The number of kids at the Allegheny County Jail went up — nearly two years after a federal act aimed at removing kids from adult lockup went into effect. Allegheny County held 249 hearings to decide if kids should be transferred out of the jail; they only removed one as a result.
James Paul
Nicole Luster said her 15-year-old son’s first time away from home was the over three months he spent at the Allegheny County Jail.
“He did have a couple of breakdowns where he felt like he wanted to kill himself, and that tore me apart because I’m a parent and I’m supposed to protect him and rescue him,” Luster said. “It’s just so sad when there’s nothing that you can do, and it’s out of your hands.”
On Luster’s son’s first night back, he was met with cake and balloons. She said he took a hot shower, got into pajamas and ate a big dinner — he couldn’t stomach the food at the ACJ for the first two and a half weeks he was there.
Luster’s son entered the ACJ in Dec. 2021, the month Allegheny County implemented the 2018 reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act which added key amendments to the old legislature and is aimed at pulling juveniles out of adult lockups.
The reauthorization gave states three years to comply and added provisions to keep kids out of adult jails and prisons, including holding limits and mandatory court hearings. But Allegheny County holds more kids in the ACJ than before it implemented the act nearly two years ago.
According to the ACJ’s population dashboard, when Allegheny County implemented the reauthorization in Dec. 2021, the jail held 21 kids charged as adults. As of Nov. 15, 2023, it holds 25 kids.
The reauthorization requires courts to hold a hearing every 30 days for each juvenile held at an adult facility to determine “if it is in the interest of justice” to keep them there, according to the legislature. These hearings are often referred to as “interest of justice” hearings.
“[The reauthorization] doesn’t stop you from charging a kid as an adult or sentencing a child as an adult,” said Marcy Mistrett, the former co-chair of Act4JJ, a national coalition that advocated for the passage of the reauthorization. “It just says you’re innocent till proven guilty, and if you are a child, you should be in a youth facility pending your trial.”
Under Pennsylvania’s Act 33, kids aged 15 and older who are charged with certain crimes, such as murder, armed robbery or other violent offenses involving a weapon, automatically enter the adult court system.
Pennsylvania is one of only 13 states with no limit on how young a juvenile can be tried in adult court and exposed to adult jails and prisons.
Luster said while her son was at the ACJ, he didn’t receive a single interest of justice hearing. She said he attended a preliminary hearing and a bond hearing and was released on house arrest in March 2022.
Christopher Connors, the chief deputy court administrator for the Fifth Judicial District, declined to comment on the interest of justice procedures in Luster’s son’s case “given the inability to identify” the involved child.
Since implementing the reauthorization, Allegheny County held 249 hearings to decide if kids should be transferred out of the jail; they only removed one as a result, according to an Oct. 20 email from Joseph Asturi, the director of communications and intergovernmental affairs for the Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania.
A hearing defense submitted by Sarah E. Linder Marx, an assistant public defender, in Oct. 2022 said Allegheny County, “appears to be an outlier in the way it continues to hold children in its adult jail.” The brief was filed on behalf of a 15-year-old sent to the ACJ for a fatal shooting in 2021.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of kids in adult jails dropped nationally from 3,220 in 2018 to 1,960 in 2021. Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia County housed 36 children in its jail in July 2015 but only 11 by August 2022, according to the Philadelphia Prison Report.