The success of a program that aims to keep wayward juveniles out of long-term detention could play a role in an eventual decision to close the Monmouth County Youth Detention Center.
The youth detention center is on Dutch Lane Road, Freehold Township. It is operated by Monmouth County at an annual cost of about $5 million, according toMonmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno.
Guadagno said the issue has been discussed by the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders in recent months. No decision on the future of the youth detention center has been made, she said.
“Last year we only had 22 offenders (in long-term detention) in the youth detention center,” Guadagno said. “The reason our population is so low is due to the success of the Juvenile Detention Alternative Program, which keeps offenders out of institutions and places them back into the communities where they live. The 22 who are housed in the center are the most serious offenders or the repeat offenders.”
Many juvenile offenders are processed at the center, but do not require immediate long-term detention. Guadagno said the Juvenile Detention Alternative Program provides those youths with all of the services they are entitled to by state mandate, while they remain with their family and in the communities in which they reside.
Guadagno said the Juvenile Detention Alternative Program is a better option than housing less serious offenders in the youth detention center for a long period of time.
She said the population numbers in the youth detention center have “taken a nose dive” over the last four years because the Juvenile Detention Alternative Program has been a success.
Guadagno said it is too early to say if the county’s youth detention center will be closed. The sheriff said she has assigned an undersheriff with 30 years of experience in corrections to undertake the task of researching the issue.
“The undersheriff will reach out to all the major stakeholders, find out the facts and answer questions so that the freeholders can make an informed decision” about the future of the facility, she said.
Guadagno said juvenile offenders from Monmouth County would be given the same services no matter where they were detained in New Jersey. Those services could include the transportation of family members and personnel who are key in the offender’s case.
“I will be talking to all levels of law enforcement, as well as community groups,” she said. “We’ll sit down and see if there is another way to do this. Saving a million dollars of our taxpayers’ money and still maintaining the accommodation of the offenders is a good thing. Whether or not this is feasible will be up to the freeholders to decide.”
Owen Williams, an officer at the youth detention center who is the shop steward and represents employees, said his concern is that state budget cuts could close the Monmouth County Youth Detention Center.
“If this happens,” he said, “we will have to send people to Middlesex County and Union County facilities where the environment is much harsher and the population is much greater.”
Williams attended a recent press conference sponsored by Better Choices for New Jersey, a coalition of 30 organizations that are asking state officials to carefully examine spending cuts that have been proposed in Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s $32.8 billion state budget. A reduction in support for the youth detention center, according to Williams, was part of the discussion at the press conference.
Williams said closing the Monmouth County facility would put a strain on family members of the offenders who visit them while they are in detention, as well as the lawyers, prosecutors, medical personnel and social services representatives who would be forced to travel out of Monmouth County in order to see that individual.
“It is my opinion that relocating our center lacks fiscal soundness and would clearly hurt our community,” Williams said.