Adelphoi submits proposal to reopen Shuman as juvenile detention center
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - For more than a year now, Shuman Juvenile Detention Center has been boarded up and closed at the same time youth gun violence has been on the rise. Now at least one provider would like to reopen it as a juvenile detention center.
The closing of Shuman has been a bane to police who say they repeatedly arrest juveniles on gun charges but have no place to put them.
"We have juveniles that are still out there who are repeat offenders with previous gun charges and they're out there," said Pittsburgh Police Commander Richard Ford. "We have an Allegheny County system that has no juvenile detention center right now and we have no plan b."
Allegheny County recently offered Shuman to anyone who wants to redevelop the site or lease the building for any purpose, though said it would give priority to parties wanting to run it as a juvenile detention center.
The deadline for proposals was Friday and the county won't comment on how many it received and their intent, but the company Adelphoi, which currently operates a center for juvenile offenders in Latrobe, Westmoreland County, confirmed it has submitted a proposal.
"We believe we submitted a very strong proposal, and we look forward to working with the county to provide detention services at the site if we're selected," Adelphoi said.
Adelphoi is currently the county's only provider for juvenile detention with only 14 beds currently available in Latrobe, but when it closed, Shuman had a capacity for 120 offenders. Even those who counsel troubled youth say those beds are needed.
"We have to find something, a place for those kids that off the charts right now, carrying these guns and still doing the shooting," said Richard Garland with the Violence Prevention Project.
The county says it is currently reviewing the proposal and won't have a comment until that is complete, but the reopening as a juvenile detention center would be welcome news to law enforcement throughout the county.