Staffing shortages remain problem for DJJ, SC report finds

The sign outside the Department of Juvenile Justice’s building on Broad River Road. (File/Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA — The state’s juvenile justice agency still lacks staff to keep officers and youth safe, three years after receiving a list of recommendations to help address problems, state auditors found.

About half the recommendations resulting from the last audit still haven’t been made, according to the follow-up report released Thursday.

Department of Juvenile Justice Director Eden Hendrick told the SC Daily Gazette on Friday the agency is contesting that assessment in a written response. She argues that closer to 65% of the recommendations have been implemented, and an additional quarter or so are underway, she said.

Many of the recommendations from the 2021 report that this year’s audit revisited involved bureaucratic improvements, such as revising policies, turning in reports on time, updating job descriptions and developing plans.

The findings are not as severe as those three years ago, which found high rates of violence and a lack of accountability for juveniles who attacked other youth and officers; employees with multiple disciplinary infractions or a lack of training; and little medical care for youth.

The follow-up report recognized improvements the agency has made over the past few years, such as installing more cameras, increasing salaries, appropriately disciplining employees who broke the rules, and efforts to change security policies in order to reduce violence.

Still, the agency should do more to protect the 12-to-19-year-olds in its care, said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Allen Chaney.

The civil rights group is suing the agency over allegations of unsafe living conditions in the agency’s facilities, including black mold, stopped up toilets and overcrowding so severe children had to sleep on hallway floors.

The report by the Legislative Audit Council “merely confirms what we’ve long known: Children in DJJ custody continue to face devastating, dangerous, and inhumane conditions,” Chaney said in a statement to the Daily Gazette. “Rather than receiving the therapeutic and rehabilitative environment guaranteed to them by law, children at DJJ are alienated, victimized, and retraumatized.”

But Hendrick said the agency either has implemented suggestions made after the 2021 review or is in the process of fixing the problems pointed out. In many cases, the root problem is a persistent lack of staff and money, she said.

“These recommendations, I guess they help the agency, but some of them are impossible with what we have,” Hendrick said.

Based on federal reports, “DJJ was unable to sustain the progress it had made” in finding and keeping juvenile officers, the council wrote. In October 2023, 15% of the agency’s juvenile officer positions were unfilled. Four months later, in February 2024, that number was 39%.

Vacancy rates have improved in recent months, Hendrick said. As of Monday, the agency’s officer positions were about 17% empty, she said.

Part of that is likely because of pay increases, Hendrick said.

As of July, officers with no experience start at a minimum of $43,806. That’s $6,000 more than the minimum pay two years ago. Employees usually make more than the base wages, due to opportunities for overtime, pay bumps for working in certain facilities, and automatic raises at six and 18 months.

More than hiring, though, the agency faces a problem with retention, the report found.

By August of this year, 93 of the 118 officers the agency hired and trained in 2023 had left their jobs. They stayed, on average, for three months, according to the report.

Retention is an ongoing concern, Hendrick acknowledged.

“There is still, I’m not going to deny, lots of turnover, and unfortunately, we still have quite a few people out on workers’ (compensation),” Hendrick said. “That’s just kind of the nature of the business.”

Staffing is also the cause of other issues mentioned in the report, Hendrick said, such as a finding that some youth were not taken to off-campus medical appointments.

That’s typically because the agency doesn’t have the officers to spare in escorting children off property.

Statewide, the agency has four officers dedicated to transportation. Anyone else who leaves to escort a juvenile from a detention center must leave their post at facilities that are already understaffed, Hendrick said.

“I would love to dedicate 10 more officers to transport, but that’s 10 less in the dorms, that’s 10 less interacting with the youth,” Hendrick said. “It’s terrible that they miss medical appointments, but also, we’re trying. We’re doing the best we can with what we have.”

In that same vein, officers sometimes put off training courses needed to renew their certification because they don’t have the coverage to step away from their jobs. If they did, the agency doesn’t have the capacity to train many people at once, Hendrick said.

That might be the reason the council marked a recommendation to train all officers with certification as incomplete, she said.

Incentives for employees who keep their certificates current, such as annual bonuses of $2,500 to $4,000 paid out in halves during the year, have helped encourage more people to take the time out of their day to complete the training courses, Hendrick said.

“Honestly, our training department probably needs to increase greatly, but that’s something that we need to look into for the future,” Hendrick said. “I think this should be way better than it was in the past.”

The agency’s focus has shifted over the last few years from the Broad River Road complex, where convicted juveniles serve their sentences, to more immediate concerns caused by overcrowding at the Columbia detention center, where they await the outcome of their charges, Hendrick said.

Those problems only worsened when Richland County closed the juvenile wing of its jail in order to focus on the adult jail, which is under federal investigation following claims of suspicious deaths.

Along with a $200 million request to build a new youth detention center, the juvenile justice agency is asking for $15 million to update its information technology systems, which could help resolve many of the clerical problems the council found, Hendrick said.

Another request that could help is $2.3 million in raises for community workers, who help youth before they are arrested and placed in DJJ facilities, and administrative workers, she said.

“Please give me more money so we can hire people with critical thinking skills, common sense, and work ethic,” the budget request reads.

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