The Richmond Juvenile Detention Center: tumultuous past, but back on its feet
The destination of hundreds of child criminal offenders in Richmond shut down in 2012 amidst neglect, dysfunction and safety concerns. Now, four years after reopening, the center is fully operational and almost completely restaffed. What has changed, and how is the administration preventing the same issues from returning? What does this mean for juvenile criminal justice in Richmond as a whole?
RICHMOND, Va. — “My confidence in the management and operations of this facility has diminished to the point that I have no choice but to take this action,” said Mayor Dwight C. Jones in a press release prior to the center’s closure in 2012. “This is not an action that I take lightly or without grave deliberation. This is an action I’m taking to move us in the direction of having a facility that is properly run and well-managed.”
Now, four years after its reopening, the 60-bed facility located on Oliver Hill Way is fully functional, and aims to turn around the lives of the hundreds of youth who are admitted each year. It was an arduous undertaking to restore and renovate it, but the administration now has confidence in the staff and operation.
What is the Richmond Juvenile Detention Center?
The Richmond Juvenile Detention Center (RJDC) is a 60-bed facility located in Mosby Court that houses juveniles (aged 14–18) who have been charged or convicted with criminal offenses. These crimes range in severity from misdemeanor to felony, including assault, armed robbery and premeditated murder. The facility has space for 10 females and 50 males, and has an average length of stay of 21 days. It functions as a sort of purgatory for juvenile offenders — awaiting trial, these children might be released within 24 hours or sentenced to confinement in a larger, higher-security juvenile correctional center like the one in Bon Air. Some stay at the residence center for longer periods, however, and participate in educational, recreational and programs aim to introduce positivity and reduce recidivism.
The center relinquished its license in April of 2012, releasing all the residents into the care of other juvenile detention centers in Hanover, Rappahannock, Chesterfield and others. All except four of the 72 employees were fired or moved to other jobs in the city.
The center was constructed in the late ’90s to replace the previous center on Mecklenburg Street, which was notoriously violent and insecure. It was shut down for a multitude of reasons, some of which remain undisclosed to the public. The initial investigation into the center was launched by the NAACP, which found dysfunctional equipment and an improperly trained staff. The care the children were receiving didn’t meet standards set by the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice.
Rodney Baskerville applied for the position of superintendent at the RJDC after its closure. He would be responsible for reopening the center and restoring its reputation and function. He said when he found out he’d been selected, he almost backed out.
“I really didn’t know if I was going to take the job,” he said. “I was working in the county and everything was going smoothly. It was great, and I was enjoying what I was doing and enjoying the structure. I didn’t accept the job when they initially offered it to me.”
He was facing a daunting task. After only a year of closure, the center was in complete disarray. Ceiling tiles had fallen out, sections of the floors were missing, the interior had to be repainted and there wasn’t any staff.
“I walked in and just thought ‘Oh my God,’” Baskerville said. “It was a disaster.”
Baskerville has a long history working with adolescents and the criminal justice system. He began his career in what was then known as the Hanover Learning Center back in 1993, working as a juvenile specialist. One of the many places he worked was in the Richmond Juvenile Detention Center as a youth counselor, in 1997.
When Baskerville was brought onto the staff at the RJDC, there was only one other member of the administrative staff — Charles Lampkins, who now serves as the assistant superintendent of operations. The two of them collaborated with state advisors and the few holdover staff members from before the closure to get the center operational again.
“I understood the seriousness of this when it was closing,” Lampkins said. “With Mr. Baskerville, I was very frank about what was transpiring. He laid out his vision for what he wanted to do, and at that point what had happened in the past was irrelevant.”
Some information was never made available to Baskerville, however. The city never informed him of the criminal allegations levied against members the center’s staff. Some of the accusations by the NAACP in 2011 included staff forging signatures indicating they’d attended mandatory training sessions. Shortly after these accusations were made public, more than $550,000 was diverted by the City Council to address the safety concerns. As for the criminal allegations of abuse, Baskerville had no comment.
“I came after those people were gone, the city didn’t tell me,“ Baskerville said. “I only go by what I read in the newspapers, so I’m not privy to those things. Those people are gone, they’re not working for the city. Or, if they are, they’re working in a different capacity.”
In Baskerville’s mind, however, the issues that forced the center to close shouldn’t happen anywhere. Under his leadership, he said he’s confident he’d be aware if there was any neglect or shortcomings.
A review by the Richmond City Council in 2013 turned up no issues. The faulty locks and security monitoring systems were replaced and the new staff had undergone all required training.
Now, a few years after reopening, the center is fully functional. The children who are detained in the center face a variety of circumstances, but they all go through a process that determines if they’re going to be held or released to their parents or guardians.
The children have been accused or charged with crimes. They’re either pre-dispositional, meaning they’re awaiting trial, or they’re being held while they await to be released into someone’s custody. They could also be post-dispositional, meaning they’ve been charged but, instead of being sent to the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Facility in Chesterfield, Virginia, they have the option to participate in work programs and stay in the center.
Regardless of their status, they’re all offered the same programs during their stay. They’re let out of their one-bed cells in the morning, and don’t return until it’s time to sleep. Between, they’re given three meals, two snacks, and a standardized high school education. They have recreation time, indoor and outdoor, with exercise equipment, a ping-pong table, basketball hoops and a library.
“We’ve had kids, since I’ve been here three Christmases ago, because we put on a Christmas play each year, we have kids that don’t want to leave,” Baskerville said. “They don’t want to go home. I tell them ‘You have to go home, the judge ordered you to be released.’ But they get three meals, two snacks, and they’re safe. They might not have that when they’re out of here.”
As for the education they receive, each intake has their transcripts sent over from their home school, and they’re administered a basic reading comprehension and math test. Many of the students are delayed in their education.
“Most of our students are over-aged and under-credited,” said Taneshia Ford, the principal of the detention center’s school. “They may be 16 or 17 in middle school, as opposed to being in high school. Truancy is a big issue, so a lot of times the students just have not been to school.”
Around 48 percent of the students in the RJDC receive special education of some kind. For everyone else though, they’re receiving a traditional school experience. There’s a ratio of one teacher to every 10 students in the classrooms, and there’s a youth counselor present during instructor.
The center doesn’t have any “security personnel.” They’re known instead as youth counselors.
If the students were going to class before they were detained, they’re being taught the same lessons at their home school. They still take Standardized Learning tests, they have six hours of teaching per day, with breaks for lunch and physical exercise, or PE. The difference, says Ford, is the environment.
“Outside of us having an awesome staff,” she said, “the students are sober. They’re well-rested, they’re well-fed. Their basic needs are met, so when they come to school, their only job is to learn. They don’t have those outside stresses of ‘I’m hungry. I didn’t have anywhere to sleep last night. Someone is bullying me.’”
In addition to the education and recreation, residents of the center receive regular mental health checkups, participating in group therapy to combat violence, drug addiction, anxiety and depression.
They also accept regular visits from a variety of non-profit groups and individual speakers. One prominent example of this is Art180, a local organization that visits weekly to engage the residents in art-therapy sessions. For some of the children, this is their first chance ever to paint, draw or sculpt.
Despite all this, recidivism rates for the center remain fairly high for pre-dispositional residents. There are some children who are detained in the center for less than 24 hours. Some of these children may be detained six times in a year, but only spend 10 days in detention in total. This poses a difficult challenge for the center’s administration aiming at reducing recidivism.
“The behaviour that is happening with some of our youth did not start in 10 days. It’s not going to be corrected in 10 days, and a lot of the time, you haven’t even gotten to engage them into anything, any groups or activities,” Baskerville said.
As he put it, they’re only able to give the children the best care possible during their stay (which is, on average, just 21 days). Once they leave, they reenter the same environment that landed them in detention initially.
“The families have to change,” he said. “We have to get into the families.”
Key players in the RJDC’s operations
In October, the Richmond Juvenile Detention Center responded to a FOIA request from a VCU student in which they were asked to provide the names of all the vendors and organizations that provide products and services to the center. This includes telecommunications, mental health services, food and recreation. This information is important in part because of how some of these companies are known to operate.
For example, telecommunications of the center — one way inmates communicate with their families, legal counsel, etc. — is handled by Encartele. Encartele is subject the Federal Communications Commission’s regulations on inmate calling rates. The company currently charges the absolute maximum rate of 31 cents per minute for residents of the RJDC.
Medical services at the center are provided by the Medical Center of Virginia, among other, smaller groups. Psychiatric services are handled by Good Neighbor and Challenge Discovery.
They both operate outside of the center as well, and through their website the companies market themselves by their acceptance of Medicaid as an insurance provider. Happy Smiles, who provide dental services, do this as well.
Policing children poses dilemmas for law enforcement, but is a reality of criminal justice
The truth is, children commit crimes in Richmond. They could be anything from status charges (when a child does something that would be legal if they were an adult, like drinking), truancy, and theft to sexual violence, aggravated assault and gang activity. To protect people and property from the crimes, and the children from hurting themselves, police are required to investigate crimes committed by a youth the same way they would if it were an adult.
Officer Farrahad El-Amin with the Richmond Police Department has been on the force for nearly nine years, and he works with youths especially. He leads multiple community programs that aim to educate children, and improve their relationship with the police.
He said that making assumptions about the guilt of a young suspect is the effect of bias, just like race or residency. His training has included eliminating bias, and not allowing it to impact his investigation.
“There’s no cookie-cutter way to respond to a situation, no matter what the age,” he said. “I don’t have a bias towards kids, I have two kids of my own, one on the way. I love working with kids, so I guess you could call that a bias, honestly. The thing is, when I get there, I’ve got to do the investigation. I’ve got to use the information that’s been given to me.”
In Richmond’s housing projects, violent crime is boiling at increasing levels. Among mid-sized U.S. cities, Richmond is 6th highest for it’s violent crime. Gun violence in particular is a pressing problem.
In a press conference held by the Richmond Police Department earlier this year, Chief Alfred Durham said “as we all know, we have had our problems with young people being shot and murdered in the city, and everybody should be disturbed by that.”
Officer El-Amin sees this violence, and responds to it. He also works closely with the kids who are victims, witnesses and or perpetrators of that violence. He believes it’s learned behaviour, and when guns and crime have been normalized for children, and nobody provides them with safe and productive ways to spend their time, it’s easy to see why criminal behaviour develops.
The challenge then becomes figuring out which programs are effective at combating the crime and addressing the problem areas in the children’s lives. Because ultimately, as Officer El-Amin said, law enforcement officers don’t want to lock children up.
“You don’t want to charge a kid if you don’t have to,” he said. “It could really steer their life in the wrong direction, so whenever we can we try to use discretion.”
So, in an effort to be more proactive and less reactive to adolescent crime, the police department holds community programs with assistance by the attorney general’s office and non-governmental organizations.
Programs like LIFE try to put a cap on the school-to-prison pipeline, a proven phenomenon that links trouble in school with a child’s likelihood of being imprisoned. The Virginia Rules Camp is a summer day-camp hosted by the RPD which invites families out to learn about Virginia laws and go on field trips around the city. Officer El-Amin remembers the trips they’ve taken to the Science Museum, the Canal Walk and to airports where they let the children fly in private planes.
Unfortunately, a lot of initiatives by police around the country have been studied carefully by research groups, and have been found to be ineffective. Not only may a program not actually reduce crime, it may increase it, with an added cost of resources for police departments and the community at large.
Ashlee Barnes, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s criminal justice program. She concentrates her work on juvenile justice specifically, and she says the biggest challenge in the field is in the “research-to-practice gap.”
“It’s identifying the best ways in which researchers can inform juvenile justice agencies and practitioners of evidence-based and research-based practices that have been found to be most effective at reducing juvenile recidivism,” Barnes said.
One very prominent, almost overused example of this gap comes with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, more commonly known as D.A.R.E. It was founded in 1983, and has police officers go into elementary and middle schools in an attempt to combat drug abuse and violence.
Research has proven that teens who have participated in the program aren’t less likely to use drugs. Numerous studies have been conducted dating back to 1992, and some even found that participants were far more likely to consume drugs.
“There are times where systems are programs that may not be evidence-based, or may have been proven ineffective,” she said. “There are cases in which juvenile justice system agencies may adopt a program that was proven effective in another jurisdiction.”
Ultimately, juvenile justice systems recognize that something has to be done. The individuals within the system might feel a personal obligation to do something, even if they haven’t accessed evidence to show it’ll be effective. Officer El-Amin said that, as a police officer, he does what he thinks works. He recognizes the limitations, however, especially with things like summer day camps.
“We’ve got them for couple hours of the day, all week,” Officer El-Amin said. “But if you go back into an environment where you’re seeing violent things, or the norm is to be by yourself for 10 to 15 hours, it’s difficult to change anything.”
To him, he recognizes the instant effect of doing something like taking a group of young children to the Science Museum of Virginia to watch the solar eclipse. The relationship between those kids and police has been improved, and he has personal experience to prove that.
“I have neighborhoods where I can walk in and wave to kids and they won’t wave back,” he said. “But then there’s a kid who recognizes me in the grocery store when I’m out of uniform, and they tell their friend ‘I played basketball with that guy, he’s a cop.’”
If you’re a child living in one of Richmond’s housing projects and police officers are generally there to lock up your parents, or you know someone personally who has been killed by police, or you’ve been detained, your impression of cops likely isn’t very good. Officer El-Amin admits that, in his life, he’s even had a resentment towards police. That contentious relationship is an added challenge when policing in the community.
