Criminal Justice
Punished: Louisville Teens Charged As Adults Are Almost Always Black
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Of 126 individuals charged as “youthful offenders” in Jefferson County, 117 of them — 93 percent — were black.
Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (https://kycir.org/tag/juvenile-justice/)
Of 126 individuals charged as “youthful offenders” in Jefferson County, 117 of them — 93 percent — were black.
If Louisville’s detention center closes at the end of the year, Louisville youth will be sent to facilities throughout the state — an outcome that families and city officials have feared will make it harder for youth to see family and attorneys and get services.
If Louisville closes its juvenile jail, it’s still unclear whether the state would open a new facility or send Louisville youth to other regional detention centers.
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Though black youth are less than 27 percent of Louisville’s youth population, they represented more than 75 percent of the youth bookings in Louisville’s secure detention center last year.
When a youth is accused of a crime in Kentucky, an adult has to make a choice in nearly every step that follows.
Allow the youth to avoid a formal charge, or bring the case to a judge? Send him home or to sleep in a cell? Put another way: Offer another chance, or deny it?
Disproportionately, the Kentucky youth denied that second chance are black.
The consultants raised questions about whether the detention center’s understaffed school violated federal laws, and said having no qualified mental health professional on staff “jeopardizes the safety of young people with mental illness.” A physician is only on site two mornings a week, and nurses give most of the medical care.
Kentucky’s juvenile detention centers overuse isolation rooms and lack basic mental health care for the thousands of youths that cycle through the system each year, a state consultant has concluded after an eight-month review.
Two former employees of the juvenile detention center where Gynnya McMillen died in 2016 pleaded guilty Wednesday to official misconduct. Victor Holt and Reginald Windham were each sentenced Wednesday in Hardin County District Court to pay a $200 fine, plus court costs. Judge John Simcoe did not assign any jail time, although the charge could have brought up to 90 days. Holt and Windham were indicted last March on the misdemeanor charge after investigators determined that they and other Lincoln Village Regional Detention Center employees skipped bed checks and falsified logs. Gynnya, 16, was found unresponsive in her room at Lincoln Village on the morning of Jan.
Recent reforms have lowered the number of youth in facilities like Lincoln Village, which is operating with less than half of its 44-bed capacity.