Washington governor wants new prison for ‘avalanche’ of juveniles being arrested

An “avalanche” of juveniles arrested in stick-ups and car thefts prompted Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to propose opening a new detention center to alleviate overcrowded facilities in the state.

Underage suspects linked to major crimes are pushing the state’s Green Hill School facility in Chehalis well beyond its capacity. The detention center only has 180 beds but is currently housing 237 older teenage boys and young adult men.

Mr. Inslee, a Democrat, said the packed facility is preventing some inmates from receiving services and is putting feuding juveniles in close quarters with one another.

“When you stuff people into a room, and they don’t have enough room, and they fight frequently, and you have gang intrusions — you got problems,” Mr. Inslee said at a Monday press event at the Green Hill School. “So the solution to this is … to reduce the overcrowding at this facility, that’s number one.”

Juvenile crime has been a nagging problem for the Evergreen State in recent years.

Minors accounted for 22% of all robberies and 20% of all car thefts statewide in 2023, according to a July report released by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

Juveniles also had significant representation in sexual assault offenses, with people under 18 accounting for 17% of those arrested in Washington.

The report noted that children between the ages of 13 and 15 made up over half of all juvenile arrests.

In Renton, a suburb of Seattle, police told local media in September that juvenile gun crimes roughly doubled between 2022 to 2024. Some suspects are as young as 12 and 13 years old.

The city’s top cop said the spike is largely due to underage offenders holding up mini-marts at gunpoint.  

“The brazenness,” Renton Police Chief John Schuldt told local NBC affiliate KING-TV. “Youth going into a convenience store and doing an armed robbery on a clerk, and the impact that’s not only going to have on the victim, but our whole community.”

The governor said he wants to open the new location for juveniles early next year in a vacant housing unit at the Stafford Creek prison for adults in Aberdeen.

Up to 48 juveniles could be transferred to the new facility as soon as February 2025, but Green Hill School Superintendent Jennifer Redman said the move would need legislative approval.  

Mr. Inslee also said the juvenile facility would have its own staff and would not be managed by the Department of Corrections, which oversees adult inmates in Washington.

The governor also denied that a 2019 law allowing some offenders to stay in juvenile custody until they are 25 was contributing to the overcrowding issue.

“I think by-in-large that the big bulk of the increased population is from increased crime by young people. And young people are committing boatloads of crime,” Mr. Inslee said. “That’s what’s causing the tidal wave of personnel coming into the juvenile justice system.”

Gov.-elect Bob Ferguson, who is currently serving as the state’s attorney general until he assumes his new office in January, has not commented on Mr. Inslee’s proposal.