WILMINGTON — At the current pace, Clinton County Juvenile Court will run out of 2016 funding for detention bed usage in about three months.
Clinton County Juvenile Court Judge Chad L. Carey advised county commissioners Monday on the juvenile detention bed situation, saying he wanted to alert them he may need to come back this year and ask for additional dollars.
Clinton County contracts with the West Central Juvenile Detention Center near Troy, Ohio for three beds a day, and with Greene County for two beds per day. The county also has an arrangement with Clermont County on an as-needed basis, with no contract.
Information from the Clinton County Juvenile Court’s Probation Department indicates it currently averages 7.7 beds a day.
“In order to stay within the 812 remaining contract bed days, we must average 3.5 beds/day until the end of the year. Based on current needs/trends, this is not probable,” stated a handout distributed to commissioners by Clinton County Juvenile Court’s Chief Probation Officer Deanne Whalen.
The informational handout included other related data for Clinton County:
• So far this year, 43 different juveniles (children younger than 18) were incarcerated.
• Twelve of those are felony offenders, accounting for 35 percent of bed days used.
• Three of the felony offenders are residents of other counties, accounting for 99 bed days used.
• In the three weeks prior to May 16, four juveniles tested positive for methamphetamine use, a felony-level drug.
• In the past six months, 12 juveniles have been placed in a community correctional facility (CCF) for treatment purposes. The CCF used most often by Clinton County is the Miami Valley Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Xenia, established by the Ohio Department of Youth Services.
The breakdown of the types of offenses for those dozen juveniles is: Seven have felony-level drug offenses; three have felony-level sex offenses; one has a felony-level property crime; and one has a felony-level domestic violence.
Juveniles who average a higher number of bed-use days generally are awaiting application to a rehab/treatment facility, undergoing psychological or sex offender evaluation, or awaiting transfer back to his or her home county, stated the local handout.
There were two situations involving two different children, said Carey, where he decided detention was a better alternative than their home lives. He said they “weren’t getting fed or taken care of.”
Reach Gary Huffenberger at 937-556-5768 or on Twitter @GHuffenberger.
