Westmoreland officials said Wednesday there are no plans for the county’s juvenile detention center to accept troubled youth from the soon-to-shutter Shuman Center in Pittsburgh.
Allegheny County officials announced this week the 120-bed Shuman facility would close Sept. 18, after state regulators rescinded the detention center’s operating license following disclosure of a recent inspection that found numerous and serious violations.
Juveniles in custody at the Pittsburgh center will be moved to other facilities. Westmoreland’s 16-bed Regional Youth Services Center in Hempfield will not be a destination, at least for now.
“We don’t have a contract with them,” said Judge Michele Bononi, who serves as a member of the county’s juvenile detention board and oversees the county’s juvenile justice system. “We’re still trying to work in pandemic mode right now and aren’t accepting juveniles from other counties.”
The county’s juvenile detention center reopened in 2012 after a lengthy renovation project that expanded the facility to include a separate shelter program for at-risk children. In 2018, state health officials approved a waiver to increase the detention center program capacity from 12 to 16 beds. Another eight children can be held in the shelter program.
Nicole Kamer, the director of the Regional Youth Services Center, said six children were housed in the detention center and another seven were in the shelter wing on Wednesday. The county for the last year has averaged about about 12 juveniles a day in detention.
With the Shuman Center closing, the only other government-owned juvenile detention centers in Western Pennsylvania are in Westmoreland and Erie counties. Private centers operate in Butler and Fayette counties, according to the state’s Department of Human Services.
Westmoreland has contracts with six local counties — Armstrong, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana and Washington — to house juveniles at the Regional Youth Services Center at a daily rate of $199, Kamer said.
The operating license for the Westmoreland center runs through March.
The most recent state inspection of the center was conducted in December 2019 and found no violations, according to a state summary posted online.
Meanwhile, county officials said plans are being finalized to provide additional programs such as in-house mental health treatment for in-custody juveniles.
“We’re in talks with an agency right now to come into the facility, or by remote, to treat kids,” Bononi said.
Rich Cholodofsky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Rich at 724-830-6293, rcholodofsky@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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