County officials are actively considering closing the Logan County Juvenile Detention Center, 104 S. Madriver St., as early as next year based on an unsustainable cost to operate the facility.
A quarterly meeting recently of the board overseeing the JDC included a motion to recommend permanently closing the facility, effective Dec. 31, and housing juvenile detainees in surrounding county youth facilities.
A task force including county law enforcement and elected officials that had been previously assembled to look at the sustainability of the JDC had also recommended using annual savings to construct a youth holding cell at the Logan County Jail location, or other local options.
No final action was taken at the meeting, and the recommended motion is but one of multiple avenues that county decision-makers are considering.
One thing is for certain, Logan County Commissioner Paul Benedetti said, the status quo is unsustainable.
“When the current JDC facility was established nearly 20 years ago the average population of the JDC was over 30 young people at a per-person cost of less than $65 per day,” Benedetti said. “The current cost is $348 per day, per detainee.”
The 2021 budget to operate the JDC is $1.182 million, which represents 16 percent of the total county budget.
The option of closing the JDC and outsourcing juvenile detention to a neighboring facility — likely Marysville — is $100 per day, per youth in addition to the cost of transportation. The total budget for that option is approximately $44,000 per year.
“No one wants to put a price tag on the cost or value of a young person’s life to keep them safe until the courts have adjudicated them for their encounter with law enforcement,” Benedetti said, emphasizing that his comments are his, and should not be taken as an official position of the Logan County Commission.
“With the ever-increasing demands of the Ohio Department of Youth Services mandates on the operations of county JDCs, we can no longer afford to house our young people locally and will need to provide housing in facilities in surrounding counties at a cost of $100 per day, per youth,” Benedetti said.
Although, a majority of the JDC task force has recommended closing the facility by the end of the year, there’s no consensus.
Logan County Family Court Judge Kim Kellogg-Martin, participating in the board meeting via telephone from Arizona, expressed opposition to closing the facility, citing exposing youths to more hardened offenders from other communities, and further disconnecting them from their local home schools and families.
The “complete closure” of the facility will have “lasting, negative” effects on Logan County, she said.
Proponents of closing the JDC and outsourcing youth detention point out that neighboring facilities, such as the one in Marysville, provide the same mental health and educational support that youths receive at the local JDC.
“Transporting (youths) to surrounding county JDCs will provide them with education, medical and behavioral assessments that they would receive locally,” Benedetti said.
“Even with transportation to and from the neighboring counties, there would be a potential annual savings of over ($500,000),” he said.
Benedetti also points to the safety challenges posed in other areas by continuing to operate the JDC at a cost the county cannot afford.
“As we talk about the value and safety of each life, we can’t overlook the value and safety of the county’s road deputies, corrections officers and safety of our citizens. We had to reduce the number of adults in our jail because of the demands on our correction officers shared with the JDC,” Benedetti said.
In addition to outsourcing juvenile detention out-of-county, with the possible exception of a local overnight housing option for youth, the JDC task force is recommending the existing JDC facility be repurposed as a Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative that would put the facility under the oversight of the Logan County Family Court, and “remove the burden of the JDC operations from the sheriff’s office.”
A final decision on the fate of the JDC facility be made in the months ahead by the Logan County Commissioners.
Editor’s note: Logan County Commissioner Joe Antram provided the following comments Monday, following deadline for the print edition:
“We continue to engage the courts in how best to serve the needs of our county’s youth,” he said. “I believe that we should take a hard look at the Marion County model as an option. We could provide emergency treatment here in our county to those juveniles who are in crisis, while contracting with a neighboring community for those who need long-term care.
“This will allow our sheriff to use these financial resources for increasing the incarceration of adults at the jail and to adequately serve the needs of 911 responses with road deputies.”