After more than a year of pointed questions from the D.C. Council about a persistent overcrowding issue in the city’s juvenile detention system, the official in charge of fixing the problem came to lawmakers with a new plan.
Sam Abed, the director of D.C.’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), said at a recent council oversight hearing that the agency was exploring the purchase of a state-owned building in Maryland — about three miles from the city’s New Beginnings facility — as a way to address the bed shortage for young people accused of crimes.
When youth justice advocates and Maryland officials heard of Abed’s plan, it raised alarm bells for two reasons.
First, the building that Abed appeared to reference, the former Waxter Children’s Center in Laurel, had been shuttered in 2022 after years of complaints over rats, mold, bugs and other infrastructure problems. Abed oversaw its closure when he directed Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services.
Second, Maryland state officials had told Abed months earlier the property wasn’t available.
A spokesperson for Maryland’s Department of General Services, which manages the state’s real estate, said in a statement that Abed had sent an email inquiry about the Waxter property in August. A DGS staff member replied that the state had been in ongoing conversations with Anne Arundel County, where the property is, about a potential acquisition of the site for use as a community center, the statement said.
Yet in sworn testimony to the council in October, Abed touted the Maryland facility as a possible solution to the overcrowding challenges at D.C.’s Youth Services Center, which has a 98-bed capacity but was housing 124 young people as of Monday.
At that meeting, Abed told D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), who chairs the committee that oversees DYRS, that the agency is working to improve the rate at which young people are placed in rehabilitative facilities, in the face of staffing challenges that he is also trying urgently to address.
“The next fastest thing we can do,” he said, “is to try to acquire that facility in Maryland. Because it is a fully built facility, we don’t have to go through the capital process and wait on construction and all the other things.”
Abed did not name the Waxter Children’s Center but said he had requested to lease or buy a state-owned building from Maryland over a year ago and had reiterated the request in recent months. Abed told Parker that he was “awaiting response from the state.”
He also raised the possibility of trying to renovate the Youth Services Center to create more space.
“I’m working as fast as I can and as diligently as I can,” Abed testified in that hearing.
When asked to confirm the details of Abed’s plan or provide details about the director’s conversations with Maryland, a DYRS spokesperson repeatedly declined to do so. The agency has not decided on a facility and could not disclose additional information about the search, the spokesperson said.
In a statement, Abed also offered no details but said that his agency “continues to explore various solutions to manage surges in our facility populations.”
“No final decisions have been made at this time,” Abed said. “DYRS continues to assess all options to ensure safe, stable, and supportive environments for the youth we serve.”
Youth justice advocates in D.C. and Maryland were relieved to learn that the shuttered juvenile jail would not be reopened to house young people. But the short-lived possibility revived concerns that DYRS has no realistic plan to expediently alleviate the challenges facing incarcerated young people — undermining their faith in Abed’s leadership.
“I’m glad that plan isn’t going to work out, but I’m not sure why the director continues to pursue it after the information he received, if that’s really what he heard,” said Joshua Miller, research and advocacy director at Open City Advocates, which represents young people in D.C.’s juvenile justice system. Instead, Miller said, “we’d really like to see him reconsidering the policies around detaining kids for months at a time at YSC without programming.”
The increase in population at D.C.’s detention facilities has coincided with protracted struggles to plan and provide for young people’s rehabilitation, leading teens to instead spend months at a time languishing at the Youth Services Center, The Washington Post has reported.
The overcrowding has curtailed access to education for the children and teenagers at the facility and contributed to extended periods of confinement and an increase in violent incidents among those in the city’s custody, according to independent monitors and youth advocates.
At a Nov. 13 council meeting where Abed again testified about the agency’s operations, Parker delivered a scathing commentary from the council’s dais about the overcrowding issues and problems with education services, parent engagement and poor intake records.
“I think that what’s happening at DYRS is dangerous,” Parker told Abed, “and you’re failing on your mission.”
Abed replied that his agency has no control over the rate of juvenile detentions in D.C.
Before Maryland state officials had clarified that using the Waxter building was not a possibility for the city, youth advocates lambasted Abed’s proposal, testifying against the acquisition before the council. In a joint statement, the American Civil Liberties Union in Maryland and D.C. said that “reopening a previously condemned facility will exacerbate health and safety concerns for youth in DYRS custody.”
The dustup in D.C. “sparked a lot of confusion” in Anne Arundel County, too, said the county’s council president, Julie Hummer, who lives near the Waxter site and has been working with state and local officials for years to acquire and rehabilitate the building so it could be used to serve residents in a corner of the county that lacks resources.
“This is a Maryland state property,” Hummer said. “It should benefit Maryland state residents.”
Just this spring, Hummer said, she and a delegation of other county officials had toured the Waxter Center with DGS representatives. After she heard of Abed’s proposal, Hummer sent a letter to the DGS secretary, probing for information, and state officials quickly assured the county that they had no intention of selling the site to the District.
Abed remains under intense pressure to address what lawyers and educators at the Youth Services Center describe as a crisis. At the October oversight hearing, Abed called getting youths into programming one of his “chief concerns.”
“We have made significant progress,” he said, though he acknowledged, “it doesn’t always result in the outcome we’re looking for.”
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