Youth Justice Project
A DC Youth Justice Coalition
Testimony · May 7, 2026

DYRS Budget Oversight

Penelope Spain & Joshua Miller · Open City Advocates

TestimonyBudgetDYRS oversight

TESTIMONY OF OPEN CITY ADVOCATES

Before the Committee on Youth Affairs
Council of the District of Columbia
Chairperson Zachary Parker and Members of the Committee

May 7, 2026

ORAL TESTIMONY (3 MINUTES EACH)

Oral Testimony of Penelope Spain, CEO

Good afternoon, Chairperson Parker and members of the Committee. My name is Penelope Spain. I’m a resident of Ward 4 and the CEO of Open City Advocates. My written testimony is quite extensive, but today I’ll focus on just two points.

First, DYRS’s proposed capital budget includes an absurd $29 million dollars to build 40 new beds in DYRS’s locked facilities: 10 at YSC and 30 at New Beginnings. During the twenty-one years that I’ve been working in DC’s juvenile legal system, we’ve consistently fought to reduce the carceral capacity of our city; and instead advocated for the expansion of community-based services. I also see $1 million for capital improvements to Oak Hill Youth Center. Having celebrated the closure of Oak Hill, it’s profoundly disturbing to see Oak Hill facility renovation included in the mayor’s budget requests. Please explore the ultimate need or purpose behind that expense. If it’s intended for an eventual stepdown program, we would oppose such efforts as they would unnecessarily delay children’s return to their families and community. If youth are placed in some sort of annex or stepdown site, please ask what purpose that would serve. Where would youth go to school? Or receive support services? Is the concept for such a program grounded in research and evidence? DYRS’s young people already spend too much time exiled from the District. I strongly caution against any extension of programming that keeps them from returning to their city, their home, and their families.

Another reason that we strongly stand against the expansion of DYRS’s locked facilities is that DYRS is not doing a good job with the capacity it already has. In February, we testified about New Beginnings’ failing program model, the absence of regular team decision making meetings, and treating reentry as an afterthought rather than a team-created plan. The Auditor’s findings on New Beginnings are utterly alarming: no meaningful mental health or substance abuse services, treatment plans failing to address documented disorders, family involvement nearly absent, and a 70 percent recidivism rate. The program is failing every which way. Six months have passed. The Mayor’s response is to add more beds, rather than to expand or improve upon services. At this particular moment when dollars are so scarce, why in the world would we spend more money to lock up more kids in a program that simply doesn’t work? It’s time to dedicate those scarce dollars to the programs and services that do work – and those services are overwhelmingly provided in the community, with families involved. Not in a jail for kids.

When DYRS Director Abed testifies, I hope you’ll explore with him the things that would actually serve the young people we represent. Ask about access to community-based mental health services. Can we connect children with those services before they leave New Beginnings and truly establish a system that strives for continuity of care? And what efforts has DYRS made to ensure that children are quickly reenrolled in school upon discharge? That’s still something that my organization is regularly doing given DYRS consistent delays and failures. What improvements have been made in engaging and supporting caregivers and families? Mental health services, education, substance abuse treatment, family engagement – that’s where we should be focusing our attention and our dollars; not more beds that are yielding failing results.

Lastly, I’d like to raise a concern about the well-regarded and promising Oasis program, which is funded and run by DYRS. Sadly, Oasis’ outward-bound style education program primarily serves youth who are not committed to DYRS and not even in the delinquency system at all. DYRS youth should have priority access to Oasis. As far as I’m aware, youth from New Beginnings are occasionally recruited to help build the physical structures at Oasis. But rather than consistently serving the children who are incarcerated less than a quarter mile away, Oasis serves non-court-involved youth. As a prevention program, that’s laudable. But DYRS’s mission is “to give court-involved youth the opportunity to become more productive citizens by building on the strengths of youths and their families in the least restrictive, most homelike environment consistent with public safety.” If Oasis is to remain a DYRS funded and managed program, DYRS should be looking for ways that each and every one of the youth committed to the agency can benefit from the opportunity.

Thank you. I’m available to answer any questions.

Oral Testimony of Joshua Miller, Research & Advocacy Director

Good afternoon, Chairperson Parker and members of the Committee. I’m Joshua Miller, Research & Advocacy Director at Open City Advocates.

Twice a month, I meet with the Youth Council at YSC. Open City Advocates and the Public Defender Service jointly facilitate these visits, with separate sessions for committed youth and Title 16 youth. I want to share part of what I keep hearing back to this Committee:

  • The facility-provided soap is causing skin breakouts on many units.
  • The facility-provided hair products are causing hair breakage.
  • Youth report inadequate meal portions and undercooked food.
  • During Ramadan, dates provided for breaking fast spoiled before the youth could use them. The two-snack-in-the-room limit, designed to prevent hoarding, made it impossible for fasting youth to store food for meals outside standard service times.
  • Title 16 youth share one phone among eleven. They share one barber with the entire facility.
  • They have no credible messengers, no social workers, no judges visiting their units. One young person told me, “them orange shirts mean something.” (Children on the “Adult Transition Unit” are prosecuted as adults and wear different uniforms.)

Communication problems are a major theme in our conversations. Programs promised do not arrive. Snacks distributed at events are confiscated during room searches. Questions go unanswered. On one visit, a YDR said, and I’m quoting, “If it’s not your turn, you don’t need to know about it.” Staff have even been asked to leave Youth Council sessions for repeatedly interrupting the youth.

One thing worth noting: the young people we speak with are often fans of their YDRs. They describe their care coordinators by contrast, as deceptive, manipulative, and uncaring. That suggests case management is still struggling, even where line staff is doing right by youth.

Many of the issues we hear had been raised in earlier Youth Council sessions but were only temporarily resolved. Corrective actions are not surviving staff turnover or operational changes. The convergence across populations on simple things like hygiene access, despite no other opportunities for the youth to coordinate, suggests facility-wide problems rather than unit-specific ones.

This is the agency that the Mayor thinks needs a raise while everyone else tightens their belts. The Mayor’s response to the Auditor’s documentation of operational and programmatic failures is a construction plan, not remediation. The District should fix what is broken before adding ten beds at YSC and thirty at New Beginnings, at which point the new units won’t be needed. We ask you to ask DYRS, in this hearing and throughout the FY27 budget process, about the conditions youth are reporting from inside the facilities.

Our written testimony includes a fuller report from those Youth Council visits and specific questions for the Committee to put to DYRS.

Thank you. I’m available to answer any questions.

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF OPEN CITY ADVOCATES

Before the Committee on Youth Affairs
Council of the District of Columbia
Chairperson Zachary Parker and Members of the Committee

May 7, 2026

INTRODUCTION

Open City Advocates submits this written testimony regarding the FY27 budget for the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) and the Council’s recent codification of expanded curfew zone authority. This testimony is submitted on behalf of Penelope Spain, Esq., Chief Executive Officer, and Joshua Miller, PhD, Research & Advocacy Director.

Open City Advocates provides post-disposition legal representation to youth committed to DYRS. We advocate for justice-involved young people to remain connected to their families, schools, and communities while receiving wraparound, trauma-responsive support. Our testimony draws on direct experience representing committed youth, evidence from federal and academic research, the District’s own enforcement data, the October 2025 DC Auditor’s report on New Beginnings, and the Mayor’s FY27 budget submission.

The Council has now codified expanded curfew zone authority through December 2028. The Mayor’s FY27 capital budget asks this Committee to fund 40 new beds in DYRS’s locked facilities at a cost of $29 million across four years, while the operating budget cuts Community Outreach by 46 percent, Economic Opportunities Development by 40 percent, and Case Management outright. These are not separate policy choices. They reflect the same budgetary theory: expand the city’s power to control young people in public, then expand the beds available to confine them, while reducing the community-facing supports that might prevent justice involvement in the first place. The pattern is consistent: more custodial capacity, less prevention.

The Mayor is asking the Council to treat youth presence in public as a public-safety problem while treating the absence of youth infrastructure as a budget problem. That is backwards. The public-safety problem is not that young people are visible. The public-safety problem is that the District has failed to build the ordinary civic infrastructure young people need: places to go, adults who know them, transportation to reach those places, behavioral health care when families are in crisis, and credible community organizations with stable funding.

The Council’s stated intent in summer 2025 was the opposite of what the Mayor is now requesting. We urge this Committee to honor that intent.

PART I: THE DYRS BUDGET AND OPERATIONAL FAILURES

A. The FY27 capital budget proposes $29 million for 40 new DYRS beds.

Our attorneys meet with committed youth at New Beginnings, the Youth Services Center, and out-of-state placements every week. The picture from inside the facilities does not warrant the capacity expansion the Mayor is asking this Committee to fund.

The Mayor’s FY27 capital budget includes $29 million across four years to construct 40 new beds in DYRS’s locked facilities: 10 at the Youth Services Center (YSC) and 30 at New Beginnings. The appropriation is structured to look modest in the first year and balloon afterward: $4 million in FY27, $11.5 million in FY28, $11.5 million in FY29, and $2 million in FY30. This Committee is being asked to start a process whose cost is largely outside this budget cycle.

The structure matters. Capital projects like this become difficult to unwind once construction is bid out or ground is broken. The decision Council makes in FY27 effectively determines what happens in the outyears. A future Council, even one with different priorities, will be asked to honor a commitment already made. The decision to make is whether the District commits to adding 10 beds at YSC and 30 beds at New Beginnings. The capital appropriation reflects roughly $9 million for the YSC units and $20 million for the New Beginnings units.

DYRS’s own public descriptions and population data confirm that YSC is not simply a short-term detention facility. DYRS describes YSC as a secure facility providing 24-hour care, custody, and supervision, and identifies the population housed there as including Title 16 youth and youth committed to DYRS, not only youth awaiting court proceedings. OIJJFO’s public population data separately track committed youth housed at YSC while “awaiting placement” and report the duration of their confinement there before release or transfer. Recent analysis by the Council for Court Excellence found that YSC’s population growth has been driven largely by longer stays among Title 16 youth and committed youth awaiting placement. The proposed YSC expansion cannot be evaluated as a narrow intake or detention issue. It is an expansion of locked capacity in a facility already being used to absorb placement failures.

B. The District should direct youth investment outside DYRS.

The Mayor’s FY27 budget proposes $29 million in capital expansion of DYRS’s locked custodial capacity while cutting DYRS’s community-facing operating capacity: Community Outreach by 46 percent (a $4.4 million reduction), Economic Opportunities Development by 40 percent (a $169,000 reduction), and Case Management outright (a $296,000 reduction). The pattern is consistent: capital up for incarceration, operating down for community supports. There is always money for prisons. There is never money for jobs and after-school programs and credit-recovery and mental health staffing.

If a parent spent money fortifying the basement while cutting school, food, counseling, and transportation, we would not call that safety planning. We would call it neglect. The District should not reproduce that logic at the scale of a city budget.

The right response is to direct the District’s youth investment outside DYRS. Programs that support and protect young people should not have to operate inside the agency that detains them. The District’s resources for youth should grow through community-based providers like Free Minds, the Department of Behavioral Health for mental health and substance use treatment, DCPS and OSSE for educational support and credit recovery, and youth-serving organizations funded through OVSJG. Those are the channels positioned to deliver what DYRS, by mission and structure, cannot.

C. DYRS has not implemented the ROAD Act, and the failures we testified to in February remain in place.

In February, Open City Advocates testified to this Committee about DYRS’s failure to comply with the ROAD Act’s requirements for individualized rehabilitation planning and reentry planning. The pattern we identified then has not changed.

DYRS continues to treat the Individualized Rehabilitation Plan (IRP) requirement as a paperwork exercise, substituting Success Plans, YLS materials, and other pre-existing documents in place of the genuinely individualized plans the statute requires. DYRS continues to withhold reentry plans until release, treating reentry as an afterthought rather than a team-created plan. DYRS continues to fail to hold regular team decision-making meetings (TDMs) for youth in out-of-home placements, including out-of-state placements. The Committee asked DYRS to address these failures. They have not been addressed. We respectfully ask the Committee to use this hearing to demand answers about implementation status, with reference to the specific questions we have submitted in Part V.

D. The October 2025 New Beginnings audit findings remain unaddressed.

In February, we walked the Committee through the DC Auditor’s October 2025 findings on New Beginnings. The picture was bleak: 78 percent of youth admitted in 2023 had subsequent criminal justice involvement, including 70 percent of youth recorded as having “completed” the program. Facility managers told the Auditor that New Beginnings operates as “a security model largely overseen by YDR staff.” Treatment plans for 13 of 17 youth in the OIJJFO sample failed to address the disorders identified by independent evaluators. Of 15 youth with documented substance use histories who were recommended for substance use assessments, none received them. Family involvement was specifically recommended for 13 of 16 youth, yet records did not evidence regular family involvement in treatment.

More than six months have passed since the Auditor’s report. The Mayor’s response is not a remediation plan. It is a construction plan. Remediation of the documented failures is a baseline obligation: the youth in the facility deserve a working program. Expansion is a separate question. Our answer is no. We do not support expanding DYRS’s locked custodial capacity.

We continue to encounter operational barriers to programming inside DYRS facilities. Volunteers and partner organizations offering education, mentorship, and creative-arts programming have repeatedly been turned away or had their access restricted by the agency. In a system whose public-facing mission is rehabilitation, the agency’s behavior on programming access tells the truer story.

These failures also expose the oversight gap created by the loss of independent juvenile-facility oversight. If the Council does not restore the Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight, it should extend the Ombudsman for Children’s jurisdiction to all DYRS-committed youth, not only those who are dual-jacketed with CFSA. Our specific request on oversight is in Part IV.

E. Amend the capital budget. Approve the rest.

In our visits to DYRS facilities, we see what works and what does not. The backup generator and bathroom renovations at New Beginnings, the culinary and laundry upgrades at YSC, fleet replacement, and the IT modernization for Carl’s Garage and Oasis are real maintenance needs. The District should fund them.

The $29 million for 40 new beds is the piece this Committee should remove. That line item expands a system the Auditor has documented as failing in the domains where expansion would compound the failure: treatment planning, family engagement, substance use assessment, programming access. Removing the bed-expansion line item leaves the rest of the FY27 DYRS capital budget intact. We do not support expanding DYRS’s locked custodial capacity, and this Committee should not approve a multi-year commitment to do so.

PART II: WHAT THE YOUTH COUNCIL AT YSC IS REPORTING

Open City Advocates participates in twice-monthly Youth Council visits at the Youth Services Center, jointly facilitated with the Public Defender Service. The visits engage two populations: committed youth, with representatives drawn from the four to six units in which they are housed, and Title 16 youth, with representatives from the two Title 16 units. Across populations, young people raise overlapping concerns about food and basic care, programming, staff communication, family contact, and the differential treatment of Title 16 youth. What we keep hearing tracks the Auditor’s October 2025 documentation of New Beginnings and adds operational detail the Auditor did not capture.

Food, hygiene, and basic care

Youth across populations reported food-quality and portion problems. Committed youth described receiving undercooked food. Title 16 youth described portions as inadequate, with the default sun-nut-butter sandwich widely considered inedible. One Title 16 youth was clinically underweight for his age and height; his unit requested double breakfast portions. Title 16 youth also reported inequitable food distribution: staff “have their picks,” meaning favored youth receive extra food while others do not.

Both populations raised Ramadan accommodations. Title 16 youth reported that dates provided for breaking fast spoiled before they could be used. They requested a reliable 8:00 PM meal and follow-up after sundown. The two-snack-in-the-room limit, which classifies anything beyond two snacks as hoarding, conflicts directly with the need to store food for meals outside standard service times.

Both populations reported that facility-provided soap is causing skin breakouts and that facility-provided hair products are causing hair breakage. Both reported laundry problems, including clothing disappearing from the laundry service. Title 16 youth reported less consistent access to haircuts than committed youth, with only one barber currently available.

Programming gaps

Both populations reported a lack of structured programming. Committed youth described a full week without school and no replacement programming during that period. Title 16 youth reported having no scheduled activities for much of the day and being consistently the last unit to receive programming when it does reach them.

Youth requested specific opportunities: vocational training in barbering, cosmetology, HVAC, and culinary; workforce development through the Department of Employment Services; Spanish language instruction; and dedicated mentorship. DYRS has an active solicitation for barbering and cosmetology services. Big Chair Chess Club has offered to provide mentoring at YSC through their “Think B4U Move” program, which includes licensed therapists and counselors, capacity permitting. Title 16 youth requested access to age-appropriate urban novels, self-help books, and legal resources, and reported that over $1,000 worth of books has been misplaced at YSC.

Title 16 youth as a distinct population

Title 16 youth articulated a clear sense of being treated as outcasts within YSC. As one young person put it, “them orange shirts mean something,” referring to the different color shirts that Title 16 youth must wear. Title 16 youth described a disparity in attention and resources: committed youth receive more programming, more staff engagement, dedicated credible messengers, and more consistent access to services. Because Title 16 youth are charged as adults, they are in practice treated as adults inside YSC, which means receiving fewer youth-oriented supports rather than more.

Credible messengers are currently assigned only to committed youth. Title 16 youth lack access to social workers. Judges do not visit the Title 16 units, limiting judicial awareness of the conditions youth experience while awaiting trial.

Phone access and family contact

Title 16 youth share one phone among 11 people, with a 30-minute time limit per use. Earned additional time on Contribute and Contribute Honors levels effectively disappears by Sunday morning, as minutes reset. On Friday evenings, all 11 youth compete for the single phone before lockup. Youth requested redistribution of phone time across the week and asked when tablet-based virtual visits would be available.

Committed youth raised broader concerns about family contact. They requested FaceTime visitation, noting that partners, extended family, and children are often unable to visit in person. Youth reported being told, “that person can’t come, they’re not family,” even when the person was a grandmother or the mother of their child. They requested regular family nights and access to family therapy and observed that outside visitors and volunteers come to the facility less frequently than they used to.

Staff communication and accountability

Poor communication between youth and staff is the dominant theme across our visits. Youth across populations describe a pattern in which requests are ignored, questions go unanswered, and commitments are not followed through on. Title 16 youth report being heard only when they raise concerns as a group rather than individually.

On one visit with committed youth, two YDRs were asked to leave the session after repeatedly interrupting. One YDR present during a session was quoted as saying, “If it’s not your turn, you don’t need to know about it.” That remark illustrates the dismissive dynamic youth described.

The picture is not uniformly negative across staff roles. The young people we speak with are often fans of their YDRs, but they describe their care coordinators as deceptive, manipulative, and uncaring. That distinction suggests case management is the layer where communication is most consistently failing, even where line staff is doing right by youth.

Recurring patterns

First, previously addressed concerns are resurfacing. Many of the issues committed youth have raised in recent visits had been discussed in prior Youth Council sessions and were believed to have been resolved. Their reappearance suggests that corrective actions are not being implemented consistently or are not surviving staff turnover and operational changes.

Second, consistency across populations. Youth across populations independently raise the same concerns about soap, hair products, laundry, programming gaps, and staff communication, despite having no opportunity to coordinate their feedback. The convergence suggests facility-wide problems rather than unit-specific ones.

Third, staff communication as a root cause. Many individual complaints, from snack confiscation after distribution to broken promises about programming to an inability to get questions answered, trace back to the same underlying issue: a breakdown in communication and follow-through between staff and youth. Addressing this pattern systemically would likely resolve multiple downstream complaints.

The Mayor’s FY27 capital budget proposes $29 million to add ten beds at YSC and thirty at New Beginnings. Adding capacity does not address what the youth at YSC are reporting. The District should address the operational failures the Youth Council has identified before this Committee considers expansion of capacity.

PART III: THE CURFEW ZONE EXPANSION

A. The new curfew zone law includes important protections, and Open City Advocates credits them.

Open City Advocates and our coalition partners, including the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop, the Youth Justice Project, and the Thrive Center, advocated for specific protections in the curfew zone legislation. The Council included several of them. The new law prohibits transporting curfew-violating youth to detention centers, including YSC. It directs the Metropolitan Police Department to transport youth home or to a designated event site rather than to a secure setting. It allows CFSA to be invoked as a non-custodial backstop when home transport is not feasible. These protections matter. They reduce the District’s exposure to violations of the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act’s Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders requirement. They reflect the Comprehensive Youth Justice Amendment Act of 2016, which already prohibits secure detention of status offenders. We commend the Council for incorporating them.

The new law sunsets in December 2028. That sunset is appropriate. It treats the expansion as a measure with a defined end and requires the Council to revisit whether the policy has served its stated purpose.

Two facts complicate this picture. The first is that the new law’s protections do not take effect immediately. The mayoral order currently operating, and the executive enforcement that proceeded under it through April and into May, did not include the new law’s safeguards. The second is that nothing in the new law makes the underlying policy more likely to work. The evidence is what it always was, and it does not support continued reliance on curfew as a public safety strategy.

B. The national evidence does not support youth curfews as public safety policy.

Federal research does not support youth curfews as public safety policy. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s 2024 youth-curfew review describes the evidence on youth-crime outcomes as mixed, with some evidence of negative effects. It summarizes earlier reviews finding no demonstrated decrease in youth crime and notes that researchers have identified racial disparities in curfew enforcement that consistently disadvantage Black youth and disproportionately affect youth of color. A 2016 Campbell Systematic Review by Wilson, Gill, Olaghere, and McClure synthesized 12 quantitative evaluations and similarly found that juvenile curfews have not been shown to reduce crime or victimization. The review found the average estimated effect on juvenile crime during curfew hours was slightly positive, meaning a slight increase, and close to zero for crime during all hours, with neither effect statistically significant. Earlier work by Adams (2003) and a later review by Grossman and Miller (2015) reached the same basic conclusion.

What curfews do reliably is shift public safety resources toward monitoring noncriminal behavior and increase police-youth contact without corresponding safety gains. That is a real cost.

C. The District’s own evidence is sharper.

The District’s own evidence is sharper than the national average. Carr and Doleac (2015) used variation in the hours of the District’s juvenile curfew and found that gunfire incidents increased 150 percent during the marginal curfew hours when the District’s juvenile curfew was in effect.

A single study is not conclusive on its own. Taken together with the national evidence, however, it gives this Council no reliable basis for believing that expanded curfew enforcement makes the District safer.

D. Even with perfect noncustodial enforcement, curfew expansion still costs the District.

Even if every encounter under the new law’s protections is executed perfectly, with home transport rather than YSC processing and CFSA backstop deployed when needed, the policy still costs the District. Two costs are particularly important.

First, enforcement consumes public-safety capacity. Officers transporting youth, processing curfew encounters, and managing the curfew apparatus are officers not doing other work. The Metropolitan Police Department’s resources are finite. Diverting them to enforce a policy whose evidence base does not support its public-safety claims has an opportunity cost the District is paying without a measurable return.

Second, the policy expands police-youth contact, which is where the District’s racial disparities live. OJJDP’s 2024 youth-curfew review reports that researchers have identified racial disparities in curfew enforcement that consistently disadvantage Black youth, with other groups also disadvantaged. OJJDP also notes that youth of color are disproportionately affected by youth-curfew enforcement, including through enforcement patterns tied to higher police presence and lower family income. The new law’s home-transport requirement reduces the worst custodial harms. It does not eliminate the underlying disparity in who gets stopped, questioned, and transported in the first place. Each encounter carries costs: trust costs, school attendance costs, and consequences for how young people understand their relationship to the city that is supposed to be theirs.

The District has worked over many years to build a justice system that does not produce these disparities. Codifying expanded curfew zone authority through December 2028, even in its narrowed form, runs in the opposite direction.

E. The mayoral order period lacks the new law’s protections.

The new law does not take effect immediately. In the interim, the District’s curfew is enforced under Mayor’s Order 2026-050, issued after the temporary expansion act expired on April 15, 2026. That order does not contain the prohibitions on YSC processing, the MPD transport requirements, or the CFSA backstop that Council included in the new legislation. Whatever the District’s policy will look like once the new law takes effect, the policy operating today is the unprotected version.

We urge the Committee to ask DYRS, on the record, what is happening at YSC during the mayoral order period. How many curfew-only youth have been processed through YSC under the executive order? For how long? With what documentation? With what separation from delinquency youth? What is DYRS’s plan for transition to full compliance with the new law’s exclusion? These questions are not theoretical. They are about the policy operating today.

F. The Mayor still has not produced the plan this Committee has been asking for.

For years, this Committee has asked the Mayor to produce a comprehensive plan addressing the conditions that bring young people into public spaces in groups at night. Chairperson Parker has led that demand. The Mayor has consistently declined to produce it. When the Council voted to expand the District’s curfew in summer 2025, most members described the expansion as a temporary tool to address what they viewed as an emergency. Almost a year has passed. The expanded curfew zone authority has now been codified through December 2028. The Mayor still has not produced the plan.

The conditions remain unchanged. Safe recreational spaces remain limited. Free transportation options for youth remain limited. Mental health services remain undersupplied. Family conflict and housing instability remain underserved. Free Minds, the Thrive Center, the Youth Justice Project, and other coalition partners have laid out concrete recommendations for what such a plan should contain. None of those recommendations has been funded.

We respectfully ask the Council to renew its standing demand for the plan and to refuse new locked-facility capacity until the Mayor produces it.

PART IV: REQUESTS OF THE COMMITTEE

We respectfully ask the Committee to take the following actions in connection with this hearing and the budget process.

First, conduct oversight of curfew implementation during the mayoral order period. Specifically, request from DYRS a complete account of how curfew-violating youth have been processed at YSC since October 1, 2025, including separation protocols and documentation. Ask the Mayor’s office and MPD for parallel data on transports, holding times, and CFSA referrals.

Second, renew this Committee’s longstanding demand to the Mayor for a comprehensive plan addressing the conditions that bring young people into public spaces, and refuse new locked-facility capacity until the Mayor produces the plan. The plan should include investments in youth recreation infrastructure, mental health capacity, free transportation, and family stabilization supports, with funding sources outside DYRS specified.

Third, reject the $29 million capital appropriation for 40 new beds in DYRS’s locked facilities. Approve the remainder of the DYRS capital budget. Specifically, approve the backup generator and bathroom renovations at New Beginnings, the culinary and laundry upgrades at YSC, fleet replacement, and the IT modernization for Carl’s Garage and Oasis. Remove only the bed-expansion line item.

Fourth, direct District youth investment outside DYRS. Programs that support and protect young people should not have to operate inside the agency that detains them. The District should expand funding for community-based providers, the Department of Behavioral Health, DCPS and OSSE, and the youth-serving organizations funded through OVSJG.

Fifth, require DYRS to implement the recommendations from the October 2025 Auditor’s report on New Beginnings, with a published quarterly progress report on the specific findings the Auditor identified. The youth in the facility deserve a working program. Remediation is a baseline obligation, separate from any question of capacity.

Sixth, restore independent oversight. Either restore funding for the Office of Independent Juvenile Justice Facilities Oversight (OIJJFO) to continue its work, or extend the Ombudsman for Children’s jurisdiction to cover all DYRS-committed youth. Currently, the Ombudsman has jurisdiction over DYRS-committed youth only when they are dual-jacketed with an active CFSA case. For the majority of DYRS-committed youth, the Ombuds office has no access at all. We ask the Council to fix that gap.

PART V: QUESTIONS FOR DYRS

We respectfully submit the following questions for DYRS. We have grouped them by topic.

Curfew Compliance

  1. Since October 1, 2025, how many youth have been processed through YSC for curfew-only violations? What is the median and maximum length of time those youth have been at YSC?
  2. What separation protocols apply when curfew-only youth and youth in delinquency proceedings are present at YSC at the same time? How is compliance with those protocols documented?
  3. The new law excludes DYRS from curfew enforcement. What is DYRS’s transition plan to ensure full compliance once the law takes effect? When is the transition expected to be complete?

FY27 Capital Budget and New Beds

  1. The Mayor’s FY27 capital budget proposes 40 new beds in DYRS’s locked facilities, 10 at YSC and 30 at New Beginnings. What is DYRS’s projected use case for those beds, expressed as a population forecast by source (delinquency dispositions, technical violations, transfers, committed youth awaiting placement, Title 16 youth, other)? What population trajectory and operational need justifies the proposed expansion?
  2. What specific overcrowding condition does the proposed expansion address? For each facility, identify by quarter the rated capacity, current operational capacity, average daily population, peak population, number of units offline, staffing vacancies affecting usable capacity, and the number of youth whose confinement is attributable to placement delay rather than a need for additional secure beds.
  3. OIJJFO’s public population data identifies committed youth housed at YSC as “awaiting placement” youth and reports their length of stay in committed status before release or transfer. For FY25 and FY26 to date, how many committed youth were housed at YSC while awaiting placement? What were the median, 75th percentile, and maximum lengths of stay? How many remained at YSC for more than 30, 60, 90, and 180 days?
  4. For each committed youth held at YSC more than 30 days while awaiting placement during FY25 and FY26, what type of placement was DYRS seeking? What prevented timely placement? How many were ultimately transferred to New Beginnings, out-of-state residential placement, a behavioral-health placement, community placement, or another setting?
  5. OIJJFO’s secure-facility population data includes Title 16 youth as a legal-status category. For FY25 and FY26 to date, how many Title 16 youth were housed at YSC? What were their median and maximum lengths of stay? How does DYRS account for Title 16 youth in the population forecast supporting the proposed YSC expansion?
  6. What is DYRS’s current secure-facility average daily population, broken down by facility (YSC, New Beginnings, out-of-state) and by legal status (detained, committed, Title 16, Interstate Compact, overnighter)? How has that population changed over the past three fiscal years?
  7. The October 2025 DC Auditor’s report on New Beginnings identified specific operational and treatment failures. What has DYRS implemented in response to those findings, and what justifies an expansion of capacity at the same facility before those findings are addressed?

ROAD Act Implementation

  1. In February, this Committee heard testimony that DYRS was substituting other documents for the Individualized Rehabilitation Plans required by the ROAD Act. Will DYRS commit to providing the Committee with the IRP template, the training materials used to instruct staff in IRP preparation, and a sample of completed and anonymized IRPs by a date certain?
  2. The ROAD Act requires discharge and reentry planning to begin within 60 days of an out-of-home placement. What is DYRS’s current compliance rate with that requirement, and what is the rate at which discharge plans are shared with youth and their full teams more than 30 days before release?
  3. For youth at New Beginnings, what is the frequency of DYRS-led team decision-making meetings that include the youth, family, education stakeholders, community providers, and counsel? For youth in out-of-state placements, what is the frequency of DYRS-led TDMs as distinct from facility-run progress meetings?

Programming Access

  1. We have repeatedly experienced volunteers and partner organizations being turned away or having their access restricted when offering programming inside DYRS facilities. What is DYRS’s current written policy on volunteer and partner access? How many programming access requests has DYRS denied in the past 12 months, and on what grounds?

CONCLUSION

For years, this Committee has asked the Mayor for a comprehensive plan addressing the conditions that bring young people into public spaces. The Mayor has not produced one. The summer 2025 curfew expansion was framed as a temporary tool while the underlying work continued. Almost a year later, the expanded curfew zone authority has been codified through December 2028 and the Mayor still has not produced the plan. Separately, the FY27 budget asks this Committee to expand DYRS’s locked custodial capacity by 40 beds while cutting community programs that prevent justice involvement in the first place.

The evidence on curfews is what it has always been. The District’s own data is consistent with the national finding. The Auditor’s report on New Beginnings is what it was in October. The ROAD Act compliance picture is what it was in February. None of these facts has improved. The Mayor is asking this Committee to expand locked capacity in a system whose existing operations the Auditor has documented as failing.

We ask the Committee to act on the evidence in the record and to make the FY27 budget reflect a different priority order: appropriate capital for what an existing agency needs to operate safely; reject the $29 million for new beds; direct District youth investment to non-DYRS channels including community-based providers, the Department of Behavioral Health, DCPS, OSSE, and OVSJG-funded organizations; require remediation of the New Beginnings findings; and use the FY27 budget process to compel the Mayor to produce the plan this Committee has been asking for.

DYRS is entrusted with children. The young people in its care, the families they belong to, and the city they will return to deserve a District government that funds what works.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Respectfully submitted,

Penelope Spain, Esq. Chief Executive Officer

Joshua Miller, PhD Research & Advocacy Director

Open City Advocates

Citing or sharing this work?

Coalition materials are free to quote and share with attribution. Cite as: Youth Justice Project, DYRS Budget Oversight, May 7, 2026.

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