Budget Oversight Hearing
Office of the Ombudsperson for Children
May 29, 2025
Committee on Youth Affairs
Councilmember Zachary Parker, Chairperson
Testimony of Joshua A. Miller, PhD
Research & Advocacy Director, Open City Advocates
Who We Are
Open City Advocates is a small organization with a big impact. We model an innovative solution in juvenile defense in Washington, DC, and nationwide. Founded to address the racial inequities and unjust incarceration practices in DC’s juvenile system, Open City Advocates provides youth-centered legal defense and holistic advocacy for young people after sentencing in the juvenile system.
Who We Serve
All of our clients have been committed to the care and custody of the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) by DC’s Family Court. “Commitment” to DYRS means that a young person is a ward of the city, oftentimes until age 21, and that their placement may change several times with little or no court oversight—including placement at home or in a carceral facility.
There are extreme racial disparities in the youth delinquency system nationwide, with Black and Latino/a children being committed and incarcerated at 4.7 times the rate compared to their white peers. It is even more extreme in the District of Columbia, where 100% of all committed children are children of color, and 96% are Black, while Black youth comprise only 51% of the DC youth population.
Open City Advocates’ clients have had extensive contact with the delinquency system; most have also been in DC’s child welfare system, and all are at high risk for entering the DC Jail or being harmed or killed by street violence. The majority of our clients hail from DC’s Wards 7 and 8, where 35% of children live in poverty. Over the last two years, 46% of violent crimes committed with guns in the city occurred in these two wards. In our 20-year history, we have lost six clients to gun violence and one to a drug overdose. Open City Advocates works to help our clients envision and actualize a healthy adulthood instead of accepting death or incarceration by age 25.
OFC Testimony
Good morning. My name is Joshua Miller, I am the Research & Advocacy Director at Open City Advocates, which provides legal representation, holistic advocacy, and mentoring to youth who have been committed to the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services or DYRS.
For many years and in many settings, Open City Advocates has been fighting to include a mechanism for the investigation and adjudication of complaints by children under the care of CFSA and those committed to DYRS and their families. Once again, the proposed budget offers both to eliminate the Ombudsman for Children and to remove the Deputy Auditor position that succeeded the Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight, which was charged with ensuring compliance with the Jerry M. consent decree after DYRS facilities were found to be grossly unsafe. (Notably DYRS no longer complies with many of the consent decree’s provisions.) While the revenue forecast is difficult, we must not respond to difficult times by withdrawing oversight and protection for young people.
We advocate for the restoration of funding for the Office of the Ombudsman for Children at $1.2M. As with the Deputy Auditor, the restoration of funding for this Office would provide an essential independent voice for system-involved youth struggling with abuse and neglect. Failing to restore this office would mean that this nascent body for investigating complaints about children in District care will cease to exist, and the District’s agencies (both CFSA and DYRS) will once again take children out of abusive and neglectful situations and drop them into similar and worse ones. Combined with other budget cuts, it would soon lead to escalating horrors that could hit the pages of the Washington Post, and could easily lead to litigation and loss of autonomy in these matters. A dedicated watchdog bolsters Council’s oversight abilities and can help prevent tragic and costly errors in the care of the District’s most vulnerable youth. Preserving this office is a key investment in our city’s future and the protection of our young people.
Open City Advocates continues to work with OFC on the issue of crossover youth, who often fall between the cracks of the delinquency and abuse/neglect systems. The full power of OFC’s systemic recommendations have only just begun to be of use; now is not the time to cut it.
In many states, the neglect and delinquency agencies work closely together under shared oversight. This is because these states recognize the parallels between neglect and delinquency: most young people committed to the juvenile rehabilitation agencies have multiple adverse childhood experiences including abuse, and most cases of delinquency are not personal failures on the part of the child requiring accountability, but rather are tied to systemic failures by adults to support children’s needs. Many children committed to DYRS who do not have a CFSA case file are nonetheless “crossover youth” according to this principle.
Nationwide, crossover youth suffer more severe consequences in the juvenile justice system and experience poorer long-term outcomes. There is still too little data about crossover youth in DC and there are few effective formal procedures outlining how CFSA and DYRS work with crossover youth. OFC is now well-placed to encourage data collection, facilitate collaboration, enable greater family engagement, and work to disrupt the pathway from foster care to juvenile delinquency.
The Office of the Ombudsperson for Children has yet to begin making the kind of systemic recommendations that we now regularly see from the Deputy Auditor on Juvenile Facilities Oversight, but they’re also a much younger agency. We believe that they are now ready to begin this crucial work, and that the timing could not be worse to abolish them.
We regularly notice a lack of coordination between CFSA and DYRS around dual-jacketed crossover youth. In a time of tight budgets, cost-shifting is inevitable, but asking young people to navigate bureaucratic comedies of responsibility-shifting is a tragedy.
It remains essential for OFC to root their systemic recommendations in the investigation and resolution of individual complaints from youth and families. This rootedness in experiences of vulnerable children is the best way to monitor systemic practices in order to encourage reforms. In order to effectively investigate and mediate complaints from families, the ombudsperson must be an independent, neutral body, not subject to supervision by CFSA or DYRS.
The ombudsman’s office should also work with the Deputy Auditor to collect and evaluate data from DYRS to identify gaps in service provision and recommend improvements to daily practices. In the very best case scenario, this would also significantly implicate children’s experience in in-patient care in DBH facilities and contractors.
As we watch the proposed budget threaten to zero out the office whose hard work we still hope to build on, I think it is important to imagine clearly what it needs to become to keep our children safe and their families confident in their treatment.
Thank you for your time. I’m available to answer any questions.