In the article “Vermont Supreme Court hears arguments on proposed Newbury juvenile facility,” VTDigger’s Erin Petenko writes the arguments hinged on whether the facility should be defined as a “juvenile detention center.”
I’m struggling to understand the ongoing debate about whether the Department for Children and Families’ Newbury proposal is a detention facility or not. While the definition of “group home” may be vague, the definition of “detention facility” is clear.
Don’t take my word for it; look at DCF’s own youth justice policy manual, accessed through DCF’s own website.
At Tuesday’s Vermont Supreme Court oral arguments, we listened to DCF’s attorney bemoaning to the Supreme Court justices that the Newbury proposal is being called a detention facility, referring to broad “dictionary definitions” and cherry-picked language to attempt to make the case why it should not be. But why reach for the dictionary when the definition they needed is so close at hand?
DCF’s youth justice policy and procedures manual clearly defines what a secure detention facility is:
SECURE DETENTION FACILITY (34 U.S.C. § 11103 (12) – means any public or private residential facility which— (1) includes construction fixtures designed to physically restrict the movements and activities of juveniles or other individuals held in lawful custody in such facility; and (2) is used for the temporary placement of any juvenile who is accused of having committed an offense or of any other individual accused of having committed a criminal offense.
There is no ambiguity: DCF’s proposed high-level, hardware-secure facility for justice-involved youth in Newbury fully complies with DCF’s own definition of “secure detention facility.”
Reading DCF’s policy manual, it’s difficult to see how the town of Newbury can be considered wrong to call it a secure detention facility, or conversely how DCF can say it is not one. DCF may “prefer” to call it something else to evade town zoning, but its Newbury proposal is a secure detention facility by its own definitions.
With this inconvenient truth so close at hand, DCF still argued otherwise to the Supreme Court while choosing to stay silent on its own policy. I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know the correct legal term for this type of “misrepresentation” to the Supreme Court justices, but I suspect some may consider it a “lie.”
As if Newbury needed yet another reason to distrust DCF.
Tony O’Meara
Newbury