There are currently 28 young people being detained at the Hogan Street Youth Center juvenile detention facility. Of those, 18 are now infected with COVID-19, along with 14 staff members, according to the Missouri Department of Social Services. Fifteen of the youth cases are still considered active.
LaTrisha Gandy, a family organizer with Metropolitan Congregations United (MCU), said every young person detained in the Hogan Street facility is African-American, so it is both a health issue and a racial justice issue.
Representatives of CWA 6355, the workers’ union that employs many workers at the center, attended the rally. They had previously requested that the center be shut down due to COVID-19 but were ignored, according to a representative.
“Those workers are coming in and out, they’re going to their families,” Baker said. “It’s dangerous for them, too.”
Most of the Department of Youth Services (DYS) workers, Baker said, are black.
“The likelihood of who’s going to die is one of the workers or their family members,” Baker said. “This isn’t good for anybody.”
So far, 14 of those workers have been infected. Some, like youth care monitor Kevin Anderson, have experienced cases of COVID-19 dire enough to make local news.
On Thursday, June 11, a group of community members led by MCU made good on an earlier declaration that, unless all 28 minors are released to their families or to facilities where they can quarantine separately, they will continue to protest. The group has been organizing around this issue since May 8, after the first case of COVID-19 in the facility was announced.
As several dozen community members, led by pastors with MCU, gathered in front of the secure facility, several others assembled in their cars to lend their support by honking – maybe loud enough that the youth inside could hear.
Kristian Blackmon, an organizer with the Campaign for Youth Justice and MCU, said that if Scott Odum, the director of Missouri Youth and Family Services, does not respond to the group’s demands, the protests would escalate. She pointed to a large poster reading “scott.odum@dss.mo.gov,” and suggested that protesters “flood his email.”
Within two days, Odum had agreed over email to meet with the group, according to Rev. Dietra Wise Baker, but as of press time no meeting had been scheduled.
The St. Louis American contacted Odum for information on the current health and sanitation practices within the Hogan Street center; his response will be reported when received.
“We were here, over a month ago, when we first heard about the first case of one of the youths in this facility catching COVID-19,” Blackmon said. “We asked for immediate release then. We’re not asking today, we’re demanding.”
She directed her words up to the darkened windows of the youth center rather than at the assembled crowd. “We’re standing here as a community, in front of these windows,” Blackmon said. “I want every child in here to see us in the streets for them.”
“You aren’t alone! We love you!” Blackmon shouted.
According to a report from the Council of State Governments Justice Center, juveniles who are incarcerated have an 84% likelihood of returning to the prison system as adults.
“We’re fighting for all the black and brown youth, all the youth that are killed in the streets every day,” Gandy said. “We’re just fighting for the youth that are still here, the youth that can break that prison pipeline.”
Gandy suggested that resources currently spent on the Hogan Street center would be better served on mental healthcare resources for youth.
“COVID gives us an opportunity to think about the things we’ve been talking about for a while,” Gandy said, “like putting some of the infrastructure that they have in the building back in the community.”
She used the example of the DYS workers that kids often grow to rely on as mentors. They are then entirely cut off from those mentors after their stay in DYS custody, which lasts an average of one year.
“Once those kids leave the facility, they don’t have access to those trusted caregivers, supporters anymore,” Gandy said. “So those kids return home and they don’t have that same level of support.”
Baker said that making the mental health treatment the kids have access to in DYS facilities accessible in their own communities might allow them to gain the benefits of facilities like the Hogan Street center without exposing them to COVID-19 risk of group housing.
At one point during the rally, a call to defund the police and use some of that funding to “give these babies the care they need” was met with cheers.
According to the Sentencing Project’s juvenile COVID-19 tracker, on June 11 there were 627 youth cases of the coronavirus in juvenile detention centers nationwide and 704 staff cases. In some states, such as New Jersey, the number of young people in juvenile detention is being decreased due to the pandemic, while those who are still detained are given access to regular testing for the virus.
Missouri Governor Mike Parson has announced that all youth and staff in state facilities have been tested twice since the first positive case at Hogan Street was announced on May 8, though no children have had their sentences changed or been relocated due to the pandemic. The state added on June 10 that all children in their care who have tested positive for the virus are being isolated and that staff “will discuss and practice to the extent practicable social distancing within a group.”
For MCU, however, that is not enough.
“The conditions of confinement in the Missouri Department of Corrections for youth have proven they are not what they should be,” said Rev. James Ross, pastor of Pilgrim Congregational UCC.
“Youth who should have been home are now infected.”
