July 3rd, 2025
Council of the District of Columbia 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20004
Subject: Urgent Request to Restore Funding for Juvenile Justice Oversight in the FY 2026 Budget
Dear Members of the Council of the District of Columbia,
We, the undersigned advocates, community organizations, and legal service providers write to you with grave concern regarding the Mayor’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 Budget. Specifically, we implore you to reject the proposal that would eliminate critical oversight mechanisms for the District’s most vulnerable youth and instead fully restore funding for the Office of the DC Auditor to do juvenile facilities oversight.
Eliminating this oversight creates the conditions for escalating tragedies that will inevitably lead to media exposés that damage the District’s reputation, costly litigation and settlements, potential loss of local autonomy over our juvenile justice systems, and most importantly, preventable harm to children in our care. A dedicated, independent watchdog bolsters the Council’s own oversight abilities and is a prudent investment in preventing tragic and expensive errors.
DYRS is asking for almost $12M extra for FY25 and more in subsequent years while essential services are cut elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Youth Services Center is overcrowded (126 kids in a 98-bed facility in May), air conditioning failed during a 100-degree heat wave, and kids wait months without court-ordered treatment. When we warehouse kids instead of rehabilitating them, we manufacture future crime. More than 70% of juveniles committed to DYRS are accused of new crimes within two years. This is both morally wrong and a bad investment.
Responding to difficult fiscal times by withdrawing protection for system-involved young people is a dangerous and costly mistake. This oversight body is not a luxury; it is an essential safeguard that ensures transparency, prevents abuse, and ultimately averts the significant human and financial costs of system failure. Recent reporting has shown that in everything from fire safety to air conditioning and correctly reporting staff-on-youth assaults, an independent monitor is an essential component of juvenile justice.
The proposal to eliminate funding for the auditor’s oversight work—as a successor to the Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight (OIJJFO)—is particularly alarming. A dedicated watchdog costs hundreds of thousands; preventable failures cost millions. This office was originally created to ensure compliance with the Jerry M. consent decree after DYRS facilities were found to be grossly unsafe. Today, it remains charged with the essential task of inspecting facilities where the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) places our city’s children, especially because there has been significant back-tracking on the objectives of Jerry M. This is not only critical for oversight of DYRS’s own secure facilities, but it also includes oversight of numerous local and out-of-state, for-profit institutions where DYRS sends many DC youth, often far from their families and communities. Many of these facilities are rife with allegations of physical and sexual abuse, making independent oversight not just necessary, but a moral imperative.
If we cannot afford this level of oversight, we cannot afford to be so punitive. At a minimum, the District requires the essential data and reporting this office provides: basic population and incident data to track safety and capacity, on-site facility inspections to ensure compliance with safety standards, and thematic reports on critical issues like fire safety, the use of psychotropic medications and chemical restraints, and behavioral health services.
The impact of this oversight is tangible and immediate. The Auditor’s work helps ensure that facilities maintain safe conditions and appropriate capacity levels. This oversight has been instrumental in identifying and addressing overcrowding issues at facilities like the Youth Services Center (YSC), which has 98 beds but has faced ongoing capacity challenges. To remove this oversight is to invite unsafe conditions to flourish in the dark.
The Auditor provides the hard data and facility-level analysis needed to ensure that our youth are safe, regardless of where they are placed. In a time of tight budgets, we must make sound investments. Withdrawing oversight is a false economy that will lead to greater long-term costs—socially, ethically, and fiscally.
We urge you to reject the Mayor’s proposed cut and to fully fund the juvenile facilities oversight to maintain essential monitoring of all facilities housing DC youth. The timing could not be worse to abolish this critical oversight function. We ask you to stand with DC’s youth and preserve this essential protection in the FY 2026 budget.
Thank you for your leadership and your consideration of this critical matter.
Sincerely,
On behalf of the undersigned individuals and organizations:
- Open City Advocates
- Council for Court Excellence
- Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative
- Disability Rights DC at University Legal Services
- Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia | PDSDC
- Coalition for Carceral Nutrition
- Isa Mirza, Foley Hoag LLP
- School Justice Project
- More Than Our Crimes
- Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop
- Neighbors for Justice
- Mari Latibashvili, Coalition for Justice at Georgetown Law
- Abolition Advocacy Project
- Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs
- ACLU of the District of Columbia
- The Sentencing Project
- Fair Budget Coalition
For questions about this letter or to add your organization’s (or your own) signature, please contact Joshua Miller at joshua@opencityadvocates.org.