Editorial: The shame of Shuman Center’s demise
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The Shuman Juvenile Detention Center no longer is licensed by the state of Pennsylvania.
On Friday, the state Department of Human Services notified Allegheny County that the facility that houses minors involved in the justice system would have to make new arrangements for its residents and close by Sept. 18.
These kind of issues happen regularly at all kinds of operations overseen by state licensing agencies. Nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living facilities, halfway houses — anyplace that operates in the care and keeping of vulnerable people needs to have someone checking up on it.
What is particularly unsettling about the Shuman situation is not just that the vulnerable were children. Yes, that’s part of it. So is the fact that the operating agency was not some for-profit corporation cutting corners to increase the bottom line.
What is worse is that it was nothing new.
“The licensing at the facility has been an ongoing issue,” county Manager William McKain said in a statement. “Over the last six years, we have put additional resources into the facility, supported new leadership and efforts by the professionals running the center, and continued to work with the courts and the state on alternatives. Yet, we continued to see violations that were only exacerbated during the pandemic with staffing challenges.”
Six years is a long time to operate as Shuman was, with a series of deficiencies. The center was on its fourth provisional license. To put it in terms the juveniles in its custody would understand, the facility was on a kind of probation. It had been notified that it did things wrong and had been given a period of time to correct its behavior.
Instead, like a kid whose delinquency just seems to start a steeper slide, the violations continued. In one of the most recent, a juvenile boy overdosed on heroin in a restroom. The date was redacted but not the time. It happened around 4 p.m. Fifteen minutes later he was slumped in a chair. It took another 22 minutes to get him any medical help. Paramedics didn’t arrive until 5:04 p.m. — an hour after the drugs were taken. It took three doses of opioid-reversal drug Narcan to revive him.
Just as concerning were the drugs children were not receiving. The report that accompanied the notice of revocation included a list of multiple redacted dates when juveniles were not given medication. On one shift, 22 children were not medicated because only a nurse could administer the meds and no nurse was there.
The state said this was “gross incompetence, negligence and misconduct in operating a facility likely to constitute immediate and serious danger to the life and health of the children in care.” The state was right.
The purpose of Shuman, stated on the facility’s website just beneath the link to the closing announcement, is “provide a secure facility for both residents and staff that promotes safety, health, and resident development while the residents await their adjudication.” It didn’t do that.
More specifically, it is a place for kids to be kept safe, sometimes from themselves, because of problems following the rules. There is hypocrisy in the center itself breaking the rules while it holds juveniles for doing the same.