Dallas County juvenile officials refute alleged mistreatment of minors

Dallas County juvenile officials Tuesday refuted accusations that children in county detention are mistreated.

Those officials said some data in an earlier report is just wrong. However, some County Commissioners still believe there is a problem.

They voted 3 to 2 Tuesday to appeal a court ruling over juvenile records.

The accusations include low-level offenders kept in detention with violent offenders for long periods of time compared with other urban counties.

Also, there are reports of children locked up for days at a time in isolation for lack of proper supervision.

“It makes them into people we do not want to release back into society and juveniles will be released back into society after we’ve isolated them and hurt them,” Commissioner Andrew Sommerman said.

Sommerman was recently appointed to the Dallas County Juvenile Board that oversees juvenile issues.

He replaced Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price on that board.

“All I see is whack-a-mole with regard to the juvenile department,” Price said.

Department supporter Price called juvenile officials Tuesday to the Dallas County Commissioners Court meeting for a briefing.

They provided evidence that was contrary to the earlier report by outside consultants on several key points, including the percentage of county detainees with low-level offenses.

“The number they presented was 47% and what we found, it was actually 23%, and that’s a big difference,” said Dr. Julie Childers, a Dallas County Juvenile Department Deputy Director.

Her report also showed offenders are now being moved from county detention in about 30 days compared with roughly 60 days in an earlier county department report and 140 days in what she said was an erroneous report by the consultants.

Dallas County’s top elected official, Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, said another independent study of the data may be needed to settle the dispute.

“If we are stuck in the attitude of 'us against them,' 'poor me, I’m being attacked,' there’s really no way we can ever win,” Jenkins said.

County commissioners sued the juvenile department seeking records that could verify how long minors were kept in isolation.

In August, a judge ruled against the commissioners and said juvenile officials do not have to provide those records under state juvenile law.

Sommerman and Price argued over what new information the juvenile officials had provided Tuesday and the value of an appeal of that court ruling.

“We heard nothing about children held in isolation, nothing about it,” Sommerman said.

“You keep saying that, but that was not a part of the damn lawsuit. Why do you keep saying it,” Price said.

Price claimed the lawsuit was strictly a matter of whether county commissioners should be allowed to see the juvenile records and not about the reasons for seeing them.

A state investigation of the Dallas County Juvenile Department is also underway, including a review of how long children were kept in isolation.

State officials should have access to all the records but they have said some records are missing.

Results from the state investigation, which may take several months, could settle much of the dispute.