Westmoreland juvenile detention center on track for March reopening

Westmoreland County’s juvenile detention center is expected to reopen this month after being largely closed since June because of staffing shortages and operational problems, officials said Wednesday.

The 16-bed facility that houses juvenile criminal offenders closed following a series of state inspections. Those findings prompted county leaders to shutter the center.

Controller Jeffrey Balzer, who serves as the chairman of the county’s juvenile detention board, said recent staffing additions will allow the detention center to resume operations. Early plans call for it to initially accept about three or four juveniles.

“It’s been a difficult process to get the people in place. We weren’t going to open the doors until we were able. We’re not going to put kids at risk,” Balzer said.

Juvenile Detention Center Director Rich Gordon said the reopening date has not been set.

“It will be after St. Patrick’s Day (Sunday) but before the end of the month. We’re not ready to announce the exact date yet,” Gordon said.

The juvenile detention center is one of two programs, along with an eight-bed unsecured shelter facility for at-risk juveniles, that operates in the Regional Youth Services Center in Hempfield.

State inspections followed an incident last spring in which a teenager there attempted suicide. Inspectors also pointed to other incidents, including a near riot, as examples of training deficiencies among employees.

The detention center briefly reopened to house one inmate in December after officials said there were no other local options to keep him confined after he had escaped from the non-secured shelter days earlier.

Staffing additions are continuing, Gordon said.

The facility currently has a roster of nine full-time employees with three vacancies remaining to be filled. Gordon said the current staff is sufficient to oversee up to about four juveniles in detention.

“It’ll be like a soft reopening,” Gordon said. “When we (shut down) I didn’t think it would be this long. I thought it would just be a couple of weeks.”

The center will be accepting a limited number of juveniles not only because of remaining staff shortages, but also to accommodate a $961,000 construction project expected to begin this spring. That includes installing new security doors and locks that were put in when the facility was built in 1979.

The project is expected to continue into the fall, Gordon said.

Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Michele Bononi, who oversees the county’s juvenile court system, said this month’s planned reopening is needed.

“It’s a good thing,” Bononi said. “We haven’t had a place to put these kids and it’s cost us a lot of money.”

While the center was shuttered, the county rented space for troubled youth in other public and private facilities, including beds at adult prisons in Allegheny, Lawrence and Lehigh counties. In some cases the county has paid up to $800 a day to house juveniles there, Bononi said.

Westmoreland County’s facility, along with a 20-bed center in Erie, are the only two government-operated detention programs in Western Pennsylvania, according to a study released last year by the Pennsylvania Juvenile Court Judges Commission.

Shuman Detention Center in Pittsburgh was closed in 2021, but after a yearlong renovation program, is expected to partially reopen next month. It will be operated by Adelphoi Inc., a private company based in Latrobe.