Local officials say northern Michigan has long needed more beds in the juvenile justice system to serve kids in crisis and their families.
The need is getting greater, especially after a state facility in Gaylord closed earlier this year.
State Rep. John Roth (R-Interlochen) is seeking $35 million in the state budget for a new "youth assessment and treatment facility" in Grand Traverse County.
Nowhere to send kids
Cameron Clark, a Leelanau County family court administrator, says courts all over northern Michigan get calls from local police officers responding to calls about children who, for example, are accused of assaulting someone.
They ask something like, “‘What would you like me to do with this young person?’” Clark said. “And in northern Michigan now, in 41 of our counties, the answer to that is, ‘I don't know.’ And that's not okay.”
Often there's no place up north for kids that need to be securely held while they're evaluated.
For situations where the courts decide children need to be in custody for a longer period of time, the juvenile facilities are all downstate, except for one facility for girls in Escanaba, and those options are usually full.
Courts are then forced to sometimes send kids to facilities out of state, making it harder for families to see and advocate for their children.
Michigan law is strict about where youth can be detained. And that often means regular jails don’t cut it. Special facilities are needed, and those facilities often have special services focused on mental health treatment and rehabilitation.
“We are at loose ends, and this has been going on for a long, long time,” said Clark. “I'm getting close to retirement, and I need to get this done.”
The facility and the funding ask
“Our court systems aren't finding beds in Michigan, so there [are] 115 children right now located outside of the state of Michigan in a detained facility,” said Roth, the state representative seeking funding for a new facility.
He’s requesting the money out of the state’s ‘earmark’ budget — open funding for special projects. The proposal comes from a consortium of court systems in counties up north, including Leelanau, Grand Traverse, and Antrim counties.
Some $35 million would pay for the construction of a 32-bed facility in Traverse City that could be used for short-term evaluations or longer-term detention.
He says legislators are about a month away from “really deep negotiations” on whether this funding will be granted in the final state budget.
He said there was an effort to get this funding in the budget in 2023. It landed in the budget bill that passed the House, but was struck from the Senate bill.
This is the first year that Michigan representatives have been required to submit their earmark requests publicly, before budgets are finalized.
Overall, Roth had the highest dollar amount of earmark requests this year of any state legislator.
He says he knows he will not get everything he’s asking for, but that he hopes to make his voice heard.
"Our needs are getting more and more,” he said, "because every year we just get left behind.”
In the case of the juvenile justice system, Cameron Clark, the family court administrator, also thinks the state is dropping the ball.
“Because the state has shuttered so many of their state institutions, we really do feel strongly that the state should be ponying up the money for this,” said Clark. “Because really, we're doing their job for them now.”
