The new juvenile detention center in downtown Omaha features comfortable rooms, common spaces with flat-screen TVs and orderly classrooms.

“It’s sweet up here,” says Douglas County Youth Center Superintendent Rondy Woodard as he leads a tour to the building’s top floor.

An expansive indoor basketball court connects to a workout room with untouched machines. A corridor leads to a rooftop recreation area with a patch of grass-colored turf.

But something is missing in the county’s new juvenile detention center: the juveniles.

A year after the controversial project’s completion, the $27 million center remains empty.

And it may never be used for its original purpose. Members of the Douglas County Board have begun floating potential alternative uses for the four-story building as the number of kids in custody continues to exceed the number of beds in the new facility.

Detained children remain in the 27-year-old Douglas County Youth Center — a midtown Omaha facility that critics say is built more like an adult jail than a therapeutic environment for kids.

In addition to the millions taxpayers put toward the construction of the building, the unopened facility has cost the county about $177,000 in utilities and maintenance since last July. Upkeep is due to cost taxpayers at least $20,000 a month going forward.

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Longtime opponents of the project led by County Board member Jim Cavanaugh say the undersized facility was doomed from the start and has turned into a money pit for taxpayers.

“The money has been spent. No child nor family has been helped,” said Bellevue activist Nicole Le Clerc. “In this trying time, to have built that building, it’s unfathomable what they’ve done.”

Project proponents, led by County Board member Chris Rodgers, say the building can still be used for its intended purpose if the number of kids in detention falls.

They contend that the state should take more responsibility for certain repeat offenders kept at DCYC and that social service programs meant to reduce recidivism need more time to work after pandemic disruptions.

Juvenile justice advocates who supported the new building say political gridlock and personal beefs inside county government have kept leaders from doing what’s best for the children and their families.

“People should be upset that we have this multimillion building that’s just sitting there because of politics,” said LaVon Stennis-Williams, director of social service nonprofit ReConnect.

Controversial from the start

Mary Ann Borgeson, a 30-year veteran of the county board, can recall few public debates more contentious than the one over the new juvenile detention center.

After a series of emotional marathon meetings in 2018 and 2019, county and city leaders approved a $114 million bond issue to pay for a new courthouse annex and an adjacent 64-bed juvenile justice facility to replace DCYC, which houses children facing new charges and kids on state probation. The move came with a modest property tax increase to cover the project’s debt.

Project backers, including the Susie Buffett-led Sherwood Foundation, hoped the smaller facility would nudge the local juvenile justice system toward alternative programs that allow kids to live in their communities.

By beefing up those programs and locating the facility right next to the courts, supporters felt kids could move through the system faster, freeing up beds, Borgeson said.

Sherwood conditionally pledged $5 million toward the center’s construction but later decided not to give the money because the facility did not open, Douglas County Administrator Patrick Bloomingdale said. Sherwood did not respond to requests for comment.

Opponents including the Omaha police union quickly raised concerns about building a facility with fewer beds than the county’s existing lockup, which housed an average of more than 70 kids at the time.

It was “magical thinking” to believe the juvenile detention numbers would go down in a growing county, Le Clerc said.

Cavanaugh instead promoted a plan that would have renovated the much larger DCYC to provide detained kids with an “enhanced campus-like” facility – more like a secure junior high school than a cellblock, he said.

The average population at DCYC trended downward for a couple years, sparking optimism from supporters.

But as the nation began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, the number of kids in detention steadily rose.

In August 2023, the county board voted to delay the move to the new downtown building until the number of kids in detention came down to 54 for at least six months.

The upward trajectory continued in 2023 as the average population of DCYC returned to pre-pandemic levels. Through July 3 of this year, the old building houses an average of 89 kids — the highest figure since 2012.

The plan for a smaller justice center was flawed from the outset, Cavanaugh said, because the county can’t control the number of arrests law enforcement makes or when judges allow detained kids to leave the facility.

Douglas County Sheriff Aaron Hanson said the lower-capacity plan didn’t work “because reality set in and theory did not prevail.”

“We telegraphed this challenge long ago, but sometimes it takes a dose of harsh reality to help render the appropriate conclusion,” Hanson said.

Project proponents point to several reasons the number of detained youth didn’t decrease as they expected. But the heart of the issue, they say, is that kids are sitting in DCYC for too long.

The number of juvenile arrests in Douglas County mirrors pre-pandemic levels, but the average length of stay at DCYC has climbed to 69 days this year — more than three weeks longer than in 2019.

Kids facing adult charges and serious juvenile charges tend to stay longer in DCYC, and the number of detainees in that category has grown since the pandemic, according to county data.

That increase is due in large part to the number of kids brought in on gun charges, said Deputy County Administrator Kim Hawekotte.

It’s part of a national trend where youth detention facilities are overwhelmed by a rise in violent and gun-related crime, said Mike Dempsey, director of the Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators. It’s hard to pinpoint what’s behind the post-pandemic wave, he said.

The county’s original plan to reduce dependency on detention relied heavily on boosting social service programs that provide tutoring, mentorship, counseling and employment guidance to kids and their families.

It was a sound idea, but that investment didn’t happen until recently, said Tamika Mease, the director of North Omaha Community Partnership, which offers whole-family counseling.

“The county is on the right track. I just feel like it hasn’t happened as soon as they put it out there as far as their timeline,” Mease said.

Many early intervention and alternative-to-detention programs intended to steer kids away from criminal activity shut down or lacked staff in 2020 and 2021, Stennis-Williams said.

The county could now be seeing the residual effect of that COVID-19 slowdown when kids didn’t have the chance to engage with the programs, she said.

Political opposition hindered some of the progress in bolstering alternative programs, but the county has made strides, Borgeson said.

It augmented a program that releases detained kids to their homes with ankle monitors.

The 2023 opening of Radius, a North Omaha residential facility for released kids on probation, has also been a positive step, Borgeson said.

The county can do more to increase alternative services for kids awaiting court dates, but it’s the state’s responsibility to fortify services like Radius for detainees on probation, Rodgers said.

If kids on probation had somewhere else to go, the county could significantly lower the population at DCYC and open the new facility, Rodgers said.

State probation administrator Deb Minardi said kids can’t be placed in beds at alternative facilities that don’t exist. Whether the state funds those kinds of facilities is a question for the Nebraska Legislature, she said.

Other options?

As the writing on the wall became clearer that there were more kids in detention than beds at the new building, the county board approved a plan in October to open the downtown facility for kids charged as juveniles while continuing to hold kids charged as adults at DCYC.

But the board paused that plan after learning it could cost $4-7 million.

Since then, other ideas have surfaced.

One involves working with the state to use the new building as a state-run youth rehabilitation and treatment center — the equivalent of a prison for juveniles.

Cavanaugh would like to see the county use the vacant youth center to help adult inmates battling mental illness instead of building an expensive new facility for that purpose.

Rodgers said the board should go back to an older plan that would have made the transition to the new facility by gradually lowering the detained population.

Board Chairman Roger Garcia said he’s waiting to see whether the Legislature caps how much revenue counties can raise during an anticipated special session later this summer. That will determine how tight the county budget is going forward, he said.

Garcia and several other board members told the Flatwater Free Press they hope to throw politics and the blame game aside to find the best solution for the taxpayers and the families interacting with the juvenile justice system.

“We have a problem here today and out in front of us, and we need to deal with it in the most productive manner possible,” said board member Mike Friend. “This is the hand we’ve been dealt.”

In the meantime, taxpayers will continue footing the bill to keep the lights on and the water running at the empty building.

A group of county employees including Woodard, the DCYC superintendent, walk the vacant center every week, flushing toilets and running faucets in each of the 64 bedrooms. It’s part of the routine to keep the building ready for whenever it’s put to use, Woodard said.

Woodard declined to say how and when he’d like to see the facility open, but as he looks around a brightly colored housing unit, he knows the kids would enjoy what the new building has to offer.

“This is beautiful,” he said. “They would really like this.”

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This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.