Youth rehabilitation agency scrutinized by D.C. Council

By Luke Reiter
Special to The Examiner 10/10/08

Statistics released this week point to progress being made by the District’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services: Arrests for serious juvenile crime is down, as is the percentage of juveniles who complete the agency’s program and are convicted again within a year.

But that’s no consolation to Cheryl Harris, the mother of one of six youths in the agency’s care who have been killed this year. Harris was among those who testified at a D.C. Council hearing into the city’s juvenile justice agency.

“We cried out so much,” Cheryl Harris recalled for council members Wednesday, describing how hard it was to contact her son Ryan’s case manager. She said that although the department arranged a system for Ryan that involved curfews, drug tests and school attendance, they did nothing to discipline him when he did not comply.

“He was on the street, doing nothing, and trouble called,” Harris said. Ryan was shot to death in March at age 15.

The agency is designed to monitor and reform convicted youths, often by keeping them in group homes or other rehabilitative facilities.

Vincent Schiraldi was hired in 2005 as director in an effort to improve key shortcomings like the difficulty of tracking youths who run away and the high percent of program graduates who are later convicted.

“There was just too much stuff to fix at this place to fix it right all at once, and I had to make my decisions,” Schiraldi said.

He pointed out that the recidivism rate, or the number of juveniles who complete the program and are convicted of a crime within the next 12 months, has declined from 31 percent in 2004 to 25 percent in 2007 — even though the number of cases committed to the department’s care has increased 150 percent in that time. By comparison, Maryland’s recidivism rate from its equivalent program is 32 percent and Virginia’s is 38 percent.

In response to the accusations of negligent case managers, Schiraldi said that one-third of the case managers had been replaced because of poor performance.

D.C. City Councilman Tommy Wells, chairman of the Committee on Human Services, said the department had made progress, but he found Harris’ and other testimonies “disconcerting,” and said they indicated a “failure of case management.”

“I’m trying to get some level of confidence that you’re plugging the gaps here,” Wells said.

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