Stevens asks how ACS designates travelers and sleeping arrangements
Stevens asks how ACS designates youth as travelers and what sleeping arrangements they have. Administration witnesses say 109 youth lack bedrooms, 74 are on residential halls, and a smaller number cannot safely be housed on halls due to conflicts; ACS assesses daily whether youth can move to halls.
During our visit at Horizon, staff explained that young people who are held above the certified capacity are referred to as travelers.
Travelers are not assigned to a bed or a room or to keep their belongings.
Do you not receive the same level of educational instruction or tutoring as other residents, and they sleep in repurposed classrooms and makeshift beds?
How does ACS determine which young people are designated as travelers?
Is the designation based on intake date, security certification, or other criteria?
How long does a young person typically remain as a traveler?
So I'd like to provide some clarification as to that.
We have 109 young people today that do not have bedrooms.
74 of those young people are on halls.
So it is our goal to put every young person who can live with other young people on our residential halls into those residential halls
because it allows them to program with those young people, go to school with those young people, and allows for a larger group experience.
We have a smaller number of people, young people, who cannot safely be housed on the halls.
And so they are placed in alternative housing classrooms or other rooms.
Every day we are looking at those young people because we are a detention facility and young people are released and enter every day.
If we assess whether or not there is a hall composition that has changed to allow a young person who perhaps could not live on a residential hall
the day before, they may be able to live on a hall the following day or the following week.
So we are making those assessments so that we have as few young people off of residential halls.
as possible.
But how is that determined?
So with all of that, I'm still confused on like, how do you determine if you like other, like you said, some of them have security issues, but what if they don't have security?
Like, how is that determined?
You said it's a small number.
How are you determining that small number?
Most of them have, almost all of them have security issues.
So they have either had conflict in the community with the young people who are on the halls, or they have had conflict in the facility with the young people on the halls.
Sometimes we will try to move them from one facility to another to ameliorate those issues.
It's not always possible.