Prince William Social Services cuts electronic monitoring

The recent elimination of an electronic monitoring program may have had a direct effect on one teen’s lengthy stay in the Prince William County Juvenile Detention Center, according to a high-ranking member of the Social Services department.

A15-year-old student at Forest Park High School turned himself in to the police June 3 for his alleged involvement in a May 22 fight with several other teens.

He was charged with robbery, assault by mob and malicious wounding and only after he was certified to be tried as an adult last month was he released to his parents, said defense attorney Joseph Drennan.

Drennan requested a motion to allow his client be freed on bond in both Juvenile & Domestic Court and Circuit Court. His first motion at Juvenile & Domestic Court on June 23 failed.

In his Circuit Court appeal July 16, a representative for county Commonwealth’s Attorney Clay Richardson argued that Drennan’s client was too dangerous to be freed on bond given his history and nature of the crimes he was being charged with.

But the presiding circuit court judge said he would allow the boy to make bail contingent on electronic monitoring and other safeguarding measures. The judge wasn’t aware at the time that the electronic monitoring program run by the Department of Social Services had been eliminated at the start of the fiscal year.

Until July 1, electronic monitoring was part of the department’s overall pre-adjudication, or pretrial, outreach program, which also involves unscheduled checks and phone calls by members of the Social Services department.

According to Social Services outreach director Carol Williams, the fact that electronic monitoring was no longer available forced this youth to be detained for a longer period of time than if the department still had the program.

Williams said a parole officer dealing with the case was willing to obtain the electronic monitoring device from the Juvenile Court Service Unit after the circuit court hearing. However, with no pre-adjudication program in place, this wasn’t a possibility.

Consequently the boy sat for another two weeks despite another request by Drennan to clarify the circuit court ruling and release the boy to his parents for observation.

JCSU Director Jim Rankin admitted that judges at the circuit court level could have been better informed of the change in programming. According to Rankin, the monitoring devices occasionally were shared between the departments.

While the DSS used the devices for both preventive and safety measures — primarily so children won’t leave the area before a potential legal outcome — the JCSU would use them for those who had already been found guilty of an offense.

Typically, only those children who are charged with serious criminal offenses are kept in the juvenile detention center for an extended period of time, said Rankin. Those charges usually involve some sort of violent or gang-related behavior.

Juveniles are normally kept no more than 90 days in the center but can stay up to 180 days depending on various factors like the necessity of obtaining psychology evaluations. Children who are found guilty of the most serious of offenses become wards of the state and are sent to out-of-county facilities, said Rankin.

The elimination of the electronic monitoring program saved the DSS $6,086 for fiscal year 2010. It also forced the department to move one of its five outreach coordinators into a new position.

The daily taxpayer cost per inmate at the Juvenile Detention Center is $121.29. The daily cost for the electronic monitoring program couldn’t be broken down by day, according to Social Services Residential Services Director Terri Stott. However, in an e-mail sent Tuesday, Stott stated, “it is safe to say that it costs less to have a youth in the EM program rather than a secure detention facility.”
DSS Director Jack Ledden said the EM program provided a lot of bang for the buck. Staff was notified of a child removing the tracking system within 15 minutes.

And it made it easier to find these children, especially since parents will occasionally lie about their kids’ whereabouts to the outreach coordinators, said Williams.

Ledden estimated that 55 youth used these services last year after 88 in 2007. But rather than eliminate a position somewhere in the department, Ledden said they had to find creative ways to cut their budget, no matter how minute.

“In totality, this stuff ... adds up,” said Ledden, who remains confident that the current outreach program offered by DSS will still be an effective monitoring tool.

Staff writer Kipp Hanley can be reached at 703-878-8062.