SCRANTON \u2014 Officials touted Tuesday a juvenile detention partnership between Lackawanna and three other counties as the best and most cost-effective option available to address a \u201ccrisis\u201d marked by a statewide shortage of detention beds.<\/p>\n
Commissioners Thom Welby, Bill Gaughan and Chris Chermak then unanimously approved a 20-year intergovernmental agreement formalizing the partnership between Lackawanna, Berks, Dauphin and Lehigh counties. Under the pact, each of the four partners will have guaranteed access to 10 juvenile detention beds at a Berks County facility targeted for reopening in summer or fall 2027.<\/p>\n
Berks County will staff and operate the revived facility, which will house both men and women, with all four counties sharing operational and other costs. Lackawanna\u2019s estimated share, about $2.6 million annually, will be defrayed by state reimbursements.<\/p>\n
The long-term arrangement among the cooperating counties \u2014 endorsed Tuesday by Lackawanna County Judges James Gibbons and Frank Ruggiero, District Attorney Brian Gallagher, the commissioners and others, including Berks County officials \u2014 comes after Lackawanna County stopped in 2018 housing juvenile offenders at the male-only Scranton detention center it leased from Lackawanna College. The county has since relied on contracts with out-of-county facilities, including one as far away as Ohio, absorbing rising costs while grappling with surging demand for detention beds in a landscape with fewer and fewer available.<\/p>\n
Between 2006 and 2021, 15 juvenile detention facilities closed in Pennsylvania and only 13 remained open in the state as of 2023, per figures county Chief Financial Officer David Bulzoni shared Tuesday. The county, which placed juvenile offenders in five different contracted detention centers in the 2024-25 fiscal year, experienced a 148% increase in juvenile detention costs from 2023 to 2025, Bulzoni said.<\/p>\n
In terms of Lackawanna\u2019s long-term finances, Bulzoni described the multicounty initiative as a favorable alternative to the status quo marked by escalating costs. It\u2019s also a favorable alternative to the county establishing, staffing, maintaining and operating its own juvenile detention center, which Bulzoni described as cost prohibitive.<\/p>\n
Access to the Berks County facility also should help curtail overtime and other costs for the county sheriff\u2019s office tasked with transporting juvenile offenders to contracted detention facilities, most of which are farther away than Berks County, Sheriff Mark McAndrew said. His deputies conducted more than 120 transports in 2025, including about 25 that were overnight trips, he said, noting each transport requires two deputies.<\/p>\n
Officials praised the partnership for nonfinancial reasons, too, with Ruggiero calling Tuesday a \u201cmonumental day in juvenile justice\u201d in the county while noting the design of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate offenders.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith our fellow counties that have partnered with us and we\u2019ve partnered with them, there (is) strength in numbers, because this facility is not only going to handle the detention-related needs,\u201d the juvenile court judge said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to also handle, probably more importantly, the treatment-related needs which are essential to the concepts of balanced and restorative justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berks County Deputy Chief Operations Officer Larry Medaglia said educational, licensed social worker and counseling services will be available at the reopened detention center, as well as medical, dental and mental health services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea here for juveniles is to get them out back into the community and be productive citizens, and we think this is the best way to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In terms of public safety, including at local schools, Gallagher, the Lackawanna County district attorney, touted the Berks County facility as a prospective resource for detaining violent juvenile offenders. A lack of available beds at contracted facilities sometimes prevents the detention of juveniles who warrant it, such as those charged with violent crimes, he and others said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you the amount of times where we\u2019ve had someone pleading guilty to a violent crime in juvenile court, or who was arrested on a Friday night, and on Monday morning they\u2019re in school with an ankle bracelet on because there\u2019s no detention beds,\u201d Gallagher said. \u201cAnd we have superintendents calling the police chief and calling my office saying \u2018why is this kid in school? He just robbed somebody, he just hurt somebody.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I can tell you on behalf of all law enforcement, specifically the chiefs of police, we are urging support and urging that the commissioners approve this regional partnership,\u201d he continued, referencing the mental health and other services the facility will provide. \u201cSo we\u2019re trying to make these kids whole. It\u2019s not just detention, which is what we had when I started in the juvenile unit over a decade ago. \u2026 Any naysayer, anyone who says we shouldn\u2019t do this, has no clue what they\u2019re talking about and hasn\u2019t been awake for the last five years here in Lackawanna County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioners Welby, Gaughan and Chermak, who needed no convincing, echoed praise for the partnership before approving the agreement.<\/p>\n
Prior to the vote, Ruggiero said he thinks the partnership will be a \u201cmodel for regionalization and how to do it\u201d moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are giving our young people an opportunity today to get their lives back, and their families\u2019 lives back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 Officials touted Tuesday a juvenile detention partnership between Lackawanna and three other counties as the best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[279,5871,57874,48930,57873,57872,52519,57871,16368,572,57234,6402,178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-123186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-berks","9":"tag-brian-gallagher","10":"tag-detention-beds","11":"tag-detention-centers","12":"tag-frank-ruggiero","13":"tag-juvenile-detention","14":"tag-juvenile-justice","15":"tag-juvenile-offenders","16":"tag-lackawanna","17":"tag-lackawanna-college","18":"tag-lehigh-counties","19":"tag-partnership","20":"tag-scranton","21":"tag-scranton-headlines","22":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}