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| Class-action suit criticizes juveniles' placement |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 07/12/2004 |
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A class-action lawsuit alleges that Kentucky is not placing juvenile offenders in the facilities that would be most beneficial to them. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of nearly 400 youths in state juvenile centers. The suit was initially filed on behalf of 15 youths but was expanded by Franklin Circuit Judge William Graham in April. In response, state juvenile justice officials denied the allegations and said the goal is to place juveniles to "best meet treatment needs while protecting public safety." The suit was filed Feb. 6 in Franklin Circuit Court. It had been sealed to protect the identities of the juveniles, but Graham -- acting on a motion by The Courier-Journal -- recently ordered it unsealed with the youths' names removed. Public defenders say the state is holding many juveniles in the higher security centers, sometimes hundreds of miles from their home, when they would be better off in foster care, group homes or private child-care centers closer to home, or even at home with state supervision. Youths sometimes are sent away for months for relatively minor offenses, their lawyers claim. As many as 150 youths now in state custody have been wrongly classified and sent to one of the 12 residential centers around the state, said the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that for several years the state has ignored regulations that arose from a 1995 consent decree the state entered to resolve federal findings that Kentucky's juvenile system violated the civil rights of youths. David Richart, who served on a commission that investigated abuses in the state juvenile system in the early 1990s, said in an interview with The Courier-Journal last week that it's important to try to preserve the ties between troubled youths and their families and communities. As part of the consent decree, the state developed an extensive system to classify youths to determine housing. The classification system takes into account age, seriousness of the crime and past offenses, drug or alcohol use, whether violence was involved and other factors. Youths are scored on a point system that determines where they should be placed. But juvenile justice officials can "override" the ranking. In 2001, federal officials lifted the consent decree, concluding the state had substantially improved the juvenile justice system. The lawsuit alleges that when the decree was lifted, the state "began moving backward" on following the classification system and began putting more "low-level" youths in residential centers. |
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