King County judge finds state agency in contempt for keeping teen in adult jail

A King County Superior Court judge held the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) in contempt of court Friday for failing to transfer an 18-year-old convicted of robbery to a state juvenile rehabilitation facility.

The ruling follows weeks of conflict between juvenile courts and the state agency after it shocked counties by halting intakes at its juvenile correctional facilities on July 5, citing dangerous overcrowding at Green Hill School, its secure facility in Chehalis for older teens and young men.

The move has left newly-sentenced juveniles in county custody, and raised the ire of many in the juvenile criminal legal system — including judges.

“How was this not foreseen?” Judge Veronica Galván asked attorneys for the state agency, pointing to a 2018 law that allowed young people sentenced as juveniles to remain in juvenile rehabilitation until age 25, rather than transferring to adult prison at age 21, the former cutoff.

“I'm trying to figure out at what point this became a crisis, because six years ago, DCYF knew that the population they were going to serve was going to be different,” Galván said. Despite facing a likely jump in its population, Galván added, the agency closed its third large juvenile rehabilitation center, Naselle Youth Camp, in 2022.

Rebecca Kelly, deputy assistant secretary of juvenile rehabilitation at DCYF, told the court that the agency was unsure how juvenile sentence lengths might change after the height of the pandemic, which had shrunk the populations of juvenile offenders dramatically.

Kelly said that while the state agency had been developing less-restrictive detention options as one strategy to prevent overcrowding, the state's juvenile facilities now house more high-risk youth than in years past.

“We have fewer young people who are actually able to go in to access those less-restrictive levels of care,” Kelly said.

Its main lower-level juvenile facility, Echo Glen Children's Center in Snoqualmie, recently lifted the pause on new intakes, but the suspension remains in place at Green Hill.

Attorneys for DCYF argued unsuccessfully that the court lacks jurisdiction over the agency in the case, and said that the state would eventually transfer young people to juvenile facilities to serve their sentences based on their place on a waiting list.

In Seattle, the 18-year-old awaiting transfer to Green Hill School for robbery was sentenced to 12 to 16 months of juvenile rehabilitation for a mugging he committed at age 14. Because he is now legally an adult, he is being held in the King County Jail.

Katie Hurley, a public defender representing the teen, asked the judge to find the state agency in contempt of court and issue sanctions of $2,000 a day “for the harm that he is suffering, languishing in the King County Jail, because of the department's abject failure to run safe and rehabilitative facilities, to the extent that they've reached a crisis point.”

Hurley said that young people deserve the services and programming that juvenile rehabilitation centers offer, and are lacking at pre-trial facilities like the county jail and juvenile detention center.

Galván agreed that DCYF was in contempt, and said sanctions would be forthcoming. She withheld a contempt ruling for a second young person awaiting transfer to Green Hill, citing a lack of specific transfer instructions. Gálvan has now given the state until July 30 to place both young men in juvenile rehabilitation.

"It is astounding to this court that it should have to issue an order telling the department to do what it's supposed to do by law," Galván said. "The very reason for [DCYF's] existence is to do this work, and the abdication of that is not okay."

Later in the day, a judge in Thurston County Superior Court refused to change a settlement agreement requirement that DCYF afford young people in juvenile rehabilitation facilities due process, including advance notice, access to an attorney and a hearing, before moving them to adult prisons prior to age 25.

Egeler told DCYF last week to return 43 young men it recently moved from Green Hill to an adult prison to reduce the population at Green Hill. The agency argued today that it needs flexibility in emergencies, such as the dangerous overcrowding at Green Hill, and can’t always wait for a hearing process.

An attorney for the young men argued that DCYF mismanagement created the overcrowding emergency at Green Hill, and that the move interrupted their rehabilitative services and programming.

Judge Egeler told the state agency that the court has no authority to change the settlement agreement, which she said DCYF clearly violated.

“The settlement affords notice and hearing to each individual before they can be transferred to [Department of Corrections] and limits the reasons for which a transfer can be made. The requested modification would negate these rights entirely, and allow a transfer regardless of whether the individual poses a security risk, or is exhibiting model behavior,” Egeler said in denying the motion.

The judge has given the agency until Aug. 2 to return the 43 men to Green Hill School.