District agencies in Washington D.C. do not track youths who have been involved in both the city’s welfare and juvenile justice systems, leaving the city unprepared to meet their needs, according to a report released Tuesday. The 122-page report from the nonprofit Council for Court Excellence and the Office of the D.C. Auditor provides the most comprehensive look yet at youths with experiences in both systems, the Washington Post reports. It details how the city’s failure to track this population caused further harm, including youths mistakenly released from delinquency court to adults “to whom the youth should not be entrusted.” “These youth are very vulnerable,” said Tracy Velázquez, the policy director at the Council for Court Excellence, which advocates for improvements to the city’s criminal justice system. “We as adults need to ensure that they are able to move past these experiences and live healthy lives.”
Researchers identified at least 181 such “crossover youth” between 2018 and 2022. These are children and young adults with active delinquency cases in Superior Court and any history with the District’s Child and Family Services Agency, which investigates allegations of child abuse and neglect. All but 10 of them are Black children. The report emphasizes ways the District’s Child and Family Services Agency and the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, which detains and rehabilitates youths charged with certain crimes, can work together, along with other agencies, to more comprehensively care for crossover youths. In a joint statement to The Washington Post, the Child and Family Services Agency and the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services said they will continue to “improve coordination, information sharing, and data sharing between the agencies to ensure a holistic approach to meeting the needs of these, and all, youth and families we serve.”