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SUMMARY
The Office of the Auditor General has conducted a performance
audit of the Arizona Supreme Court, Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC)—Juvenile
Detention Centers pursuant to Arizona Revised Statutes (A.R.S.) §41-2958, which
requires a review of the programs and commissions established by the Legislature
within the judiciary. This audit was conducted under the authority vested in the
Auditor General by A.R.S. §41-1279.03.
Juvenile detention centers provide temporary and safe custody
of juveniles pending court disposition. Arizona has 14 such juvenile detention
centers—two in Maricopa County and one each in 12 other counties. Greenlee and
La Paz Counties have agreements to use juvenile detention centers in adjacent
counties. More than 12,000 juveniles were detained in these juvenile detention
centers at some point during fiscal year 2006. The presiding judge of the
juvenile court is statutorily responsible for the supervision of the detention
center. However, the centers are primarily funded and operated by their
respective counties. The Supreme Court has administrative authority over all
courts and court programs, including juvenile detention centers. The AOC assists
the Supreme Court with its administrative responsibilities. Since 1998, the
State has contributed more than $20 million in juvenile detention center
construction or renovation funding. Juvenile detention centers offer various
services to detained juveniles, including education, healthcare services,
nutrition, recreation, and visits from family.
Review of operations shows opportunities for
improvement (see pages 11 through 30)
Auditors' review of operations at five juvenile detention
centers disclosed wide variation in the degree to which adequate safety,
security, and other practices were in place as compared to state operational
guidelines, national standards, best practices, and the juvenile detention
centers themselves. Auditors selected five juvenile detention centers to
represent centers of different population sizes, location, age, and population
composition. Auditors then reviewed these five juvenile detention centers across
selected operations in the areas of safety and security, healthcare, behavior
management, and staffing and training. Three of the juvenile detention
centers—Coconino County, Pima County, and Maricopa County's Durango center
(Maricopa-Durango)—operated adequately in virtually all aspects of operations
reviewed. The two other juvenile detention centers—Mohave County and Santa Cruz
County—need to improve in many areas. In all, auditors have identified more than
20 recommendations in this report for improvements at these two juvenile
detention centers. Examples of problems identified at one or both of these
juvenile detention centers included the following:
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Safety and security: Control rooms were not fully
secure, procedures for careful control of keys were inadequate, and
perimeter areas that could not be monitored by cameras were not periodically
inspected.
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Healthcare: Staff not trained by healthcare
providers conducted health screenings and administered medications, access
to prescription medications was not sufficiently limited, and suicide
screening and monitoring needed improvement.
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Behavior management: Better procedures are needed
for evaluating juvenile behavior, limiting the use of isolation, and
restricting the use of mechanical restraints.
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Staffing: Both juvenile detention centers
struggled to maintain adequate staffing because of staffing shortages. As a
result, both juvenile detention centers have resorted to locking some
juveniles in their rooms because of staffing shortages. For example, the
Santa Cruz County center sometimes conducts school in shifts with half the
juveniles in school and the other half locked in their rooms. A recent
report from the AOC cited a shortage of staff as a contributing factor to
escapes from the Mohave County juvenile detention center in October 2006.
Although the areas for improvement centered on these two
juvenile detention centers, auditors also identified some problems at the
Maricopa-Durango and Pima County centers. Most notably, the Maricopa-Durango
center was concerned about its ability to comply with federal and state laws
that call for keeping juveniles separated, by sight and sound, from adult
inmates. In addition, the Pima County center should determine if external blind
spots at the center pose a security risk and, if so, take steps to routinely
monitor them.
State-wide effort needed to improve operating standards
(see pages 31 through 40)
The Supreme Court and the AOC have an opportunity to make
practices such as those discussed in Finding 1 more uniform across centers by
strengthening operational guidelines. Arizona's Operational Guidelines and
Best Practices for Juvenile Detention Care in Arizona (Guidelines), developed by
an advisory committee in 1998, contain minimum guidelines for juvenile detention
center operations. These minimum guidelines are detailed in some areas, but
vague in others. As a result, a juvenile detention center can technically comply
with the Guidelines, but not necessarily guarantee a safe environment for
juveniles and staff. For example, one guideline recommends that juvenile
detention centers establish policies and procedures regarding control of keys.
However, this guideline provides no further direction, and as a result, a
facility can comply with the guideline simply by having a policy and/or
procedure that may or may not provide adequate detail about appropriate
practices. The Supreme Court does not mandate that the juvenile detention
centers comply with the Guidelines, but instead encourages them to voluntarily
comply.
Standards that are more rigorous and that carry a compliance
requirement can help eliminate the types of disparities that auditors
identified, and also are in keeping with practices used in other states.1
Auditors obtained information from nine other states in which the judicial
branch operates or oversees juvenile detention centers and found that eight had
mandatory standards. In March 2007, the AOC began an effort to review the
Guidelines to determine which ones addressed constitutional or statutory
requirements. This review could serve as a springboard for the Arizona Judicial
Council to direct the AOC to work with the county juvenile courts to identify
and/or develop and implement mandatory operational standards. Doing so should
involve reviewing and improving current guidelines to ensure they provide
adequate direction and detail to juvenile detention centers, and adopting new
standards where appropriate. The standards should include sufficient detail and
information to provide juvenile detention centers with the guidance they will
need to establish conforming policies, procedures, and practices.
Once such standards are developed, the AOC would need to take
several steps to help juvenile detention centers implement them. These include
providing training and technical assistance to appropriate county juvenile court
and juvenile detention center staff on the mandatory standards, assisting county
juvenile court staff in obtaining additional resources from their respective
boards of supervisors if needed, and identifying additional resources, such as
best practices and tools used by some juvenile detention centers, to share with
other juvenile detention centers to help comply with the operational standards.
Revised standards should also be used to increase
accountability and provide critical information to improve juvenile detention
center operations. Standards that help to provide accountability and data for
decision making are sometimes referred to as performance-based standards. These
types of standards can be linked to goals, have objective measurements of
performance, communicate expected or best practices, and require the
implementation of processes to document operations. Coconino, Graham, and Pima
Counties' juvenile detention centers have used some form of performance-based
standards already within their juvenile detention centers. Further, implementing
state-wide, performance-based standards for juvenile detention centers would be
consistent with the Supreme Court's goal to ensure accountability in the courts.
Supreme Court should improve juvenile detention center
screening (see pages 41 through 45)
The Supreme Court should help ensure that only appropriate
juveniles are detained by developing and implementing policies and/or standards
to assist county juvenile courts in making this determination. Juvenile
detention centers use various tools to make this determination, possibly
resulting in inconsistent decisions from county to county. Auditors' review of
studies on juvenile detention centers identified some potential risks of
detaining juveniles. Reports indicated, for example, that juveniles may be at a
higher risk of death by suicide or illness when in the custody population and
that detaining juveniles may widen the gulf between juveniles and the potential
positive influences of the community. Additionally, according to Supreme Court
data, Hispanic and African-American youth are disproportionately detained in
relation to their population proportion. Detention may also be used
inappropriately to house juveniles who are mentally ill.
Under the direction of the Arizona Judicial Council, the AOC
should work with the county juvenile courts to develop and implement policies,
procedures, and/or standards to assist in appropriately and consistently
screening juveniles for detention. These policies and/or standards should also
recognize legitimate county-level concerns regarding the safety of the juveniles
and the community within their jurisdiction. To help ensure that there are
viable alternatives to detention, the AOC and counties should continue with
their efforts to identify and use detention alternatives. According to a U.S.
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention report, alternatives to
detention are typically more cost-effective and can be less harmful than
detaining a juvenile in detention.2 According to the Pima County
juvenile court director, redirecting juveniles from detention into alternative
programs has proven cost-effective for Pima County. Specifically, Pima County
reported that it has reduced its average daily juvenile population in detention
by 49 juveniles, dropping from an average daily population of 176 juveniles in
2003 to 127 in 2006, which has resulted in cost savings. The Supreme Court and
the AOC, through their management of federal funding and their own Juvenile
Probation Services Fund, have been able to redirect monies to counties to fund
alternatives to detention and should continue to do so by continuing to request
funding for the use of effective alternatives to detention.
Supreme Court should improve juvenile detention center
inspection program (see pages 47 through 56)
To help ensure that juvenile detention centers provide a safe
and secure environment for detained juveniles, the Supreme Court, through the
AOC, should take the lead in developing a more comprehensive juvenile detention
center inspection program. Traditionally, state inspections of these juvenile
detention centers have been done primarily by the Arizona Department of Juvenile
Corrections (Juvenile Corrections), with the AOC also conducting its own
inspections in recent years. Inspections done by the AOC and Juvenile
Corrections are somewhat limited, as each inspection reviews for compliance with
an average of only 3 of the 74 existing guidelines, and there is no enforcement
of resulting recommendations. Auditors' review of inspection reports found that
in some cases, findings and corresponding recommendations are noted in reports
for 4 consecutive years with no indication of compliance by the juvenile
detention center.
For several reasons, the Supreme Court, through the AOC,
would be better suited than Juvenile Corrections to develop and implement a
comprehensive juvenile detention center inspection program. First, although
Juvenile Corrections has the statutory responsibility to inspect juvenile
detention centers, it does not have statutory authority to enforce its
recommendations. The Supreme Court and the AOC are in a better position to work
with the juvenile court’s presiding judges and juvenile court directors to
achieve compliance. Second, when inspections were originally established, the
Supreme Court lacked the capability and clear authority to conduct them.
According to the AOC’s Director, at that time, superior courts were considered
county courts and the AOC was not involved with the county courts until
subsequent lawsuits determined that court employees are state employees.
However, the AOC has increased its level of involvement with juvenile detention
centers from a state-wide perspective, such as facilitating the effort to
establish operational guidelines. Inspecting juvenile detention centers would be
consistent with these types of efforts. Finally, the Director of Juvenile
Corrections has indicated that Juvenile Corrections has focused on its own
facilities because of federal monitoring that resulted from serious safety and
security issues. Although this federal monitoring was completed in September
2007, Juvenile Corrections now must establish internal processes to prevent
these issues from reoccurring in its facilities in the future.
Therefore, the Legislature should consider revising statute
to replace Juvenile Corrections with the AOC as the entity responsible for
inspecting juvenile detention centers. If it is given this responsibility, the
AOC should develop and implement a comprehensive juvenile detention center
inspection program. Finally, the AOC should review its staff resources and
assess whether it has sufficient staff to properly implement and maintain an
improved inspection program. If additional staff resources are needed, the AOC
should review several options, including shifting internal staff resources or
working with the county juvenile courts and/or the Legislature to obtain needed
staff resources.
1 California, Connecticut,
Illinois, Indiana, MIssouri, North Dakota, Texas, and Virginia have operational
standards that their juvenile detention centers are required to meet. Utah
enforces compliance with juvenile detention center policy and procedures.
2 Austin, James, Kelly Dedel
Johnson, and Ronald Weitzer. Alternatives to the Secure Detention and
Confinement of Juvenile Offenders. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington D.C.:
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Sept. 2005.
Read full report in Acrobat PDF format
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