counselors in all 100 counties across the state of North Carolina.
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  They're kind of similar to what you would think of an adult probation officer.
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  But we have a lot of front-end responsibilities
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  also. We do a lot of the prevention work with young people.
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  We had two types of facilities that are run by state employees.
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  Those are detention centers.
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  The detention centers would be equivalent to what you think of as an adult jail.
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  This is where kids go while they're awaiting trial.
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  A judge or our court counseling services staff had decided that there are risks
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  to themselves or the public that we go to a detention facility.
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  We also run what are called youth development centers. Those are the long-term
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  committed facilities. This is what you would think of on the adult side as a
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  prison, but these serve committed youth in the state of North Carolina.
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  And in those facilities, we have everything that you would think of that a child
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  would need. We have social workers. We have teachers.
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  We have school principal. We have our own local education agency. So we run our own.
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  We have a board of education, just like a normal school district does,
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  that serve those young people.
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  And so each year we serve about 24,000 kids through community-based services.
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  And that filters through the system all the way down to in our actual youth development centers.
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  Last year, we had about 200 kids that were in those facilities.
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  In detention facilities, we served about 2,000 kids that were admitted on a
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  daily basis. That's about 400 kids that are served in the juvenile detention
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  centers across the state of North Carolina. So we did the full continuum of
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  services from the very front end of the system.
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  We try to make sure that kids don't get deeper in the system,
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  but we also have those deep end services for kids.
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  And the ultimate goal of the juvenile justice system is making sure that when
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  a kid returns back into your community, they're going to be a good citizen.
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  And every juvenile comes home.
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  Every juvenile is coming back to your neighborhood. So our responsibility is
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  that when that kid comes back, they're ready to reintegrate back into that community
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  and a productive and as a good citizen in that community.
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  And it's a tough job. A lot of the kids that come into our system have mental
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  health problems. They're way behind in educational achievement.
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  They have parental problems, meaning that their parents are not very involved.
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  Last year, 36 percent of the kids that came into our system had parents that
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  said, I'm either unwilling or incapable of taking care of my own kid.
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  And so there's no doubt why they ended up with this in the first place and so
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  it is a tough job to make sure these young people get the services that they need.
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  But we are successful with a lot of kids. And I think that's one of the misconceptions
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  that the public has is they think once the kids got involved with juvenile justice,
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  they're going to be a bad person for the rest of their life.
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  Throw away the key, right?
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  Yeah, yeah. And the reality is that for kids that get diverted from the system,
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  meaning that we put them in a plan or contract in a community-based service,
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  only about 20% of those kids ever get in trouble again.
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  Wow. That's really. Yeah. And for the deeper in kids, it's still only like 30%.
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  So we do really good work with those kids and the state employees that work
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  in those facilities in our communities, making sure these kids,
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  I call them lean, mean, delinquency fighting machines. I love that.
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  And what is the age range? I guess, do you go up to like 18 or is it?
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  Yeah, so you're eligible for the juvenile justice system up until the age of
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  18, but we can keep you up until your 21st birthday. And so if you committed
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  a crime right when you were like 17 and a half, you may be staying with us for,
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  you know, up until that 21st birthday in some cases. Okay.
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  And you did mention the recidivism rate. How does that compare,
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  I guess, to the general prison population?
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  So we do a little bit better than the adult system. As far as recidivism,
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  we're about 10% lower than the adult system.
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  So a few years back in 2017, the General Assembly passed Raise the Age,
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  which extended the jurisdiction of juvenile justice from 16 to 18.
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  And a large reason for that is because of that recidivism rate in the juvenile
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  justice system is lower than it is in the adult system.
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  And that's because we take a much more individualized approach with kids.
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  Our caseloads are a lot smaller. So an adult probation officer may have 60 on
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  their caseload. We have 20.
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  And that's because we're not just working with the kid. We're working with the
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  whole family. We're working with mom and dad, a sibling that may be in that household.
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  Because it's not typically just the kid that ended up in the system.
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  There was a systemic reason why they ended up there.
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  The family's not functioning correctly or they're not getting services in their
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  community that they need. And so we're trying to address all those things.
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  Or economic issues, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.
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  So your caseload is lighter than the Department of Adult Corrections,
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  but I'm curious how the vacancies, the lack of, you know, being able to employ
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  people across the state of North Carolina, how does that play into your department?
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  It's their number one challenge is to adequately fill the positions within our
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  facilities and within court services in the state of North Carolina.
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  Right now in facilities, we have about a 40% vacancy rate.
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  And that's difficult to do the work that we're trying to do with young people
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  with that high of a rate of vacancy.
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  Three years ago, we got the step pay plan for some for our employees.
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  It was also done for correctional officers at the same time.
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  Our employees' salary, step salary plan is tied to the same one that the correctional
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  officers are, which is a really good thing because for the first six years of
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  experience, they get increases in pay.
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  So they can see that there's an automatic pay increase that's coming.
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  That's good. The problem is that now that salary is set in statute.
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  So the base salary starts at $37,000. And that hasn't changed in three years
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  because we haven't got no new budget in three years.
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  And so the entry-level position is really hard to get people in the door when
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  you're competing against Target and Walmart that are paying more.
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  Right. And it's fulfilling work, but it's difficult work that you have.
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  I mean, it's important that you get the right people in, for goodness sakes.
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  But I was curious, with your department, we've heard a lot about lapsed salaries
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  recently. And there's an idea that state agencies are just sitting on these
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  slush funds of salary money they're not using.
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  And it's kind of that whole thing's gotten a little out of control, that narrative.
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  Agencies that have lapsed salary need that money for underfunded items mainly related to personnel.
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  Do y'all have any frozen positions, for instance?
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  Because I know when the House and Senate didn't agree on a budget,
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  positions that either the House or the Senate wanted to be cut,
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  maybe vacant positions that they identified, they have to be frozen.
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  They've been frozen for seven months.
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  Did y'all have any frozen positions? So we haven't frozen any because our vacancy rate is so high.
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  And so we haven't actually frozen any because we didn't get any cut in the Senate.
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  There was the suggestion in the House that 10 percent of the vacancies should
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  be cut and that money be transformed into pay raises for employees,
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  which sounds good on paper.
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  But the problem is that we have, so we have federal mandates for what our ratios have to be.
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  So we have to have a one to eight ratio in our facilities. That means one staff
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  member for every eight kids.
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  If we don't have that one to eight ratio, I can't get the kids out of their
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  rooms because it's unsafe for us to have those young people on the floor without
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  the proper staffing. Wow, that's not helping at all, right?
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  Right. So if I was to lose, what they're projecting would be about 100 positions for us.
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  If we were to lose 100 positions, we would never be able to meet that ratio
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  again, which means that we would be out of compliance with federal law,
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  with what is best practice for juvenile justice.
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  And what would that mean? It would mean that we'd lose millions of dollars in federal funding.
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  So that requirement that we have to be that one to eight ratio means that we
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  would lose money for victims of a crime act.
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  We'd lose women's victimization dollars that we get from the federal government,
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  money that comes through burn
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  JAG, which is money that goes to buy cameras for police officers even.
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  And I mean, things that are completely unrelated to juvenile justice,
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  we would lose those federal dollars because we're not in compliance with the
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  rules on those standards. Yeah.
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  It's a terrible idea to cut those positions because we need those positions to be in ratio.
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  It's not that we're holding the positions. We just can't hire all the people.
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  And I think y'all are a great example. Your work, of course,
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  is unique in that it's about kids and safety of all of us and mental health
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  and all these things that are, y'all have the hot button issues,
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  all of them under one umbrella.
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  But most agencies, they've got critical work, the public needs,
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  and they would, in many cases,
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  if you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, you don't end up to the good of the citizens
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  by just freezing jobs or getting rid of jobs. But that's why I wanted to ask you that.
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  I know that your department was in the news recently for testifying about using
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  some lapsed salary money for firearm safety.
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  And that's something I wanted to ask you about. This is not something that money's
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  been appropriated to handle, but you've been very outspoken about firearm safety,
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  and it seems like you've had some real wins in terms of getting the public in
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  North Carolina to exercise more safety.
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  Right. So the General Assembly passed a bill three years ago that said that
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  we must do a awareness campaign on safe firearm storage.
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  It was a bipartisan bill, passed the House almost unanimously.
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  And so it had money when it was in the House. When it went over to the Senate, the money disappeared.
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  And so it passed and we're required to do an awareness campaign,
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  but no funds were made available to do that with.
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  So we did use lap souring to help fund that campaign.
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  We also used some federal grants that we got to come in to help pay.
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  We were finding money anywhere that we could find it to cobble together the
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  campaign. And it has been extremely effective.
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  The reason why we started that campaign was that we went from 4% of juvenile
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  crime four years ago involved a firearm.
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  Last year, 14% of all juvenile crime involved a firearm.
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  Oh, wow. Where are these kids getting those firearms from? Yeah.
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  They're getting them from their own parents' house or they're stealing them
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  from vehicles that people are leaving unlocked and the car's unlocked and the gun's unlocked.
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  And so we're trying to make sure that those guns don't get into the wrong hands
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  of kids and criminals in your community.
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  And so this is a campaign where we're trying to influence the public to understand
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  the importance of doing that.
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  That was a small part of our lap salary.
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  I'll just point out that the biggest portion of our lap salary last year was
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  spent on hiring temporary employees so that we could be in ratio. Yes.
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  And so we're actually using the LAP salary to still try to get people in the door.
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  And it's the quickest way we can get people there. And then we can get them
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  hopefully to apply for a permanent position once we get them in the door.
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  But that's where the vast majority of our LAP salary went last year was for that purpose.
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  And then we can do contractual services for residential placements for kids.
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  That money has not increased since 2020.
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  Well, there's been a little inflation since 2020. And so the bed rate that we're
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  paying for Methodist Home for Children, which is a nonprofit to provide those
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  types of services for kids, has not increased in five years, almost six years now.
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  And so they're really struggling to maintain the same bed capacity that they had.
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  So those were the two top categories where we spent lap salary last year was
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  doing temporary positions for our staff and for residential contractual placements for kids.
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  And then we use some of that money for the NCSAFE campaign, the safe storage
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  campaign on firearms, which the legislator asked us to do.
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  And so my point back to them is fund those things. Right.
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  Yeah. And then we can talk about how we could use that lap salary in another way.
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  But in the meantime, we have to have employees and we have to have placements
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  for these kids in communities so that we can make sure that they don't reoffend.
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  Well, good for y'all for figuring out how to get it all done.
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  That's amazing. So this might be like an outside of the box question out of left field.
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  You know, I guess it's a popular thing to talk about cutting government right now.
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  What happens to the state if your department is not properly funded?
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  Well, I mean, I think that everybody agrees public safety is a basic function
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  of government, right? Yeah.
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  Even if you don't think some of the other things are, I mean,
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  I think public safety has got to be one of those things that we fund and decide to deal with.
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  And so when we talk about what does it look like for not to have juvenile justice,
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  for example, that would be that kids that commit very serious crimes in your
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  community wouldn't have a placement.
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  They wouldn't get services. They wouldn't be an opportunity to change their life in a positive way.
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  And I can't even imagine what that would mean for our public as far as public safety moving forward.
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  And so I think my point when I talk to legislative members about this is if
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  we're going to fund something, let's fund it to the point where it actually can be effective.
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  Yeah. And to be effective, we need to have people in those positions that are
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  professionals, that know what they're doing. You know, we look at people that
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  work in our facilities typically need to have a four-year degree,
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  two years of experience, and we're going to start them at $37,000.
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  You know, it just doesn't make sense. And so let's really look at what are those
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  functions in government we really want to make sure are moving forward and make
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  sure they're funded correctly so that we can't be effective.
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  Yeah, I imagine that you have several different kinds of jobs too,
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  right? You have teachers.
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  Yeah, we have a large span of employees. So we have juvenile court counselors,
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  which are kind of like the probation officers that you would typically think about.
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  But we also have social workers and psychologists that work with our kids in
• 21:13
  our facilities that deal with the mental illnesses last year of the kids that
• 21:17
  came to our youth development centers.
• 21:19
  Every single one of them had a mental health diagnosis. Every single one.
• 21:23
  50% of them had five or more mental health diagnoses.
• 21:27
  I heard y'all say that in a legislative committee one time, and I was blown away. That is profound.
• 21:32
  Yeah. You know, that illustrates the difficulty. I was going to say.
• 21:35
  What I think what the public probably doesn't realize is that when every other
• 21:39
  system has failed a child, that's when they often end up with us. Yeah.
• 21:43
  And so they're facing all these other issues. The average kid comes in five
• 21:47
  years behind on English and four years behind on math.
• 21:50
  And so we're doing remediation with those kids. We're working with their mental
• 21:54
  health problems. We're working with the family problems that they're facing.
• 21:58
  It's a lot of intensive work that you're trying to do to make sure that this
• 22:02
  kid can go back and be successful.
• 22:04
  Well, you are really very well respected at the legislature.
• 22:07
  I mean, there's some folks who run agencies who lobbyists just know that when
• 22:12
  they speak to the legislature, the legislators on both sides of the aisle seem
• 22:16
  very receptive. They know you're just coming there and giving them the facts.
• 22:19
  So I'm genuinely curious how it's this hard for your agency because you are
• 22:25
  one, I know Suzanne and I were talking, that everybody respects.
• 22:29
  So what do you attribute it to? I mean, this seems like a no-brainer.
• 22:32
  It's kids. It's public safety.
• 22:34
  And it is. And I mean, we have gotten resources in the past,
• 22:39
  but I think in the last few years, it's just been more difficult because I think
• 22:43
  there's just a decision whether what do we want to fund in state government
• 22:47
  and what is that going to look like?
• 22:48
  And I think it's helping legislative members understand that how is it that
• 22:53
  we choose certain types of employees that get increases or get paid more than
• 22:57
  other types of employees?
• 22:59
  And so when we're looking at correctional officers and we're looking at,
• 23:02
  juvenile justice employees that work in the system, why are they making $20,000
• 23:06
  less than a law enforcement officer starting out?
• 23:10
  Because they're doing very similar dangerous jobs.
• 23:14
  I mean, working in our environment, in the last month, I've had four of my employees
• 23:18
  had to go to the emergency room because they've been assaulted by a juvenile.
• 23:22
  And so this is hard work. It's important work.
• 23:26
  And like I said, our people are mission-driven, but they got to be able to take
• 23:29
  care of their own family, too.
• 23:31
  If I can't go home at night and take care of my kids and my family,
• 23:34
  then it's really difficult for me to come in the next day and work with some
• 23:38
  of the harder kids in the state and give them the services that they need.
• 23:42
  And to put yourself at risk knowing you might not come home to your kids,
• 23:46
  which is something most of us don't have to think about when we go to work. Exactly.
• 23:50
  Yeah, I know I have two kids.
• 23:54
  That's all you want to deal with? I don't think I want to, yeah.
• 23:58
  We can't run on empty. Yeah. You know. We have really good people.
• 24:02
  I mean, I'm blessed that the staff that work for us are really good people,
• 24:06
  and they truly want to make a difference with young people. And I appreciate them.
• 24:10
  The state needs to show them that they appreciate them, too,
• 24:13
  by giving them a salary that values what they do.
• 24:16
  And to answer your question that you asked before, I'm not sure why that's not
• 24:19
  hitting and why people can't quite understand that.
• 24:22
  This is something that we need to put more value on, is the employees that make up the system.
• 24:27
  Well, we have a fair amount of legislators that listen to the podcast.
• 24:29
  So if you're listening, they're doing God's work.
• 24:33
  Help them out so that they can keep staffed up.
• 24:35
  And I imagine, I mean, you kind of touched on it, but if you can reach these
• 24:39
  folks as their kids, maybe they won't commit crimes as an adult.
• 24:43
  And they may not be a drain on the system forever. Absolutely.
• 24:48
  It's pay me now or pay me later, right? And so this is an opportunity to catch
• 24:53
  that kid before they enter a life of crime.
• 24:56
  That's going to mean that we're going to house them and provide custody for
• 24:59
  them for the rest of their life.
• 25:00
  Or we're going to have them be out in communities being taxpaying citizens.
• 25:05
  Yeah, and being productive. So that's an easy choice if you ask me that we would
• 25:10
  invest in the system that's going to make sure that happens.
• 25:13
  I have one other budgetary question that I've been wanting to know.
• 25:15
  All of the federal budgetary legislation and what we're waiting to see out of
• 25:22
  the state has municipalities, has cities and counties involved.
• 25:26
  Kind of on high alert too, because this stuff all trickles down to them.
• 25:29
  How does that impact y'all's work? Because I know the locals have some juvenile
• 25:35
  centers that they run too. So how do y'all work together?
• 25:39
  Yeah. So juvenile detention, which is the service, again, where kids go to while
• 25:45
  they're awaiting trial, is a shared responsibility between the state and the county.
• 25:48
  And so they pay 50% of the cost for a kid to go to a facility and we pay 50%.
• 25:53
  So there are three county-run facilities, Durham, Guilford, and Brunswick own
• 25:57
  their own facilities and run their own facilities.
• 25:59
  So we pay them to provide the services in those county-based services.
• 26:03
  And then we have the state facilities that all the other kids come to from every
• 26:07
  other county. And so those counties pay us.
• 26:10
  Counties are definitely feeling some restriction on their budgets right now.
• 26:13
  And so it has become more difficult for them to help with that.
• 26:17
  But we also, with our Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils, which are in all 100
• 26:21
  counties, have a Juvenile Crime Prevention Council.
• 26:24
  We send dollars from the state to those what we call JCPCs, juvenile crime prevention
• 26:28
  councils. And then the counties match that money.
• 26:31
  And they are using a lot of the federal dollars to do that with a lot of times.
• 26:35
  And so they're trying to find ways to cobble together the money to make that
• 26:38
  happen at the local level also to fund these programs.
• 26:42
  And so it's a constant balancing act to try to figure out how to make that all work.
• 26:46
  But we rely on counties to help us with programming and we want to empower them
• 26:51
  to be part of the solution.
• 26:52
  We're fortunate in the state of North Carolina that juvenile justice is a statewide initiative.
• 26:56
  So in a lot of states, juvenile court counselors may work for the county.
• 26:59
  Where they work for the state here, the beauty of that is that we have data
• 27:02
  on every single kid that comes into juvenile justice.
• 27:05
  I can tell you all the crime trends that are occurring across the state.
• 27:08
  The whole NCSAFE campaign, for example, came up because we started to notice
• 27:12
  that uptick in the number of kids possessing firearms when they were committing
• 27:15
  crimes and said to the General Assembly, something needs to be done here.
• 27:18
  If we really want to do something about juvenile crime, this is the way we can address it.
• 27:22
  So we can get ahead of some of those trends and try to stop them from growing
• 27:26
  into bigger issues down the road because we have that data and can provide that information.
• 27:32
  How many kids have we got in juvenile justice centers right now?
• 27:36
  So today we have just over 600 in facilities, and so that's in detention in NYDCs.
• 27:42
  And detention, you know, the length of stay is only typically around 30 days,
• 27:47
  where in a youth development center, kids typically stay between 12 and 15 months.
• 27:50
  And that's the long-term committed facilities for kids. And so detention centers,
• 27:55
  the hardest part about working in a detention center is that a kid straight
• 27:58
  off the street comes into the facility and we don't know anything about them.
• 28:02
  Law enforcement drops them off at our door and we have to do full assessments
• 28:06
  to figure out what's going on with this kid.
• 28:08
  And they may be having mental health problems. They may be having drug,
• 28:12
  substance abuse problems, family problems that have driven them to the system.
• 28:16
  It's a tough job. I mean, you may be getting a kid at midnight.
• 28:19
  And trying to figure out how do I calm this kid down? How do I get them in a
• 28:23
  situation where they can get back on track here?
• 28:26
  And so detention is constant. It's a 24-hour operation where you're constantly getting new kids in.
• 28:32
  Kids are going out to court all the time. Kids are going to medical appointments
• 28:35
  all the time. It's a lot to organize and get together and make sure that they run efficiently.
• 28:40
  Awesome. Is there anything else you want to touch on? I think he's answered all this.
• 28:45
  I mean, I think this was fast, especially the lap salary stuff.
• 28:48
  I mean, I think I don't have the exact number in front of me,
• 28:51
  but we spent over half of our lap salary last year on temporary employees.
• 28:55
  I'm sure. Well, that's the kind of standard for the biggies for DPS, DAC and HHS.
• 29:00
  Yeah. And then we spend a lot of money on medical contracts and mental health
• 29:04
  services because we don't like in detention.
• 29:06
  We don't have mental health clinicians that work there full time.
• 29:08
  So we have to contract for those.
• 29:10
  And that's been a huge driver of the cost, too, because those costs have been
• 29:14
  constantly going up. Absolutely. Yeah.
• 29:17
  Does that, do you have to transport kids when they go see or they don't come to the facilities?
• 29:23
  So once the kid gets to our facility, we have to do all transports.
• 29:26
  And so in juvenile justice, the kid has to go to court every 10 days.
• 29:30
  There is no bond in juvenile court. So a kid can't bond out of a juvenile detention center.
• 29:36
  So what happens is every 10 days they go back before the judge and the judge
• 29:39
  makes a decision whether to continue confinement for that kid or to release
• 29:43
  them back to their parents or to a guardian in the community.
• 29:47
  And so of all 400 of those kids in the next 10 days, they're going to have to
• 29:51
  go to court somewhere in the state of North Carolina.
• 29:53
  And unfortunately, it's not all in the same location. So when you're working
• 29:57
  at Wake Detention Center, you're serving kids from Wake County,
• 30:01
  Johnson County, Edgecombe County, Nash County. That is a lot of transport. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:06
  And these are the kind of things that we talk about with some of our correctional
• 30:08
  officers because it takes them away from the facility where they're supposed
• 30:12
  to work because they have to transport, which makes it fewer employees.
• 30:15
  On the floor. An already stretched. An already dangerous situation, yeah.
• 30:20
  And the other thing that draws a lot of our staff out is that if a kid gets
• 30:24
  sick and has to go to the hospital, we have to send two staff with them. Yes. Right.
• 30:28
  And so if you're already short-staffed and you have to send two staff to the
• 30:32
  hospital for every kid that goes, that's two staff less that you have on the floor now. Right.
• 30:37
  And so it makes it very challenging. So one of the things that we did ask for
• 30:41
  in the budget last year was to establish a crisis in medical unit within juvenile justice.
• 30:46
  So Adult Correction got to do this a few years back with the Central Regional
• 30:50
  Hospital that they have at Central Prison.
• 30:52
  The Central Prison. Yeah. And so we're trying to do a similar thing at our facility
• 30:56
  in Butner at CA Dillon to set aside 20 beds that would be set aside for kids that are in crisis.
• 31:02
  Because you have a kid that's on suicide watch, they have to get one-on-one
• 31:06
  attention by a staff member that, again, pulls a staff member away from other
• 31:09
  duties that they have on the floor.
• 31:11
  And then if you have to take that kid out to the hospital, there's two more that go.
• 31:16
  And you're talking about at some of our smaller detention centers,
• 31:19
  there are only 20-bed facilities.
• 31:21
  And so at one time, you've got three or four staff on the floor.
• 31:24
  So if you're sending two to the hospital, now you've got to call two more people
• 31:28
  in that were on their time off so that we can just cover the floor at the facility.
• 31:33
  And so it's challenging. And that's part of the reason also I feel like if we
• 31:38
  could get fully staffed, then we wouldn't have to call so many people in on their days off.
• 31:42
  And that would increase morale and quality of life for our employees.
• 31:46
  And that's what we wanted it.
• 31:48
  Well, that's an inefficiency you would think a committee would look into, right?
• 31:53
  Some committee. Yeah. Maybe if there's only a committee that did.
• 31:57
  Anyway, so every time we bring someone in from a department,
• 32:00
  I learn so much about this department.
• 32:02
  And I think you might be my new favorite department.
• 32:05
  I think if I were every time, like if I work for a state, maybe I'd do that.
• 32:10
  And so maybe I would. Yeah, we're hiring.
• 32:14
  But I really it really opened my eyes to what you guys do. It's it's pretty
• 32:19
  pretty amazing we all have a soft spot for children, too.
• 32:22
  Yeah, yeah, but you're not getting away this that easy because every episode
• 32:27
  we ask one question my question of the week. Okay, so John's working weird.
• 32:38
  This week's question is, what's your favorite ice cream flavor?
• 32:41
  My favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip. Nice.
• 32:45
  Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. Love mint chocolate chip, especially from Goodberries.
• 32:49
  Oh, yeah. They got a good one. Artis, what's your favorite?
• 32:52
  Just chocolate. I mean, every one of these questions I know makes me seem exactly
• 32:57
  as I am, and I don't love that. I'd love to come across differently.
• 33:01
  No, just chocolate. I just like chocolate.
• 33:04
  Chocolate's my my top too but do you remember being a kid and
• 33:07
  you bought it in the carton the neapolitan oh yeah the three
• 33:10
  flavors that was always my favorite mainly because it was colorful but mine
• 33:15
  is i guess cookies and cream but this weekend my kids got something called brookies
• 33:20
  and cream that's why it came to my head but it was amazing what is that it's
• 33:24
  like a brownie and a cookie together in ice cream form.
• 33:30
  It was Turkey Hill, but it was amazing.
• 33:33
  Well, that's our question of the week. But thank you so much for joining us,
• 33:36
  for having us out here and working with us.
• 33:39
  And everyone, I guess, have a great week. Thank you so much.