Some members of Allegheny County’s new Juvenile Detention Board of Advisors are raising tough questions that reflect the intractable problems in youth corrections here and across the country — notably the vast overrepresentation of Black kids and kids with disabilities in the system.
The 10-member board met for the second time in January — more than 18 months after the county’s youth correctional facility, formerly the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center, reopened under a new name and private management. Now called Highland Detention Center, it’s operated by Adelphoi Western Region, part of a Latrobe-based group of nonprofits providing youth detention services in multiple states.
“The question in front of us is, ‘Why is the population so racially biased?’” said Kristy Trautmann, a board member and the executive director of FISA Foundation*, which funds local nonprofits serving women, girls and people with disabilities. She noted that “a little less than half of the kids [incarcerated at Highland] qualify for special education services, which I think speaks to what some of their needs might be, as well as the intersection of disability in the juvenile justice system.”
Trautmann pointed out that PaDRAI — the state’s risk assessment tool that can determine whether a child is detained or released to non-carceral alternatives — “is not racially biased” when “used with best practices.” She asked Erin Dalton, director of the county’s Department of Human Services, for further investigation of the disparity. “I feel like that is an important thing for the county to really be thinking [about] in terms of making sure that juvenile justice involvement in [the form] of detention is fair,” she told Dalton.
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The data points Trautmann flagged were in the department’s 2025 annual report on Highland, which was distributed to reporters during the board meeting. The report includes data provided by Adelphoi to the county over the past year. It also draws from the county’s public dashboard about Highland and the former Shuman Center.
Here are some highlights from the annual report and the discussion among board members and county officials during the Jan. 15 meeting, plus insights from two academic experts and an advocate for youth in the criminal legal system.
10-14-day stays the norm
- 220 unique young people were detained at Highland in 2025, including those who entered the previous year but stayed into 2025.
- Those 220 young people had 260 stays at Highland, indicating some were detained more than once.
- Among those who exited Highland last year, 50% went to another detention center, 31% returned home, 15% went to a juvenile placement (a court-ordered stay in a residential facility or treatment program), 2% went to a child welfare placement and 2% transferred out of the jurisdiction.
- The median length of stay was 10 days and the average length of stay was 14 days.
Jeff Shook, a professor of social work at the University of Pittsburgh, said the relatively short average length of stay “popped out” while he read the report. It’s around half the national average, which is 27 days.
“I think the smaller size of this facility might be requiring them to be really attentive to getting kids back in their community,” said Shook, who’s “seen a lot of kids languish” in bigger facilities, where there’s less incentive to quickly address a child’s needs, connect them with services and community supports and keep them in school.
“We’re bringing in kids who have gone through a lot, who are struggling with a lot.”Jeff Shook
Highland has operated a single 12-bed pod since it reopened, but will scale up to 60 beds as the county completes renovations. It follows a “no eject/no reject” policy, which means it won’t turn away kids with complex needs and tries to keep some beds available at all times for those who’ve been rejected by other providers.
An Allegheny County Department of Human Services dashboard indicates that there are currently 15 juveniles in the county jail.
172 young people had a charge involving a weapon
Young people may enter Highland with multiple open charges, according to the report. It breaks down some of the most serious ones associated with each detention, which are usually felonies.
- 97 youth detentions involved a firearms offense as the most serious open charge.
- 65 were associated with a crime against a person, such as assault.
- 62 were associated with a crime against property, such as arson or burglary.
- 172 had used a weapon associated with any — not just the most serious — of their open charges.
- 86 had an open warrant during detention, some of which were issued for non-adherence to the terms of their release or failure to appear in court.
Shook said many of these kids are in impoverished families touched by other government programs and agencies. The report found that 82% were enrolled in Medicaid one month before detention, while 27% lived in subsidized housing and 60% received income supports, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
And some are likely suffering from trauma: 16% were involved in an open child welfare case in the month before detention, while 10% were survivors of alleged abuse or neglect.
“We’re bringing in kids who have gone through a lot, who are struggling with a lot,” said Shook, who studies the transfer of youth from the juvenile legal system to the adult criminal legal system, among other youth-focused research interests.
“We should be asking ourselves … why we’re not collectively able to provide supports to these youth and families sooner, so they don’t end up here,” added Sara Goodkind, another Pitt professor of social work, during a joint interview with Shook.
7 of every 8 young people sent to Highland were Black
Experts noted the striking, but unsurprising racial disproportionality at Highland: 86% of young people incarcerated at Highland last year were Black, while 14% were white. (The facility only admits males and only legal sex is recorded, according to the report.)
Allegheny County reflects a nationwide reality: Despite long-term declines in youth incarceration, Black youth are almost five times as likely as their white peers to be held in juvenile facilities, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit advocating for racial, gender and economic justice in youth incarceration.
Goodkind’s research team produces reports on racial differences in behavior in a project of the Black Girls Equity Alliance. She said similar behaviors by Black and white youth are often interpreted differently by adults in positions of authority, such as teachers, principals and police officers.
While Trautmann, the board member and FISA Foundation executive, called for an investigation of Highland’s racial disproportionality, another member doubted the board’s ability to take on such a complex project.
“That’s a really complicated question,” said Edward Mulvey, the newly elected board chair and a professor of psychiatry emeritus at Pitt’s School of Medicine. He listed “neighborhoods … the police, the courts, everything” that could be driving factors. “So while laudable, I’m not sure it’s a goal we should be spending a lot of energy on because I just don’t know that we’re going to come up with any solid answers.”
A youth advocate later criticized the possibility of a hands-off approach to racial disparities, which, she said, Mulvey’s comments implied.
“It makes me question what [Dr. Mulvey] believes the function of the board is,” said Tanisha Long, Allegheny County community organizer at the Abolitionist Law Center, a legal nonprofit serving incarcerated people, which has offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
“If the board is going to claim that their job is not oversight, then they need to find a job to do, and part of that job should be determining why a certain portion of the population is being placed in these detention centers more than anyone else,” said Long, who was nominated, but not appointed, to the board and has criticized its advisory nature and lack of enforcement powers. That’s the kind of “digging” necessary “to find out what type of advisement this board can make,” she added.
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In response, Mulvey expressed regret over his phrasing during the meeting. “It sounded as if I was saying racial disparity really isn’t an issue, and that is not at all true and … certainly not what I meant,” he said during an interview.
Mulvey pointed to a 2023 report published by Pitt’s Institute of Politics, which found multiple drivers of disparities between Black and white adults and kids at different steps during the legal process. More policing in areas with higher concentrations of Black residents, for example, leads to significant disparities in charging rates across neighborhoods.
Disparities result from “a complicated process” that starts far before a child enters Highland, Mulvey said, and there’s not “an easy fix. … My main thought was it would be tough to start getting sidetracked by that when [the board has] so many more direct advisory” responsibilities, such as focusing on what’s happening inside the facility.
Young people with disabilities were also overrepresented in Highland’s population: Of youth who matched the county’s school enrollment data, 41% had an Individualized Education Plan during a recent school year and 55% had one at any point during their education. Based on 2019-2023 census data, 9.6% of county residents under 65 had a disability.
$6.9 million paid to Adelphoi
Under the terms of the contract, Adelphoi will get an average of $14 million a year. That’s around 40% more than the county used to spend on running the facility before former County Executive Rich Fitzgerald’s administration shuttered it in 2021 — after the state revoked its license for multiple violations.
From late 2023, before the center reopened, through Jan. 2 the county paid Adelphoi $6.9 million, according to payment data from the County Controller’s office.
In fiscal year 2024-2025, the cost per bed — whether occupied or not — per day at Highland was about $767. The average state cost for the secure confinement of a young person was $588 per day in 2020, or $214,620 per year, according to a report by the Justice Policy Institute, a defunct nonprofit that worked to reduce incarceration.
After reviewing the payment data, both Shook and Goodkind said the county was paying “a lot of money” for youth detention. “Do you see how much this is costing taxpayers?” Goodkind asked.
“I think that is additional support for keeping the number of beds low.” Shook added, “Where’s that money going? What are we getting? And how is this affecting youth?” He said he hopes the board asks those “hard questions.”
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At least some of that money pays for Adelphoi’s staffing of the facility, which includes six shift supervisors, 12 counselors and seven youth service workers, according to a slide deck Dalton presented to board members during the meeting. The average salary across these positions is $54,200.
There were a total of 26 new hires and 27 vacancies from month to month in 2025, according to the report. Long, the youth advocate, noted “a good amount of terminations” — 10 in the past year — that Adelphoi reported to the county.
‘A missed opportunity’ to engage Adelphoi and the public
A board member pointed out Adelphoi’s absence at the meeting.
The operator should “be in the space and listening and hearing not just what we would say, but [also] … public comments,” said Kathi Elliott, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and CEO of Gwen’s Girls, a nonprofit serving girls in the region who face racism, poverty and violence. Time had been allocated for public comments on the meeting agenda, but none were made.
Public Source asked Adelphoi about its absence at the board’s initial meetings. Karyn Pratt, the group’s vice president of marketing and strategy development, wrote it gave the board a tour of the facility, has a meeting with Mulvey scheduled and is “creating opportunities” — which she did not specify — for members to engage Highland leadership and staff.
Pratt didn’t answer a question about Adelphoi’s plans to attend future meetings to interact with the board and the public, but said county leadership and the courts have been complimentary of the group’s operation of Highland.
Adelphoi representatives told Erin Dalton “they didn’t think that it was appropriate for them to be at the board meeting,” said Mulvey, which is why he’s meeting with them to establish a working relationship.
In response to questions about its efforts to engage the community, a spokesperson from the county Department of Human Services said it posts meeting information online, at Highland and in the courts, and encourages “all juvenile justice stakeholders” to attend board meetings, which occur on the third Tuesday of every other month. It also invited Adelphoi and other parties “to help answer questions from the board or the public.”
The county is also facilitating quarterly listening sessions with young people held at the facility and “will bring perspectives from those sessions into the meetings.”
Elliott told Public Source in June that she would be in favor of board members making unplanned visits to Highland. It’s what members of the county’s Jail Oversight Board — which has more statutory power than the Juvenile Detention Board of Advisors — can do to conduct inspections of the Allegheny County Jail.
Trautmann said that “onsite reviews” and “unannounced visits” wouldn’t be the role of the board, but further details about the county Department of Human Services’ oversight of the facility “would be a comfort” to board members.
Dalton said the department’s priorities include working with Adelphoi to increase family visitation — such as providing transportation and childcare — and “making sure that there are really strong aftercare supports for young people.”
Venuri Siriwardane is the health and mental health reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org or on Bluesky @venuri.bsky.social.
*FISA Foundation has contributed funding to Public Source.
The Jewish Healthcare Foundation has contributed funding to Public Source’s health care reporting.
This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.
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