After more than three months of delay, D.C. provided the requested transfers within days after court hearing on plaintiffs’ request for immediate relief
WASHINGTON — In response to a lawsuit brought by children held for months in juvenile detention rather than rehabilitative placements to which they are entitled by law, the D.C. government has now transferred the two sixteen-year-old plaintiffs to rehabilitative placements, the plaintiffs’ lawyers confirmed in court filings today.
The moves come just days after federal Judge Carl J. Nichols held a two-hour hearing on the request by plaintiffs’ lawyers from the ACLU of the District of Columbia (ACLU-D.C.) and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS) that the court order immediate transfers to rehabilitative placements for the two named plaintiffs, identified in court papers as K.Y. and D.J. Today’s filing informs the court of the recent transfers and asks the court to continue to consider ordering broader relief for all the children housed at D.C.’s troubled juvenile detention facility, the Youth Services Center.
The case, K.Y. v. District of Columbia, concerns the practices of the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), which is the agency in charge of rehabilitative placements for children who have been adjudicated delinquent by the D.C. family court. Filed October 28, the lawsuit alleges that DYRS has a practice of missing statutory deadlines to complete assessments and treatment plans for children committed to its care, and that as a result DYRS regularly holds children for months at the jail-like Youth Services Center instead of promptly transferring them to appropriate rehabilitative placements. Without prompt transfers to rehabilitative placement, plaintiffs allege, children suffer a range of psychological harms and also must spend a longer time in secure detention facilities because they do not start earning their way toward less restrictive placements until their rehabilitative placements begin.
“Everyone from the Mayor to the Council to the Attorney General to the Family Court agrees that DYRS is failing the children committed to its care for rehabilitation,” said Megan Yan, PDS attorney and counsel for the plaintiffs. “Even the DYRS Director, Sam Abed, has said children should be transferred to their rehabilitative placements within 30 days of commitment instead of languishing in what is essentially a children’s jail. But our clients were there for three to four times that length prior to their recent transfers.”
The court heard oral argument December 12 on plaintiffs’ request for immediate transfers for K.Y. and D.J. based on violations of both D.C. law and their constitutional right to due process of law. Briefing on whether the court should certify a class of all children held at the Youth Services Center awaiting placement is scheduled to conclude in January.
“When children are held in the District’s jail-like detention center, they can experience irreparable mental, emotional, and physical harm,” said Aditi Shah, staff attorney at the ACLU-D.C. and counsel for the plaintiffs. “While we are glad DYRS finally transferred our clients to their placements following last week’s court hearing, we need systemwide relief so that all children committed to DYRS promptly receive the rehabilitation to which they are entitled by law.”
Along with the District government itself, DYRS Director Sam Abed is also named as a defendant in this case. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Read more about the case, K.Y. v. District of Columbia, here.