The West Virginia NAACP filed a lawsuit Thursday against the state Department of Homeland Security, Department of Human Services and the Department of Education, alleging they failed to collect data meant to improve the juvenile justice system. (Getty Images)
The state NAACP has filed a lawsuit against three West Virginia departments, alleging they failed to collect data meant to improve the juvenile justice system.
The organization filed the lawsuit Thursday in Kanawha County Circuit Court. The complaint lists as defendants the state Department of Homeland Security, Department of Human Services and the Department of Education.
“The West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP has long advocated for the state to address racial inequities in how young people of color are being treated in schools and carceral settings, including racial bullying, school suspension and truancy concerns in West Virginia,” Loretta Young, president of the West Virginia State Conference of the NAACP, said in a news release Thursday.
“This data is an important tool in that work and by not collecting it, the state is hindering the NAACP from fulfilling its mission,” she said. “West Virginians deserve to have a government that fulfills its obligations — to know that when the state legislature passes a law near-unanimously and the governor signs it, the state agencies follow that law, just the same as ordinary West Virginians do.”
According to a report from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy , in 2013, West Virginia’s confined youth at a rate of 510 per 100,000, and Black kids were nearly three times more likely to be confined than white kids.
Between 2006 and 2011, the lawsuit states, West Virginia’s rate of youth incarceration increased 5%, despite a national drop of 35%.
Former Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin signed Senate Bill 393 into law in 2015. The legislation had unanimous support from both chambers of the Legislature. It followed the work of a task force made up of lawmakers , law enforcement, judges, public defenders, teachers and others that Tomblin had convened to work on juvenile justice reform. The panel found, among other things, that the state lacked information about youth recidivism rates.
The legislation required the state to collect data on recidivism, the outcomes of diversion programs, the outcomes of truancy programs and the proportion of minority youth who are involved in the juvenile justice system compared to those in the general population involved in the system.
The NAACP learned through Freedom of Information Act requests that the state has not collected the required data, the lawsuit says.
The complaint seeks to require the state agencies to comply with the law by collecting the data.
The NAACP is represented by attorneys with Mountain State Justice and the Democracy Forward Foundation.
Representatives of the three state agencies did not immediately return an email seeking comment Thursday.
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