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6 Months Later, Juvenile Detention Facility Still Shut Down

In May, Low Staffing levels at the Dona Ana County Detention Facility forced County Officials to close the Juvenile Detention Center and move detainees to a portion of the adult facility that was completely separated by both sight and sound. Six months later, the juvenile facility is still closed and community members are concerned.

Deacon Louis Roman ministers to incarcerated adults and children across Southern New Mexico. He says even though the juveniles in detention are fully separated from the adults, he has concerns.

“I think right now because we are not giving them the necessary attention and intervention that they need,” Roman said. “That they become more at risk, once they’re released.”

Roman says the low staffing levels are causing a stretching of resources that isn’t helpful to the children awaiting trial.

“Integrating them into an adult facility,” Roman said. “Even though it’s segregated does not afford them the same level of treatment, of care that they would be receiving in the Juvenile facility itself, and so they are not receiving the resources that they should be getting on a daily basis, they’re just not getting it.”

Roman says he’s also concerned about violent and non-violent offenders being housed in the same area.

Dona Ana County Spokesperson Jess Williams says all of the required resources are still being provided to juveniles in the facility, and that it is a safe environment.

“Everybody is very well supervised,” Williams said. “And if we perceive a problem we act on it before it becomes a problem. And if we need to segregate we can and do.”

Williams says the County wants to reopen the facility as well, and they are working on improving the staffing levels.

“They’re much better,” Williams said. “We’ve already put a couple of academies through and we’ve got some more in the pipeline, But we’ve got to get up to a level where we are absolutely certain that all the staff and the detainees are safe.”

Williams says they have both retention and recruitment issues.

“Well detention is a very hard job,” Williams said. “Your essential in jail for 12 hours a day, and your among people who may not be the kindest people in the world to you sometimes because they are in a difficult position too.”

County Commissioner Billy Garrett says the goal is to reopen the doors of the juvenile facility by mid-may, and that the county is taking steps to make it happen.

“We did approve salary increases,” Garrett said. “Subject to negotiations with the union and that’s been approved, so we made money available. And that’s scheduled over a two year period, that should provide some incentive for new people coming in and it should help for retention for those who’ve been concerned about not getting enough pay.”

Garrett says it’s very important for the county to make the juveniles in the facility a priority.

“We need to take care of them,” Garrett said. “And we need to do it in a respectful way, and there are also people in their that have serious issues and we need to be able to take care of those. So, there are some challenges, I think by and large we are on the right track. I just want to make sure that we are going fast enough, and that we’re not leaving any opportunity unexplored.”

County Spokesperson Jess Williams says there is currently no danger of having to move juveniles to an out of county facility.

Samantha Sonner was a multimedia reporter for KRWG- TV/FM.