COLUMBIA, S.C. — Richland County could soon stop housing juveniles at their Alvin S. Glenn detention facility.
Richland County administrator Leonardo Brown says the request to stop housing youth at Alvin S. Glenn comes as staffing continues to be a concern.
On Tuesday the county's Detention Center ad hoc committee approved a measure that would potentially shut down the juvenile wing of Alvin S. Glenn.
"We are responsible for providing detention services for adults here in Richland County. At some point in time, I'm not sure when the county also decided to voluntarily stand up a juvenile center but that's voluntary," said Brown.
According to jail director Crayman Harvey, the move would free up staff at the facility, which has been the subject of a national investigation following a number of inmate deaths.
"We have fourteen staff that's providing care, custody, and control for them. So once you approve closing that facility, those fourteen staff will be shifted to the adult side where we can put them in coverage in our transportation unit, in our intake unit, all of those areas where we're not up standard where we'd like it to be," he says.
According to brown, the 27 juvenile inmates that are housed at Alvin S. Glenn, would be sent to the Department of Juvenile Justice's facility. Brown also stated the county would pay a per-diem for juveniles housed at DJJ, a service that Director Eden Hendrick says costs the county $50 per day for each juvenile.
"We are still overcapacity almost every day, and so this will just be an additional amount of youth coming to our detention facility that we will have to deal with," says Hendrick.
She says now they have to come up with a solution for a facility that's already overcrowded and understaffed.
"We discussed that hopefully, we will be if it does happen, we will be able to work out a plan and it won't happen immediately and maybe we can phase it in or something like that," Hendrick says.
District 10 Councilwoman Cheryl English shared her thoughts on the recommendation during Tuesday's meeting.
"It gives us the ability to utilize space, the ability to have better staffing to cover who is there," she said.
According to the county, the request will be in front of the full county council on June 4th.