A federal judge Tuesday suggested the state and not a civil-rights group in California should decide which juveniles are placed in detention centers in Salt Lake County.
U.S. District Chief Judge David Winder said he likely will modify a 10-year-old agreement between the state and the Youth Law Center in San Francisco that outlines crimes for which the county can detain teens.Winder asked state lawyers to propose changes by Thursday.
Since the agreement was signed, management of Utah's detention centers has changed drastically. State Youth Correction officials, and not county officials, decide what crimes a teen can be detained for. Statewide guidelines outline those crimes for every county except Salt Lake County. In that county, teens can be promptly locked up only for crimes listed in the agreement with the California agency.
Mark Foler, attorney for the Youth Law Center, urged Winder to keep things as they are.
"This court should not completely defer to state authority. This court has a responsibility to respect consent decrees."
But the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 ruled that consent decrees like this one can be changed if the laws or the facts have changed markedly since the decree was signed. That is the case here, said Craig Barlow, assistant Utah attorney general.
Many aspects of running the detention facilities have changed in the past 10 years, including the creation of a statewide detention policy. The consent decree is inconsistent with state law now, Barlow said.
That inconsistency troubled Winder. The Legislature has ordered Youth Corrections to create statewide guidelines. But because of the decree the state can't do that in Salt Lake County, "so they are violating that part of the statute," Winder said. "The power that is, as I see it, is the state Legislature of Utah."
If the judge allows the state to modify the decree, teenagers arrested in Salt Lake County could be detained for car theft and burglaries of businesses. They are now detained for those crimes in every other county. "It will make a minor difference," said Gary Dalton, director of Youth Corrections.
The California group is worried that without the consent decree the Legislature could pass laws that would require Salt Lake County youths to be jailed for everything from smoking to skipping class. That would lead to the same overcrowding the group found here 10 years ago.
That's not likely to happen, said Colin Winchester, general counsel for the state court administrators' office. "If the state did that, we'd be back in court and we would lose on a slam-dunk."
When the Legislature met in special session in October, it passed a law that made it illegal for teenagers to carry handguns. Youth Corrections officials may add that crime to the statewide guidelines outlining what teens can promptly be jailed for. If the decree is modified, Salt Lake County youths could be jailed for that crime, too.