‘It’s on us:’ KY Republican slams fellow lawmakers for not funding juvenile justice improvements

Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, called on the Kentucky legislature to put more funding into improving treatment and conditions for Kentucky kids being held in detention. (LRC photo)

Sen. Danny Carroll slammed the Kentucky legislature on Friday for not funding his proposal to spend $22 million on a special mental health juvenile detention facility.

The West Kentucky Republican filed Senate Bill 242 during the 2024 session, which would have also created a process to test and treat minors with serious mental health issues in the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). The bill passed the Senate and died in the House.

“By that bill dying in the house, we have left DJJ hanging,” Carroll said during a meeting of the Juvenile Justice Oversight Council. “We have directed them to do certain things, and we didn’t give them the money to do it.”

Kentucky Republican pitches $165 million to improve care, safety of juveniles in state detention

He called the bill’s death “one of the most disappointing times in my entire career in this legislature.”

“We as a legislature, we have pointed fingers at DJJ. We have pointed fingers at the governor. And now, we have some culpability in this problem because we had the opportunity to finish this out. We had the opportunity to establish a mental health detention center to treat the most severe kids that are detained and we didn’t do it. We let the bill die. We have a crisis in this commonwealth that everybody agreed was a crisis, until it came time to pay for it, and then all of a sudden, it wasn’t a crisis.”

All eight of Kentucky’s youth detention centers are under federal investigation for possible abuses. Meanwhile, advocates worry about a new state law requiring more kids charged with violent offenses to be held in Kentucky’s troubled juvenile jails.

Another new state law , passed in 2024, allows more minors to be tried as adults , which could also increase the number of juveniles in detention.

“With (the Department of Justice) being in town , we’re going to probably … end up under another consent decree in the commonwealth,” Carroll said. “And my colleagues in the legislature, it’s on us.”

“I'm going to catch heck for this, but at this point, I really don't care. We have let our kids down, no question about it, and we've got to fix this, and we've got to fix it soon.”

– Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton

Carroll’s bill allocated $90 million for building two all-female regional detention facilities as well. Female juvenile inmates are currently being transferred to Boyd County.

“Maybe this next session, we finalize how the regional centers are going to be set up, and then we also need to, once again, approach the mental health detention center that we had planned,” he said.

Kentucky recently finished the fiscal year with a $2 billion General Fund surplus plumping up the Budget Reserve Trust Fund to $5 billion. Both statutory triggers were met for reducing the state income tax rate by another half percentage point in 2025 to 3.5%, which would be the third income tax reduction since 2022. Reducing the income tax is a top priority for the Republicans who control the legislature.

Republican lawmakers in recent years have repeatedly blamed Gov. Andy Beshear for violence and understaffing in juvenile detention facilities and criticized the administration for mismanagement. Sen. David Givens, R-Greensburg,in May said the federal investigation into DJJ should be a “crucial wake-up call for the Beshear administration .”

Beshear criticized the legislature for not funding Carroll’s mental health facility, among other things.

In January, a report from Republican Auditor Allison Ball found “​​disorganization across facilities” and a “lack of leadership from the Beshear Administration” within DJJ. She also criticized the Beshear administration for “the unacceptably poor treatment of Kentucky youth.”

Carroll called for more unity in approaching solutions to the crises within DJJ.

“There’s been a lot of finger pointing back and forth with this and folks, it’s time for that to stop. We’ve got kids with mental health issues that are sitting in jail cells today and will be there a longer period of time because this legislature failed to act, and that’s unacceptable,” he said. “We cannot point fingers. We cannot start blaming and then just let it die during the session. We’re no better than who we’re pointing fingers at if we do that. And that’s what happened last session.”

“I’m going to catch heck for this, but at this point, I really don’t care,” Carroll added. “We have let our kids down, no question about it, and we’ve got to fix this, and we’ve got to fix it soon.”

Staffing issues improving

During the same meeting Friday, DJJ staff said the staffing issues that have plagued the department are on the mend. Still, there remain 100 funded but vacant positions, according to Myrissa Ritter, a human resource branch manager in the Justice and Public Safety Office.

From July 2023 to July 2024, DJJ detention staff increased from 344 to 448, Ritter told lawmakers. Security staff increased 274 to 329, making for the “most significant growth,” she said.

Mental health employees such as social workers, clinicians and psychologists increased from 217 to 241 over the past year as well. Youth workers and administrative staff numbers also improved, from 581 to 615 in the same time frame.

Ritter credited Senate Bill 162, a law passed by the legislature in 2023 that allocated millions toward improving salaries for DJJ employees . With that money, Ritter said, DJJ can now start correctional employees out at $50,000 a year instead of the previous $30,000.

“While we have made significant progress in staffing,” she said, “we will continue to seek ways to ensure that the department remains adequately staffed.”

Sen. Whitney Westerfield, who co-chairs the council, asked about the current conditions of facilities. DJJ Commissioner Randy White , who serves on the council, said that “by and large, the infrastructures are okay right now.”

One facility has a stuck thermostat that’s being repaired, he said, and there are “some drain lines” in need of repair.

“We are prepared for heat, but one never knows,” he said, “because repair needs evolve.”

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