2025-03-17 Juvenile budget requestSUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
FOR THE COUNTY OF LEWIS
(360) 740-1178
360 N.W. North St., MS:JUV01 JUVENILE COURT Fax (360) 748-2258
Chehalis, WA 98532-1900 TDD (360) 740-1480
Shad B. Hail Hon. J. Andrew Toynbee Administrator Judge - Department No. 1 Susan E. Wickert Hon. Paul A. Strophy Office Manager Judge – Department No. 2 Vanessa L. Conwell Hon. Joely A. Yeager Detention Manager Judge – Department No. 3 Rickie Anders Cailen L. Cecil Probation Manager Court Commissioner
To: the Lewis County Board of County Commissioners
From: Shad Hail, Juvenile Court Administrator
Re: Read Ahead Request For 2 Additional Rotating Hourly Full-time detention staff.
Overview:
Two of the greatest risks of liability to a county come from the jail and the juvenile departments, and
specifically from juvenile detention centers.
Our juvenile detention facility currently has twelve full-time salaried officers and two full-time hourly
officers (one is currently vacant due to lack of applicants). There are three total officers on day shift and three on
night shift, with sometimes a fourth officer during the main court docket each week. Detention officers alternate
working four shifts of 12 hours one week and three the next. The detention facility requires coverage 24 hours a
day, 365 days a year.
The hourly officer’s role is primarily to cover absences for salaried staff. Depending on sick and vacation
leave accrual rates, there are currently approximately 2,900-3,200 hrs per year of leave that must be covered by
those two hourly officers or casual help which is approximately 1.5 FTE. This is just the leave time and does not
include coverage for FMLA, PFML, vacancies, academy coverage, court dockets, training coverage,
administrative leave, bereavement leave, medical or treatment transports, emergencies, etc… In a detention
setting, these other types of things happen very frequently and many of these things have to be covered with
overtime.
While operating our facility, one officer must remain in the locked control room and two officers handle
every other situation, to include everything from overseeing medication dispersal, conducting intakes and
releases, facilitating recreation, conducting cell extractions, handling programming responsibilities, responding to
youth in crises, coordinating visitation, cleaning the facility, handling emergencies and a host of other
responsibilities. If there are two youth involved in an incident, this means two staff are available to handle it. This
has been the case since budget reductions resulted in the loss of two to three officers circa 2008-09 and has
SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
FOR THE COUNTY OF LEWIS
(360) 740-1178
360 N.W. North St., MS:JUV01 JUVENILE COURT Fax (360) 748-2258
Chehalis, WA 98532-1900 TDD (360) 740-1480
Shad B. Hail Hon. J. Andrew Toynbee Administrator Judge - Department No. 1 Susan E. Wickert Hon. Paul A. Strophy Office Manager Judge – Department No. 2 Vanessa L. Conwell Hon. Joely A. Yeager Detention Manager Judge – Department No. 3 Rickie Anders Cailen L. Cecil Probation Manager Court Commissioner
presented challenges and high levels of risk ever since, but historically we were at least able to mitigate that risk
to a small extent with the experience of our staff and the structure of the program.
Over just the last couple of years, we have experienced an unprecedented level of retirements and
turnover. Our average length of experience used to be 8-9 years, with several people having 15 or 20+ years of
experience. Our most experienced detention officer currently has 8 years of experience. Our average experience is
now 2.7 years, but 50% of the officers have less than 2 total years of experience in the job and that includes 2 of
the supervisors.
With all of these new employees comes the imperative need for training, but just meeting minimum
staffing on the floor must take priority. This means that there is almost no coverage available to allow for training
time, except that which can be piecemealed while on the job.
To put this into perspective, Lewis County Juvenile Court is among the least staffed juvenile detention
centers of any size in the state of Washington and is definitively the least staffed facility by average daily
population (please see attached statewide data documentation I have compiled). No other facility that houses
close to our ADP attempts to run a detention facility with only three people on shift on a regular basis during the
day when youth are out of their rooms.
A changing youth population and legislative changes are only compounding what was already a
substantial challenge based on our staffing levels. RCW 13.22 went into effect in 2020, impacting the use of room
confinement as a consequence for behaviors in detention. Additionally, prior to other relatively recent legislative
changes more youth with very serious charges and particularly those with serious violent offenses pending would
have been declined to adult jurisdiction and would be housed at the jail. Now they must remain in the juvenile
detention center with a few notable exceptions. We also continue to see increasing rates of mental health,
criminogenic behaviors including violence, deteriorated support systems, and higher needs in the population we
are serving. These factors, combined with less experienced staff and already extremely low staffing levels overall,
form an unacceptable cauldron of risk and liability. The risk extends not only to the youth for which we are
responsible, but also to our staff and ultimately to the community.
Even with these risks and the unavoidable lack of experience, we have exceptional staff working nothing
short of miracles in many situations to de-escalate, reduce the need for the use of force, and provide care for the
SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
FOR THE COUNTY OF LEWIS
(360) 740-1178
360 N.W. North St., MS:JUV01 JUVENILE COURT Fax (360) 748-2258
Chehalis, WA 98532-1900 TDD (360) 740-1480
Shad B. Hail Hon. J. Andrew Toynbee Administrator Judge - Department No. 1 Susan E. Wickert Hon. Paul A. Strophy Office Manager Judge – Department No. 2 Vanessa L. Conwell Hon. Joely A. Yeager Detention Manager Judge – Department No. 3 Rickie Anders Cailen L. Cecil Probation Manager Court Commissioner
youth we are responsible for. I could not be more proud of the extraordinary efforts they make on a daily basis,
while also recognizing the obvious and undeniable fact that they need more resources. They need backup.
Request:
I am requesting authorization and funding to hire two more full-time hourly detention officers. Assuming
we could find applicants, we would use these officers to accomplish several things. This will not erase all of the
risk or challenges, but with this support we could begin to address our two greatest needs.
The first priority would be to add a fourth officer in detention from 8am-8pm when the majority of youth
are out of their rooms and the risk is the highest, particularly when our population is higher. That would allow for
three people to respond to suicide and self-harm situations, fights between two or more juveniles, medical
emergencies, escape attempts, custodial assaults, and everything else. Second, when the population and other
circumstances allow, we would use them to provide coverage for other staff so that we could prioritize training,
which is a desperate need we have.
Cost:
Maximum estimated $191,000 S&Bs annually + $400 for CBA authorized clothing allowance. This will
potentially be lower due to overtime savings.
I will be happy to provide additional information or to answer questions regarding this request.
Respectfully submitted,
Shad Hail
Administrator
Lewis County Juvenile Court
SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
FOR THE COUNTY OF LEWIS
(360) 740-1178
360 N.W. North St., MS:JUV01 JUVENILE COURT Fax (360) 748-2258
Chehalis, WA 98532-1900 TDD (360) 740-1480
Shad B. Hail Hon. J. Andrew Toynbee Administrator Judge - Department No. 1 Susan E. Wickert Hon. Paul A. Strophy Office Manager Judge – Department No. 2 Vanessa L. Conwell Hon. Joely A. Yeager Detention Manager Judge – Department No. 3 Rickie Anders Cailen L. Cecil Probation Manager Court Commissioner