Year after year, problems mounted at Shuman Juvenile Detention Center, the long-distressed Pittsburgh facility where Allegheny County housed troubled youths awaiting their day in court.

When the state of Pennsylvania finally could tolerate no more, it revoked the facility’s license in 2021, sending the local juvenile justice system reeling and leaving few options for holding kids and young adults accused of crimes.

Last year, the county’s court system announced that Shuman would reopen with new management, a new name, millions of dollars in renovations and a different treatment approach.

Adelphoi, the Westmoreland County- based nonprofit hired to run Highland Detention at Shuman Center, plans to adopt a “trauma-informed care” model focused on building trust, recognizing past trauma and creating a safe environment. It will offer group therapy and individual counseling as well as behavior and physical health assessments with individualized care plans.

But with the facility reopening last week in Pittsburgh’s Lincoln-Lemington- Belmar neighborhood, the lofty and time-intensive goal of rehabilitating troubled children seems to be in conflict with reality: that Shuman is meant to serve as a short-term detention center.

“You might say you’re doing trauma- informed care. It’s hard to do,” said Jeffrey Shook, a University of Pittsburgh sociology professor and expert in juvenile justice. “There’s the rhetoric and the reality.”

Shuman, which admitted its first juvenile Wednesday, will serve children and young adults from ages 10 to 20. It has an initial capacity of 12 but will go up to 60 in about 18 months, Adelphoi CEO Nancy Kukovich told TribLive.

Shuman will house juveniles newly charged with crimes. When renovations are completed, youths who are charged with adult crimes currently being held at the Allegheny County Jail will be moved to an “interest of justice” pod for longer-term placement — including more treatment, Kukovich said.

For law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges, the reopening is welcome — a possible salve to years of frustration for not having a local facility to hold children accused of serious crimes. Elected leaders hope it also will help quell concerns about public safety.

“When you don’t have a facility where there’s oversight for this type of offender — where they get the care and treatment they need — it becomes a revolving door,” said Pittsburgh police Assistant Chief Richard Ford. “We see a lot of repeat offenders, and we see an increase in violence.”

But the reopening has not received universal approval. In addition to Shook’s concerns, skeptics have raised other issues.

Allegheny County Council filed a lawsuit weeks after the courts and former county executive Rich Fitzgerald’s office announced the Adelphoi contract, alleging the county did not follow the proper procedure to award it.

Others have questioned the county’s decision to privatize the facility with what they call a one-sided contract that benefits Adelphoi.

“We’ve had two years to develop a plan to run Shuman,” said Allegheny County Councilwoman-at-large Bethany Hallam, who has been vocal in her objections. “But nobody was willing to have that conversation because the previous administration and the court system had that conversation for everyone.”

The county’s court system refused to answer questions about Shuman’s reopening, citing the ongoing litigation.

Falling apart

When Shuman Center, which was operated by the county, opened in 1974, it could hold 120 juveniles.

But in the years before it closed, that population decreased significantly.

While in 2003, the daily average was 100, it dropped to 59 in 2017, 42 in 2018 and 28 in 2020, according to the county controller’s office. Those numbers followed trends occurring nationally, Shook said, including both a decrease in crime and the recognition that young people charged with minor offenses should not be incarcerated.

When Shuman closed in September 2021, the county was spending about $11 million per year to operate the facility.

Over those same final years, Shuman was the subject of provisional operating licenses after the state’s Department of Human Services found continuing violations.

In one of its last reviews in June 2021, the state found a boy overdosed on heroin in the facility, requiring three doses of Narcan to revive him. The last inspection record showed that on one particular day, 22 youths at Shuman did not receive their prescribed medication because there was no nurse on duty to administer it.

Despite repeated reassurances from Shuman staff and remediation plans, improvements never came, so the state issued an emergency removal order in August 2021 to transfer the 20 remaining juveniles there to other facilities across the state.

“There was every reason to be critical,” Kukovich said. “It had really fallen apart.”

Fitzgerald, who left office in January after running the county for 12 years, declined to answer questions about Shuman.

When Shuman closed, county officials talked about the state taking over the facility, but that never happened.

Instead, when juveniles were arrested, Allegheny County law enforcement agencies were left to release them, hope for a placement elsewhere or hold them at the Allegheny County jail.

According to the jail population dashboard, as of Monday, there were 29 people under 18 being held there. Some are there for homicides, aggravated assault and other violent crimes.

Juvenile court judges lamented the lack of facilities for placement, and Ford, the assistant police chief, said law enforcement agencies were additionally hamstrung because the out-of-county locations that were able to accept juveniles required additional time and manpower to transport them.

“We need a facility where violent offenders are held,” he said.

New partnership

During Shuman’s closure, more than 300 juveniles from Allegheny County were served by Adelphoi in its 12-bed Cambria County detention facility. The average length of stay, Kukovich said, was about 14 days. They also were taken to George Junior Republic in Grove City and a facility in Jefferson County, Ohio.

Juveniles admitted to a detention center must have a hearing within 72 hours of admission. Their cases then will move through the juvenile court system, where disposition options include diversion, probation, outpatient services, in-home services or placement in a treatment program. Typically, in Allegheny County, most juvenile court cases are disposed of within six months.

In September, the court system announced it was partnering with the county and Adelphoi to reopen Shuman with a five-year, $73 million contract.

Adelphoi, which was founded in 1971 and is based in Latrobe, reported last year that it served more than 3,000 children and had contracts with 64 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.

It was the only entity to submit a bid for the Shuman project, but the contract immediately drew criticism.

County Council sued Allegheny County and Adelphoi, alleging that council’s approval was required before awarding the contract. The county executive, however, disagreed. The lawsuit is pending.

While Hallam does not dispute that there is a need for a juvenile facility, she believes the contract with Adelphoi is illegal. She and council President Pat Catena believe Shuman should once again be county operated.

Catena believed there needed to be a short-term immediate solution to get Shuman up and running again after its closure — and a long-term reimagining of juvenile justice in Allegheny County.

The contract with Adelphoi didn’t do either of those things in his estimation.

Current county administrators note they were not part of the administration that negotiated the contract and Adelphoi was the only entity that wanted it.

Hallam advocates for a board of managers to provide what she considers to be true oversight of the facility.

Shuman had such a setup several years ago, before its problems led the state to impose provisional licenses.

In June, County Executive Sara Innamorato announced a 10-member advisory board, including five appointments that must be approved by council.

In the meantime, renovations at the facility are ongoing. The $10.6 million project won’t likely be fully completed for another 18 months, Kukovich said.

Too many beds?

Shook, the Pitt professor, agrees that the Pittsburgh area needs a juvenile detention facility — maybe even 12 beds. But he’s adamant that there’s no need for 60.

If there are that many, he continued, they will end up being filled.

“We’re going to send kids there because those beds are paid for. Those placements are paid for,” Shook said.

He is critical of the new contract — particularly about the fact it was reached under Fitzgerald’s leadership, given it was his administration that lost Shuman’s license to operate.

“The Shuman that declined under Fitzgerald should have disqualified him from being able to enter the contract for the new one,” Shook said. “You totally lost any trust.”

He also questions the cost of the contract, noting the county will pay a daily rate of $650.25 per bed for all 60 beds — or about $39,000 per day — regardless of how many beds are filled.

“I think about what we could do with that kind of money in a day for families,” Shook said.

The county could be spending those dollars on the front end to help families avoid places like Shuman in the first place, Shook said. Or, he continued, building community-based alternatives for children and their families.

“We had Shuman, and Shuman failed markedly,” Shook said.

Shook said that detention centers often become “catch-alls” for kids.

“The vast majority don’t need to be put in this kind of placement,” he said.

Detention facilities, Shook said, are intended to be temporary, which means it is not their job to rehabilitate and treat children. Further, data over the past 10 years, Shook said, shows that kids in detention are more likely to commit new crimes upon release.

“I think we’re missing an opportunity to do deep thinking … that will make a place like Shuman as obsolete as we can,” he said.

In announcing the reopening this week, Adelphoi noted that during the time Shuman was closed, 234 children in Allegheny County who met the criteria for detention were not held because of a lack of beds.

Of those, five were shot and killed, and one died of an overdose.

“Thinking we’re going to solve these questions by reopening a failed institution,” Shook said. “I don’t know why we’re here in 2024 when we have decades that show these institutions have failed kids.

“The detention facility is not going to be the answer to the problems we have.”

The new Shuman

Kukovich, the CEO for Adelphoi for the past 13 years who earns nearly $260,000 annually, talked excitedly about the physical changes that have been made at Shuman.

From the beginning, Adelphoi officials believed that at least half of the trouble at the old center was caused by physical plant problems.

“One of our observations was that they were trying to right the ship in a 50-year-old facility that had virtually no upgrades,” she said.

There was a lack of security cameras, Kukovich said, as well as cameras that could be unplugged or pointed away from a space to create blind spots.

There also were too many opportunities for too many kids to be in the same place all day long.

“That’s part of why there was so much violence and fights,” said Kukovich, who served as CEO of the United Way of Westmoreland County for 10 years.

With the renovations, pods will have no more than 12 kids at one time. They will eat, study and have recreation time together.

“That also means that the staff who are taking care of them are a team, and they get to know these kids,” Kukovich said.

Already, Adelphoi has hired about 30 people to staff the first pod after interviewing about 200 people. The contract requires a staff-to-resident ratio of 1 to 6 during waking hours.

Wages start at $20 to $25 per hour depending on experience and education.

Pods will have private rooms for everyone. There also are two classrooms, a gym and a common living area, a space for meals and access to an outdoor recreation area, Kukovich said. Large windows let in natural light.

There now are magnetic locks, and the facility will have an estimated 200 cameras that leave no blind spots.

Pittsburgh police Chief Larry Scirotto and others from the department’s administration toured Shuman late last month. It was Scirotto’s first time inside the facility — in the past he’d always dropped juveniles off at the sallyport.

He called his experience somber, especially considering the history there of detaining children who had committed minor crimes.

As part of the tour, Scirotto said, they walked through the old part of Shuman, as well. The infrastructure, he said, was not designed to support housing children, and necessary upgrades were not made.

“Should that have been addressed more than four years ago?” Scirotto asked. “Certainly.”

The renovated area, he said, is “generically sterile,” and there aren’t a lot of comfort items. But it is modern.

“It’s still a correctional facility,” Scirotto said.

He spoke with members of the staff and said that they impressed him. The programming and support, he said, seems appropriate. The staff appears to be engaged and feels a sense of responsibility, Scirotto said.

“It was an energy you don’t hear from the correctional world,” he said.

Conflicting purposes

Kukovich said Adelphoi will serve two purposes at Shuman — keeping kids safe and providing the courts what they need to help those kids.

Because Adelphoi already has been working with Allegheny County to provide services at its Cambria County facility, Kukovich said, its relationship with the courts is already strong.

“We know these kids. We know what they come from,” she said. “We know what kind of information the court is seeking.”

Richard Garland, the executive director of Reimagine Reentry, a nonprofit organization that provides resources to people returning home from incarceration, is nominated to serve on Shuman’s advisory board.

“There are those that need something a little extra to get onto the straight and narrow,” he said. “I think we need a place like Shuman, especially if we’re going to get young people the help they need to keep them out of the criminal justice system.”

He envisions Shuman as a type of rehabilitation facility to give young people a second chance.

But Kukovich said that can be hard for a place that serves as a short-term stay facility.

“It’s not getting deep into treatment,” she said. “It’s a short stay, and so you really have to meet the kids where they are. They’re going to be frantic. They’re going to be mad.”

Instead, the service will focus on stabilization, assessment, information gathering and community safety, Kukovich said.

“We’ve been up and down and back and forth and sideways for seven years,” she said. “It’s time for us to try and get something that’s stable.”

Educational services will be provided by Pittsburgh Public Schools with guidance from the Allegheny County Intermediate Unit.

There also will be training in what Kukovich called soft skills — how youths can put their best foot forward, how to approach what’s happening in their lives and how to get ready for the next phase.

‘Better than nothing’

Ford is happy there will be a local facility for police to use, noting that the revolving door for some juvenile offenders over the last few years has been hard. Some knew there was no place for them to go, so if they were arrested, they’d get right back out on the street, he said.

“You’re then putting the public and relatives at risk by re-releasing those kids,” Ford said. “There has to be accountability.”

“I’ve seen some pretty heinous crimes where people’s lives have been shattered by juvenile violence,” he said.

To Ford, 12 beds doesn’t seem sufficient, but “we have to start somewhere.”

“At least this place is closer for us,” he said. “Anything is better than nothing.”

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