Ky senator had a solution for at-risk youths in custody. Then the money vanished
Kentucky’s next two-year state budget does not include $112 million needed to build a proposed 16-bed mental health treatment facility for the Department of Juvenile Justice and two 24-bed girls detention centers that state officials requested to keep girls apart from boys following a rape during a 2022 riot.
“Disappointed doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about that,” said Sen. Danny Carroll, who promoted the construction of the facilities during the legislative session that’s nearing its end.
The Department of Juvenile Justice long has struggled with the abuse and neglect of youths in its custody, failing to provide them with the protection they need, Carroll, a Benton Republican, noted.
“This has been a crisis,” said Carroll, chairman of the Senate Committee on Families and Children. “Everyone is agreed that this is a crisis that needs to be addressed immediately.”
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Gov. Andy Beshear included most of the projects money in his own budget recommendation earlier this year. His cabinet officials endorsed the projects in testimony to legislative committees, calling them necessary to improve services for teenagers held at the Department of Juvenile Justice.
“This is incredibly disappointing as it hinders Kentucky’s at-risk youth from receiving the care they need to grow and develop into healthy functioning adults and violates Senate Bill 162 as passed by the General Assembly,” Justice and Public Safety Secretary Keith Jackson said on Friday.
Jackson was referring to a law enacted last year requiring mental health services for teens held in the juvenile justice system.
“We strongly advocate to the General Assembly to do the right thing and include the funding as it has been proposed,” Jackson said.
Carroll, working with the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Kentucky Hospital Association and others, crafted a plan in his Senate Bill 242 to build three facilities.
Kentucky especially needs a professionally run treatment facility to help “high acuity” youths in the juvenile justice system who are considered potentially dangerous to themselves or others due to dealing with severe mental illness and childhood trauma, Carroll said.
The Herald-Leader has reported in recent years that Kentucky’s juvenile detention centers typically lack adequate mental health services.
Youths suffering from mental health problems have been locked in isolation cells for days or even weeks, including one girl reportedly left naked in her own filth over the summer of 2022. Several girls reportedly held in such stark conditions have filed civil-rights lawsuits against the Department of Juvenile Justice.
Carroll’s bill is ready for passage by the House of Representatives when lawmakers return from their veto break on April 12.
But even if the bill is sent to Gov. Andy Beshear, it will go without the $22 million for the mental health treatment facility and the $90 million for the two girls detention centers, Carroll said Friday.
The only budgetary reference to the projects is a paragraph buried deep in House Bill 6, the executive branch spending plan, that instructs the Department of Juvenile Justice to send a report to lawmakers by Dec. 1 on how a mental health treatment facility would work and what it might cost.
Dustin Isaacs, a spokesman for the Senate Republican Majority Caucus, said senators determined that more study would be helpful before they commit to the mental health treatment facility.
“There was interest expressed in looking deeper into that specific proposal to ensure there is a good understanding of the costs associated with the project, how it will be operate and the size of the facility, and to provide due diligence by looking at alternative options that may exist,” Isaacs said Friday.
Under Carroll’s proposal, the mental health facility would be opened by Feb. 1, 2026, on the grounds of Central State Hospital, a state-run psychiatric hospital in Louisville. There would be room to expand beyond the original 16 beds.
The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services would provide clinical staff at the facility by entering into a contract with one of the state’s public teaching universities.
The girls detention centers would be built in Central Kentucky, likely in Fayette County, and in Western Kentucky, according to the governor’s budget recommendation.
Carroll said he hopes his colleagues will reconsider the projects next year, even though the 2025 General Assembly won’t be a budget-writing session. There are more than enough state funds available in Kentucky’s $2.7 billion state spending plan to cover these juvenile justice projects, he said.
“Look at some of the things that that money (in the state budget) went towards,” Carroll said.
“Not that those weren’t important things, but I could go through in five minutes and find $22 million for that mental health facility that would not have had a significant impact, a negative impact, on the locations that we would take that money from,” he said.
“Fiscally, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have funded that center.”
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