EVERETT — The beds sit mostly empty at Snohomish County’s juvenile lock-up.
Here and throughout Washington, fewer young offenders are doing time behind bars as the criminal justice system has sought better solutions.
As a result, the number of children in the Denney Juvenile Justice Center has dwindled since it opened in 1998.
On any given day last year, the 124-bed facility in north Everett housed an average of 27 young detainees. That’s down from a peak daily population of 82 in 2001.
“As much as we thought 15 years ago that we would need this bed space, juvenile justice has changed,” said Marilyn Finsen, the administrator for Superior Court, which oversees Denney.
The positive trend has created quandaries: What to do with a juvenile detention building and staff that are larger than the county needs?
When county officials decided in the 1990s to build a new juvenile justice center, they expected needs there to grow along with the county’s population.
The $24 million building on 10th Street replaced a facility from the 1960s that appeared to be maxed out. Complaints at the time included graffiti-covered cell walls and having to set up mattresses in a crowded hallway to give kids a place to sleep.
The boom in juvenile inmates didn’t materialize.
On the contrary, juvenile drug court, remote monitoring and educational programs have helped lower the population. Fewer teens are being arrested, too.
“It’s something that all juvenile detention facilities are facing,” Finsen said. “We’re not an anomaly.”
The county in March hired a consultant to size up the issue.
Seattle-based BERK released findings in June. The study cost taxpayers $50,000.
The findings from the 26-page report have set off discussions between union and management reps about issues such as potential layoffs, reforming the overtime system for juvenile corrections officers and reconfiguring the detention facility.
“We’re definitely looking at our current staffing pattern, trying to identify what our need is for our population,” said Brooke Powell, an assistant administrator who oversees juvenile court operations.
The one issue not up for review: keeping kids safe, she said.
Denney has an annual budget of about $6.6 million. Most of that goes to pay employee salaries and benefits.
The facility’s 70 budgeted positions include 46 juvenile corrections officers, plus supervisors, cooks, nurses and more.
While the average daily inmate population has plummeted by 68 percent since the early 2000s, staff only decreased by 25 percent, the study found. Current levels are based on what’s needed when there are 39 to 52 kids in the facility.
It’s unrealistic for staffing to decrease by the same amount as the inmate population, the study says, because detention officers need to be at the facility around the clock.
However, Pierce and Spokane counties use fewer employees to run juvenile detention centers with similar average populations.
Matthew Miller, a union staff representative working with front-line Denney employees, said conversations with management have been productive. The union understands Denney needs to adjust to a new reality. He’s disappointed with the report’s focus, though.
“The report clearly states that management is top-heavy,” said Miller, who works for the AFSCME-affiliated Washington State Council of County and City Employees. “That’s our frustration. Why didn’t the report explore that further?”
He cited examples: a nursing supervisor oversees just two registered nurses, while a cooking supervisor manages three cooks.
Some of the study’s most surprising findings involve overtime.
The county has averaged $450,000 in overtime at Denney over the past 14 years. That far exceeded other counties BERK examined. And overtime is rising, despite the decrease in detainees.
Overtime pay went up 52 percent for county juvenile corrections employees in 2014.
It’s concentrated among a small group of employees. A detention manager decides who gets the extra hours. Priority goes to senior employees.
That led to one employee working 110 days of overtime last year.
Eight employees received more than $20,000 each. One of them wasn’t even on the job for most of the year.
Ron Gipson, who also serves on the Everett City Council, was on paid leave for 11 months last year during a workplace investigation into sexual harassment. Nevertheless, he drew $23,865 in overtime pay. That came on top of $68,729 in base salary and benefits.
Labor law and the union contract require the county to grant overtime to employees on paid leave, county human resources director Bridget Clawson said.
“He’s entitled to the level of overtime that he most likely would have gotten if he were not on paid administrative leave,” Clawson said. Employees are presumed innocent unless the employee disciplinary process determines otherwise.
Gipson remained on leave last week.
Sick time among Denney employees also is ripe for reform, the Denney study suggests. Employees used an average of 9.2 days of sick time per year, the study says. That’s more than double the average at other local governments.
That’s an unfair comparison, said Miller, the union rep. Corrections employees and other law enforcement officials tend to use more sick time than other workers because of the stresses of the job. Being in a confined space for long periods of time also makes them more susceptible to illness.
“Ultimately, employees should not be penalized for using sick leave when they’re sick, when their children are sick or when their parents are sick or ill,” he said.
Finsen, the superior court administrator, said she’s working hard on reforms.
“I don’t want to diminish the staff’s credibility or the work that they do,” she said. “We have really hard-working people who are trying to serve these youth. We have a very large facility that needs to be right-sized to the community.
“It’s going to take time.”
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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