Posts Tagged ‘DYRS’
Inmate Escapes From New Beginnings Youth Facility
A day after local poo-bahs at DYRS opened its New Beginnings Youth Center, a New Beginnings inmate escaped.
With much fanfare, the facility replaced the infamous Oak Hill juvenile detention facility. Officials had trumpeted its very un-jail like citing; local media had repeatedly compared it to a college campus. "This is the anti-prison," Vincent N. Schiraldi, director of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, told the Post in a story that made it seem like New Beginnings was a St. Albans branch campus only better . "What we had before was a training school for them to become adult inmates. We want them to aspire to college, to be in a place that looks like you care about them."
The press had noted that New Beginnings was not surrounded by razor wire. Instead, officials stated that the facility's security was pure state-of-the-art Gattaca shit---"climb-free fencing" and "detention-grade windows." New Beginnings central campus-like feature was a sweet courtyard; it also had a cafeteria, library, gym, and automated bathroom time (!). Apparently, none of the new features nor the intimidating climb-free fencing could prevent a kid from bolting the $46 million Laurel campus.
The kid is still out there. An internal investigation is underway to determine how the kid escaped. Meanwhile, the Post provides some hilarious details on the city's security tests:
"On Thursday, Schiraldi and David Muhammad, chief of Committed Services, said they had brought in young men to try to scale the New Beginnings fences and made modifications to prevent escapes. Schiraldi even said he planned to put prickly shrubbery, possibly rose bushes, near the fence so the young men would not be tempted to flee."
One councilmember is already feeling prickly over the escape---Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells.
Read More "Inmate Escapes From New Beginnings Youth Facility" »
Children Speak Out On CFSA, DCPS
On Friday, I attended Positive Nature's organized conference on vulnerable children and families. The event, held among several conference rooms at the convention center, was also put together with the Department of Mental Health and the DC Children & Youth Investment Trust Corporation. The bigwigs from CFSA, DMH, DYRS and DCPS showed up and gave upbeat speeches.
The speeches may constitute wishful thinking considering that these agencies are under the microscope either by Colbert King or the courts. The court monitor's report issued last week on CFSA was not pretty. Judging from the breakout sessions, social workers and advocates have a lot to learn from the children they are paid to protect and nurture.
Fenty’s Proposed Layoffs Should Avoid DCPS
This morning, LL was all over Fenty's announced District gov job cuts. Our aggressive political scribe reported: "Of the remaining 776 employees the mayor is proposing to lay off, 250 are in DCPS—mostly teachers aides and support staff, Tangherlini says." This may not seem like scary news, but it is.
I know what your thinking: teachers aides and support staff seem like easy cuts. What the hell do teacher aides do? What does support staff mean? Let me guess what they do: they help handle over-crowded classrooms, offer tutoring, lesson planning and generally help teachers get through the day. I'm not sure about support staff. But it could mean social workers, guidance counselors, secretaries, and librarians.
Do we really want to cut funding for these jobs? These cuts are coming on the heels of all those school closures last year. Catania made the argument today on the Politics Hour that enrollment is down at DCPS and that more and more kids are going into charter schools. But for every successful charter school, there are stories like City Lights Public Charter which recently had to close its doors before the school year even finished.
We Feel You Colby
On Saturday, Colby King wrote another column addressing youth violence and the problems with DYRS. In his column, he spoke for journalists all over---but especially here in the District---about all those columns getting zero respect from the people that could actually fix the juvenile justice system. In other words, he's spilled a lot of ink on a pretty worthy crusade and no one in power seemed to care.
This does not bode well for the rest of us (citizen bloggers, alt-weekly vets, Legal Times interns). King is a big-time powerhouse journalist. His columns are must-reads every Saturday. And he has people who agree with him on this issue (those people all seem to work at D.C. Superior Court).
