Editorial: Shuman closing failed kids in 2021 and continues to do so

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey has drawn a line between the closing of Allegheny County’s Shuman Juvenile Detention Center in September 2021 and a rising tide of violent crime.

“We should have never closed Shuman without a plan,” Gainey said during a news conference related to a triple homicide Oct. 15 in the North Side.

Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam, while admitting that the county failed Shuman, said there is no evidence the closing and incidents like the shooting have any relation.

But is this a time when a trail of breadcrumbs providing a clear path for an investigation matters? Not really.

Gainey’s statement might be short on evidence and long on a kind of common sense instinct about the problem. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong and it doesn’t mean the county shouldn’t take steps to correct the critical hole in the system left when the state closed down the detention center because of massive internal failures, characterized in the decision as “gross incompetence, negligence and misconduct.”

Hallam might be completely right that there’s “zero evidence, zero data” that can definitively blame the Shuman closing for the rash of violence, especially gun crimes, that has been seen over the past year. But whether this was the outcome or not, closing Shuman had to have an immediate and continuing effect on both the kids who had been remanded there and those over the last year who needed such oversight.

Who is right doesn’t matter. What does matter is there are 13 detention centers in 67 counties in Pennsylvania. The state’s second- largest county serves the needs of thousands of children and families and should have a way to serve their needs when they interact with the juvenile justice system.

It is a failing of the county that Shuman closed. It had multiple chances to avoid the closure, as the county repeatedly was given provisional licenses. It is an even greater failing that Allegheny County children are sent to other counties and even to Ohio because they cannot be housed closer to home. Perhaps the greatest failing is that some of those children now are remanded to the county jail.

Has all of this escalated violence? Maybe. Maybe not. But Allegheny County has been falling down on the issue of juvenile detention for years. It needs to start escalating success rather than defending failure.