Black teenagers are more likely than other youth to end up waiting in Colorado juvenile detention centers well past the day a judge says they can leave, a concern that advocates say raises civil rights issues.
Of the 94 kids who were still locked up more than a month after a judge said they were eligible for release, 27 of them were Black, according to the latest report for a state commission charged with figuring out how to find alternatives to juvenile jail. That’s 29%, even though Black children make up only 4.4% of the state’s population.
This disparity, though, is a reflection of the fact that Black children and teens are overrepresented in the juvenile detention population overall. They make up 27% of Colorado’s juvenile detention population.
In addition to the racial disparity, the analysis revealed a regional one.
By far, El Paso County, part of the 4th Judicial District, is keeping the most kids in detention centers past when a judge says they should go home or into a treatment facility. About 30% of the kids kept longer than a month past their releasable date were in El Paso County — that was 28 kids for a combined 2,038 days longer than required.
The findings are concerning, said Dana Flores, who is the Colorado coordinator of the National Center for Youth Law’s justice team, because they show the state is disproportionately keeping Black males, as young as 12 and often with a history of being abused or neglected, in juvenile jails instead of at home or in foster care placements.
“It’s striking that, on average, these children and youth are staying in jail — before they have been convicted of a crime — for nearly two months after they have been deemed releasable by the court,” she said.
Flores was upset that the Colorado Department of Human Services report recommended that policymakers postpone any decision-making until there is another round of data. The new report was based on just the first six months of data collection required by a 2021 state law and reported to the Colorado Youth Detention Continuum Statewide Advisory Board.
“There are certainly some who would say that the situation constitutes a human and civil rights emergency, right now,” Flores said.
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The latest report focused on the 94 young people in a six-month period who were held a month or longer beyond when a judge said they could be released, provided their parents paid a personal recognizance bond and picked them up, or when a foster home placement or a residential treatment facility had an available bed.
“We absolutely have to be doing something,” said Minna Castillo with the Colorado Department of Human Services, which includes youth corrections.
But, she said, the state is still fine-tuning how it gathers data, including a universal definition for all 22 judicial districts of when a child is “releasable.” The districts have collected data in various ways until now. For example, some kids are deemed OK to leave by one district, but have charges in another judicial district, which means they cannot actually be released.
This week, Colorado had 202 young people in juvenile detention. Of those, 35 were considered releasable, Castillo said.
“We have to look at that list every single week,” she said. “There are a lot of different variables that have to be sorted through.”
Some kids on the list have mental health or substance abuse issues, some are aggressive or have a history of serial criminal behavior, and some have parents who refuse to pick them up. “We need to be able to look at this list of young people and make new treatment plans for them using the resources that we have,” she said. “I would not say we should do nothing. I think we need to look at it on an individual, case-by-case basis.”
One teenager, who was involved in the child welfare system and juvenile corrections, was denied 80 times for placement in treatment facilities in Colorado and across the country, Castillo said. The teen was recently sent to another state for care, and Colorado paid for a $25,000 secure medical transport.
There are certainly some who would say that the situation constitutes a human and civil rights emergency, right now.
— Dana Flores, Colorado coordinator of the National Center for Youth Law’s justice team
Rep. Lindsey Daugherty, an Arvada Democrat who sponsored the 2021 law that required the Colorado Youth Detention Continuum board to find alternatives to jail, said the point was to prevent kids from being detained because of a lack of alternative services.
The board, she said, “is “not fulfilling that duty.”
The board has known since an inaugural report in July that children and teens are staying locked up longer than needed, she said. “Children who should be released are remaining in custody for months,” Daugherty said. “This is urgent and action is required now.”
Legislation calls for $25 million to create, expand treatment system
Legislation up for debate at the state Capitol this session would require the human services department to expand the system of care for children with complex behavioral health issues, including more therapeutic foster homes and psychiatric treatment beds. The bill comes with an estimated cost of $25 million the first year, growing to $38 million by year three.
The goal is to create more specialized care, as kids’ needs have become more intense.
“We definitely have young people who are impacted by trauma from abuse and neglect,” Castillo said. “We have young people who have multifaceted issues — they’ve got a mental health disorder, they have treatment needs going unmet. They are 16, 17, highly aggressive, highly assaultive and really dysregulated and need to be able to be in a setting that can manage all of those needs.”
The majority of the kids held longer than an extra month in juvenile detention were boys from 15 to 17. The median length of extra time they were held was 57 days.
When they were released, about one-third went home, one-third went to residential treatment centers and the rest went somewhere else, including foster homes.
Most were involved in the child welfare department before they went into juvenile detention.
More research is needed, but state officials speculated that El Paso County, a more conservative district than Denver, keeps kids in juvenile jail longer because the stipulations for release are stricter. For example, a kid who might be allowed to go home to their parents in Denver would be told in Colorado Springs that the only release allowed was to a residential treatment center. And it can take weeks or months for a bed to become available.
Black children overrepresented in foster care, juvenile corrections
Black children are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system as well as the child welfare system, in Colorado and nationally. The imbalance exists in all levels of the child protection system — from the number of calls to the statewide child abuse hotline to the number of Black teens who emancipate from foster care without ever returning to their families or being adopted.
Black teens were more than three times as likely as kids of other races to age out of foster care in 2020, meaning they did not get adopted or reunited with their families, according to data provided to The Colorado Sun by the state division of child welfare.
Castillo called the disparity highlighted in the latest juvenile detention report sad, but not shocking.
“Systemically, we have a lot to do to be able to understand why did the young people even come into our system in the first place,” she said.
Of the 94 young people detained at least a month beyond when they were eligible for release, 40 of them, or 43%, were white. White children make up 55% of Colorado’s population. White kids, however, stayed an average of 76 days past when they were eligible to leave, while Black youth stayed an average of 66 extra days, according to the report.
Phillip Roybal spent his high school years in youth corrections after being arrested at school in eighth grade. Now he works to keep Black and brown kids out of the juvenile justice system as part of the Colorado Youth Justice Collaborative. He’s also director of community and policy advocacy at Fully Liberated Youth, which provides intervention services, mentoring and therapy to young people in the system or at risk of being in the system.
Roybal said he is frustrated that Colorado isn’t taking swifter action as a result of the numbers in the new report.
“What more data do you need?” he asked. “The numbers are right there. Make this make sense for us. It’s almost a civil rights issue.”
He suggested the state stop giving money to the justice system for intervention and therapy based on the number of kids in juvenile corrections and instead send those funds to community organizations. Fully Liberated Youth, which works with young people before they are sentenced, is regularly told by the judicial system that its funding for those services is tied to the number of kids in the system, he said.
“It seems very predatory in a sense,” he said.
Colorado has 15 juvenile detention centers that hold people ages 10-21. Eight hold young people in detention before their cases are decided, while the others contain those who are serving sentences.