SCRANTON — Lackawanna County commissioners authorized a letter of support Wednesday seeking $5 million in state capital investment for a regional juvenile detention facility that will eventually house detainees from five partner counties.
The planned facility in Berks County is the pending product of a partnership between Berks, Dauphin, Delaware, Lackawanna and Lehigh counties, each of which either has or will request $5 million in state support for the project to renovate and reopen the former Berks County Youth Detention Center in Leesport. Once operational, the facility will have the capacity to house up to 40 male and female juvenile offenders.
Commissioners here approved in February a 20-year intergovernmental agreement formalizing the multicounty partnership, which officials touted as the best and most cost-effective option available to address a “crisis” marked by a statewide shortage of detention beds. Berks County will staff and operate the revived facility overseen by a regional youth detention center agency, with all five partner counties sharing operational and other costs and benefiting from guaranteed access to detention beds often in short supply elsewhere.
The regional plan originally only included four counties before Delaware County moved to join. Its addition means each county will have guaranteed access to eight detention beds at the facility, down from 10 when there were only four partners, but Delaware’s participation also means a lower cost share for the other collaborators.
Lackawanna’s revised share is estimated to be about $2.1 million annually, down from the estimated $2.6 million officials projected in February, though that total will be defrayed by state reimbursements for days the beds are filled, county Chief of Staff Brian Jeffers said Thursday. Officials tentatively anticipate the regional facility opening later next year, likely in or by the fall, he said.
It all comes years after Lackawanna County stopped housing juveniles in 2018 at the former Scranton detention center it leased from Lackawanna College. The county has since relied on contracts with costly out-of-county facilities, including one as far away as Jefferson County, Ohio, to house its juvenile offenders, absorbing costs amid surging statewide demand for a limited supply of detention beds.
“Counties are often forced to seek placements far outside their regions at substantial cost and with limited certainty of acceptance,” commissioners noted in their letter seeking state funds for the Berks County center. “In other cases, youth who would otherwise require detention must be released into the community for lack of secure placement. This threatens the progress Pennsylvania has made in juvenile justice reform and places additional strain on county governments and local communities.”
Commissioner Thom Welby noted the latter challenge at Wednesday’s commissioners meeting, expressing his belief that a lot of juvenile offenders are committing more serious crimes “because there is no consequence to their action.”
He called the regional detention center “an incredibly important project” that “allows for the providing of consequence” for serious criminal behavior.
Fellow Commissioners Bill Gaughan and Chris Chermak, Lackawanna County Judges James Gibbons and Frank Ruggiero, county District Attorney Brian Gallagher and others have also all endorsed plans for the regional facility.
From a cost perspective, county Chief Financial Officer David Bulzoni — who said earlier this year that Lackawanna experienced a 148% increase in juvenile detention costs from 2023-25 — has described it as a favorable alternative to the status quo and the prohibitively expensive prospect of the county reestablishing its own detention center here.
Explaining how the collaborative came about, Jeffers said in February that the near-fatal shooting of Scranton police Detective Kyle Gilmartin in early 2024 and the broader challenges of youth and gang violence it illuminated reinvigorated county efforts on the juvenile detention front that had begun under the prior county administration. Officials originally explored restoring an in-county detention option, including the less-than-ideal potential of housing of juvenile detainees in a dedicated area of the Lackawanna County Prison, but ultimately pursued the regional approach after the state encouraged such collaboration.
The county’s letter to members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly — the state House and Senate — says state support is “essential to making this regional initiative possible” and urges “prompt consideration” of the full $25 million investment collectively sought by the five partner counties.
“This proposal represents a practical, collaborative, regional, and fiscally responsible solution to a statewide challenge,” the letter concludes. “We welcome the opportunity to discuss the project further with members of the General Assembly and (the Shapiro) Administration.”