{"id":251934,"date":"2026-07-25T16:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T16:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/251934\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T16:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T16:40:12","slug":"berks-officials-approve-deal-with-4-other-counties-to-open-youth-detention-center-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/251934\/","title":{"rendered":"Berks officials approve deal with 4 other counties to open youth detention center"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like many counties across the state, Berks County has been struggling for years to address a severe shortage of space at youth detention centers.<\/p>\n

The situation has left the county scrambling, sometimes even resorting to having young offenders spend weekends inside the youth probation office.<\/p>\n

To address the issue, Berks has partnered with Dauphin, Delaware, Lackawanna and Lehigh counties<\/a> to reopen and operate its former youth detention center on County Welfare Road in Bern Township that closed its doors in 2012.<\/p>\n

And on Thursday, the Berks commissioners made that partnership official.<\/p>\n

The commissioners unanimously approved a resolution to enter into an intergovernmental cooperation agreement with those four counties to establish what will be known as the Keystone Regional Youth Detention Center.<\/p>\n

Chief Operations Officer Kevin Barnhardt told the board that Dauphin, Delaware and Lackawanna county officials signed the agreement this month, and that Lehigh County is poised to sign the deal in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe meet monthly with the other counties, and we\u2019re really going to press forward to have a real opportunity for these children who need to be incarcerated to keep the streets safe as well as keep them safe,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is a tremendous shortage in beds in this area of the commonwealth for these children so to come together with these other counties is pretty darn amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Commissioners Chairman Christian Leinbach said it is important to keep in mind that this is about minors who are involved in violent crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not talking about shoplifting \u2014 these are violent crimes,\u201d Leinbach said. \u201cSo this is good government having five counties come together to do something jointly that likely one county couldn\u2019t afford to do by itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also on Thursday, the board adopted a resolution authorizing an agreement between the county and the September 11th National Memorial Trail Alliance<\/a> for the installation of signs on property owned by the county to assist visitors, bicyclists and walkers in navigating the trail.<\/p>\n

The course is a 1,500-mile network of trails and roads connecting the three national memorials dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 attacks: the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, the Pentagon Memorial in Virginia and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City.<\/p>\n

Leinbach noted the portion of the trail that runs through Berks follows a path that includes Stonecliffe Recreation Area, the Union Canal Trail, Gring\u2019s Mill Recreation Area, the Berks County Heritage Center and Blue Marsh.<\/p>\n

The board also adopted a resolution authorizing the county to execute a memorandum of understanding with the IM Able Foundation that allows the organization to assemble and maintain a shed at the Berks County Heritage Center that will house ambulatory bicycles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like many counties across the state, Berks County has been struggling for years to address a severe shortage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,2376,212,201,433,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-251934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-breaking-news","tag-delaware-county","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251934","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=251934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}