Judicial intervention and juvenile corrections reform: a case study of Jerry M. v. District of Columbia.

AuthorSinger, Will
PositionIV. Theory and Practice Can Be Very Different through Conclusion, with footnotes, p. 922-964 - Symposium on Overcriminalization
  1. THEORY AND PRACTICE CAN BE VERY DIFFERENT

    In one sense, an institutional reform lawsuit is successful when it results in a court order or consent decree that mandates reforms. But it has long been recognized that institutional implementation of the reforms is both more important and more difficult than prevailing in court. (142)

    This Part examines the interactions between the Jerry M. lawsuit, the broader goals of juvenile corrections reform, and the behavior of the actors who play a role in implementation. One might expect that institutional interests--interests assigned by a person's position in the bureaucratic landscape rather than by any personal values--would determine how each actor behaves. For example, a chief executive would always oppose court intervention that diminishes his power over an executive branch agency. (143) While institutional interests certainly exist and inform behavior, they do not determine behavior. Thus, one chief executive might welcome the court's intervention while a successor might bitterly resist it--and in some cases the same executive might reverse his position to do both. (144) The examination proceeds one group at a time, but the reader should bear in mind that these groups consist of individual members who might act atypically.

    It should also be said that the groups profiled here are not the only ones worthy of consideration. Middle management is extremely important to the effectiveness of large organizations. (145) Likewise, the youth offenders themselves play a central role in a juvenile corrections agency. (146) However, neither group figures prominently into this Comment's point about judicial intervention, and therefore neither is considered here. For the sake of simplicity, this Comment generally avoids the educational component of the District's reforms, which tended to observe the same arc as the corrections-oriented portions of the decree. (147)

    The purpose of this examination is not to assign blame or second-guess old decisions, but to illustrate the kinds of barriers that future reformers may encounter and must overcome. (148) The District's experience shows that a highly detailed consent decree will not foster compliance, except perhaps in an unusual case where the institution's leading deficiency is that it adopted the wrong standards. More generally, this Part argues that consent decrees and the efforts of courts and parties are most effective when they are grounded in a realistic appraisal of the institution's central deficiencies.

    Finally, it is worthwhile to restate the main goals of the District's reformers. (149) Since the inception of Jerry M., plaintiffs sought to reduce the number of youths held inappropriately in secure confinement by developing community-based alternatives to incarceration, especially for youths awaiting trial. (150) Additionally, plaintiffs sought to improve the quality of rehabilitative programming inside secure facilities and to ameliorate dangerous conditions related to the physical plant. (151) Even relatively straightforward deficiencies resisted remediation over time. (152) As we will see, the District's implementation of reforms became a matter of great controversy in local politics. (153)

    1. SENIOR STAFF AND AGENCY MANAGEMENT

      The effectiveness of management can determine an organization's success or failure. (154) This statement retains its truth even where a court intervenes in a government agency's operations. (155) This Section contrasts a protracted period during which management of the District's juvenile corrections agency was in disarray with a later period of greater clarity of purpose. With capable management, the District achieved far more progress towards reforming its juvenile correctional facilities and complying with the Jerry M. consent decree. In summary, this Part argues that without capable and cooperative management, litigation is unlikely to cause the desired reforms.

      1. A Series of Ineffective Leaders

        For much of the Jerry M. era, an extremely high turnover rate diminished the effectiveness of agency management: in the eighteen years between 1986 and 2004, the District's Youth Services Administration had a series of nineteen top administrators. (156) Naturally, they varied significantly in their approaches to juvenile corrections and their management abilities. Some early administrators received credit (at least from executive branch colleagues) for caring about kids (157) or identifying major management problems. (158) Later administrators adopted an attitude that the court regarded as "ideologically hostile" to the decree's goals. (159) Whatever their intentions, none made much improvement. (160) In 2004, the District's inspector general concluded that the agency's "leadership void has a very negative impact on discipline, dedication, morale, and loyalty. Too many employees are not performing their day-to-day tasks satisfactorily, which, in turn, results in operational breakdowns across the board in security, oversight, monitoring of youths, ... [and] other areas." (161)

        In the lifetime of an institutional reform lawsuit, the most important senior managers may be those who negotiate the consent decree. (162) This first generation of managers establishes the terms that endure until the government performs (163)--often long after that generation has departed. (164) In the District, the senior managers who agreed to the consent decree's provisions appear not to have considered agency costs or any other difficulties of implementation. (165) Such blindness to the near future suggests that the District's managers (166) wrongly believed that, by accepting the consent decree, they could make the litigation go away. (167) Alternatively, the first-generation managers may rationally have recognized their ability to personally depart for other jobs, leaving future generations to bear the costs of implementing a poorly designed agreement. (168)

        Even if the first-generation managers intend to live with the lawsuit, there remains the question of whether they will subvert their own narrow interests to the broader goals of the institutional reform lawsuit. (169) The annals of adult prison litigation include cautionary tales in which skillful administrators exploit lawsuits not to reform but to entrench their philosophies of corrections. (170) This type of response shows that, in practice, one cannot count on institutional reform lawsuits to destabilize an established order that reflects political blockage, as some theorists have supposed. (171)

        There is no doubting that the parade of ineffective managers and overall failure to achieve compliance frustrated the Jerry M. court (172) and plaintiffs (173) alike. This frustration led to harsh sanctions, such as contempt findings and the imposition of fines for ongoing noncompliance. (174) The initial fines prompted the District to fire an administrator--but instead of seeking a manager to achieve compliance, the mayor's top advisors began expressing second thoughts about the consent decree. (175) Instead of persuading the defiant defendant, the court's attempt at coercion contributed to the adversarial hostility that marked Jerry M.'s implementation phase. (176)

      2. Organizational Changes

        Some evidence suggests that the organizational structure of the District's agencies--primarily, the fact that the juvenile corrections agency was, for a long time, a bureau buried within a much larger department-contributed to the slow pace of change. (177) However, the experience of other states suggests that no one organizational structure is inherently more conducive to reform. (178) Nonetheless, a major organizational shakeup can invigorate a lethargic public agency. (179)

        At the outset of Jerry M., the District's youth corrections agency was known as the Youth Services Administration (YSA). (180) The administrator of YSA reported to the commissioner of social services, who reported to a director of the Department of Human Services (DHS), who reported to the mayor. (181) Thus, the YSA administrator had to fight for resources and management autonomy against a host of higher-ups, who might second-guess the administrator or have other priorities for the department. (182)

        Meanwhile, DHS suffered from its own chronic bouts of mismanagement. (183) The District's inability to improve conditions in secure facilities stemmed in part from "insufficient oversight by senior management at DHS who may be too far removed from YSA's day-to-day operations and the youths being served." (184) Accordingly, the District's inspector general recommended that the mayor consider removing YSA from DHS and making it a separate department with a director directly accountable to the mayor. (185)

        Though DHS disagreed with the recommendation, the city council responded to mounting pressure from the courts and the public by adopting it legislatively. (186) The council hoped the altered management structure would enable the cabinet-level agency to comply with the terms of the Jerry M. decree. (187) But the restyled organization remained unlikely to change much, so long as it lacked effective management. (188)

      3. Proactive Management, Compliance, and Far-Reaching Reform

        The new agency, renamed the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), found a highly capable leader in Vincent N. Schiraldi, a longtime reform advocate who had studied the District and brought with him a reform-oriented senior management team. (189) Schiraldi took the job hoping "to improve decency and outcomes for a population of young people who are nearly 100% youth of color." (190) Instead, because the department's operations were so profoundly broken, he quickly found his energy consumed with basic operational questions such as determining who would fix broken boilers that robbed secure facilities of heat and how to purchase adequate supplies of underwear. (191)

        Of course, Schiraldi had more ambitious plans, such as...

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