PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The City of Philadelphia has filed a lawsuit against the state in an attempt to force it to relieve overcrowding at the Juvenile Justice Services Center that has led to serious and potentially dangerous conditions there.
Mayor Jim Kenney said the city has been asking the state for three years, to no avail, to take custody of youth in detention who have been ordered by a judge to be moved to a state facility.
The mayor said the lawsuit is a last resort.
“I regret suing my friends, but we need to get these kids in an appropriate setting, and we need to reduce the congestion at the Juvenile Justice Center,” he said.
The center is designed to be a temporary facility for up to 184 youth awaiting trial. The suit states the population of the facility is currently at 223 young people, including 74 who have been found delinquent and must receive rehabilitative treatment from the state before they can be released.
Related
“The last thing I wanted to do was sue the governor, who’s a friend of mine. I love him. But we have 74 kids languishing in a facility that’s overcrowded,” Kenney said. “It’s scary, and I got employees in there who are doing their best to hold on. The kids deserve to have a better situation.”
The time those kids spend in the JJSC does not count toward their sentence, meaning they are serving additional time. Meanwhile, conditions at the JJSC have deteriorated. Ebony Richards, a counselor at the JJSC, testified in City Council last week that the situation has become dangerous.
“Someone is going to end up dying in that facility,” she said. “We need help.”
Council encouraged the lawsuit. The state said, last week, its facilities are full. The suit refutes that.
"The administration recognizes that this is an extremely challenging situation and that is why the administration has been actively engaged with state and local officials to work towards a resolution and is taking numerous steps to alleviate it," Wolf Press Secretary Elizabeth Rementer said.
"We will continue to seek both short-term and long-term solutions to address the broad issue of juvenile delinquency and urge the city do the same."