Mark Walker

Argus Leader

Faced with one of the highest juvenile incarceration rates in the country, South Dakota in 2012 set out to change the way its juvenile justice system works.

An ambitious pilot program was launched in Minnehaha and Pennington counties to reduce the number of kids sitting behind bars.

Five years later, the Minnehaha County Juvenile Detention Center is locking up almost a third fewer kids than it did just half a decade ago.

But a closer look at the numbers reveals most of those gains benefited white kids. While the number of white juveniles detained dropped in half between 2012 and 2016, the number of youth of color in the facility hasn't changed.

Youth of color now account for 65 percent of the juveniles behind bars in the Minnehaha County Juvenile Detention Center, which serves a 14-county region where non-whites account for only about 10 percent of the population.

Juvenile corrections authorities use a supposedly objective questionnaire to decide which kids get supervised release and which ones are held in lockup.

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South Dakota had the nation's second-highest juvenile incarceration rate in 2011, and a high rate or recidivism to go along with it. That helped spur a multi-year effort by the lawmakers and corrections officials to reform the state's juvenile justice system.

Among the changes implemented in recent years was a so-called risk-assessment tool for juvenile offenders, a survey intended to help judges and corrections officials more objectively assess someone's flight risk and danger to the community.

“A risk assessment instrument helps evaluate the juvenile's risk on an objective basis,” Second Circuit Court Administrator Karl Thoennes said.

When a juvenile is arrested and taken to the juvenile detention center, one of the first things they do is sit down with an officer for a risk assessment. The one-page survey includes information such as criminal history, seriousness of current charge, drug and alcohol use, and the willingness or ability of their parents to assume responsibility.

Points are assigned or deducted based on the responses. A score of 12 or more indicates the juvenile poses a risk and should be locked up. A score between 7 and 11 suggests they should see a judge or be placed in an alternative shelter, and 6 or less means they should be released to their parents until their court date.

Sara Steva, a juvenile correctional officer who conducts the screenings at the Minnehaha County JDC, said she considers the score alongside a sworn statement from the officer who made the arrest.

“Sometimes the score and the situation don’t add up, but I’d say a good percent of the time they really do,” Steva said.

Read the form used to assess juveniles' risk:

The surveys give corrections officials a seemingly objective method for evaluating defendants, but the outcomes raise questions about built-in bias.

The U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Corrections encourages courts to use the scores, which are increasingly common across the country. Meanwhile, a 2016 analysis by ProPublica found they were more likely to flag black defendants as risks compared to whites.

In Minnehaha County, officials said the racial disparity indicates a problem.

“We are concerned about it,” Minnehaha County Commissioner Jeff Barth said. “I think it’s clearly an issue, and it’s at every level of law enforcement.”

Josh Rovner, a juvenile justice associate with The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the problem isn't unique to Sioux Falls. Nationally, racial disparities in juvenile detention centers have worsened as the number of children being held has decreased.

“We’ve seen juvenile justice reform decrease the placement and commitment of all youth, but most of the benefit has gone to white youth,” Royner said.

The reasons — and the solutions — are less clear.

Annie Brokenleg, Minnehaha County's racial and ethnic fairness coordinator, trains juvenile justice workers on how to work with the youth of color. She can't point to one reason for the disparities at JDC but noted parenting as an area that can improve.

“There are a lot of barriers for families as far as transportation and getting to appointments and getting to court,” Brokenleg said.

Judge Doug Hoffman, a juvenile court judge in Canton and co-chair of a group charged with implementing the state's juvenile justice reforms, said judges don’t want to lock youth up unless they pose a significant risk the community.

Socioeconomic status plays a factor, at times, he said.

“If we don’t have that structure in a stable environment for the kid, it’s harder for us to be able to keep track of them in the community,” Hoffman said.

Jamie Gravett, the county's JDC director, said kids entering the center have committed all types of offenses, from violent crime to property crime. County officials have to dig deeper into the data to find out why minority races are over-represented in the facility.

“Our ideal thing would be to match the population percentage as close as possible to what our community is as a whole,” Gravett said.

The county recently hired a case manager to help youth of color and their families avoid falling too deep in the criminal justice system. The person helps people get to court on time and get to services where they can get help. The county also has funded a racial and ethnic fairness coordinator through Lutheran Social Services who looks for new programs, policies and grant opportunities to help with the racial disparities.

“Minnehaha County recognizes the need to make a concerted and purposeful effort to address the disproportionality,” Minnehaha County Commissioner Cindy Heiberger said.

State Sen. Kevin Killer, a Democrat from Pine Ridge, said the racial disparity is concerning. The state's juvenile justice reforms were a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done to reduce recidivism in among all children.

“In theory, (the programs) should be colorblind," Killer said. "These statistics say otherwise.”