- (female announcer ) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- County Mayor Lee Harris, and Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris.

Thanks for being here again.

- Sure.

- Along with Juvenile Court Judge for Shelby County, Tarik Sugarmon, thank you for being here again.

- Thank you.

I appreciate it.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We'll talk, you know, primarily about certainly juvenile justice, and the kind of battle, the fight, the disagreement over the detention center right now.

We'll try to get some other issues that are on both your plates.

I do wanna start though, with the news of the week, the biggest news of the week for many of our viewers certainly, which was the firing of Marie Feagins.

And we'll just spend a minute on it.

And I'll start with you, County Mayor Harris, your take on what the board did, was that a good move?

Where do things stand?

I mean, to be clear, the county mayor doesn't have a say over who the superintendent is.

A lot of money runs through county government, but just your take on the situation.

- Well, my take right now is that we've gotta move forward as a community.

I mean, this is Thursday as we sit here and record.

- Yeah.

- And most often I hear people talk about focusing on the children as a priority.

And if we're really gonna do that, we can't reminisce about what happened early this week.

We gotta turn the page.

With Memphis and Shelby County Schools, we've got a lot of things coming up that are really critically important right now.

We've got funding for Frayser High School, and we've got a budget season which is right upon us.

And so I'm hopeful that we'll all be able to look forward at this point.

I supported Marie Feagins.

I was hopeful that they would've found a path to compromise.

That didn't happen.

But at this point, we've gotta turn the page, and we've gotta focus back on the kids.

- And have you worked with the interim Superintendent Richmond in the past?

I imagine, in some ways?

- Well, he's, the good news is he is from Memphis.

He spent his career here.

And so he can hit the ground running, with respect to the Frayser High School, which is a major project that everyone's heard a whole lot about at this point.

He's actually from the Frayser community.

And so no one has a real interest in seeing that project come off successfully, more than Dr. Richmond.

We've exchanged communications over the course of this week, and we'll be getting together very, very soon.

- And let me, again, I don't know that I want your, it'd be unfair to ask a judge there, you know, their opinion of a political situation.

But your office does intersect with Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

I mean, it doesn't, you know, people sitting at this table, in the comment section of The Daily Memphian, you know, elsewhere, you know, sort of, we want kids in school, not in juvenile court.

- Exactly.

- But sometimes those things intersect.

Your take on what's going on over there.

Does it interrupt what you're trying to do as the juvenile court judge?

- No, it doesn't.

In fact, when we came to office, we were working with an interim superintendent at the time, Antonio Williams.

And the relationship we've had with, of course, with our schools has been a good relationship.

We've improved our, addressing the truancy problem.

We got our numbers down.

When we came in truancy cases were not being handled by the court.

We stood up.

- Where were they being handled?

- Well, they were referred- - This was two, you're two years- - to the court.

- and some months in office.

- Yeah, but during Covid the court wasn't hearing those cases.

- Gotcha.

- And so they had a backlog of several thousand cases.

We worked that down and found out with some of the core issues and problems our families are dealing with, and again, we serve the same constituent base as Memphis and Shelby County Schools does.

And so it's in our best interest to make sure we deal with the truancy, make sure the parents are properly resourced, make sure the children have the best opportunity at getting an education in our public school system.

And working with the school system is important between the juvenile court as well as Memphis City Schools Memphis and Shelby County schools.

I'm so used to saying Memphis City schools.

- No, Yeah, I understand.

And before we go to Bill, and we'll get to more of the issues we're here for, stay with that relationship.

That backlog is down to what now?

And what, for someone who is truant, I mean, are they spending a night in the youth detention center?

Are they on probation?

Like what happens with truancy when someone, where's the backlog, and what typically happens with someone when they come to you and they've been truant?

- Well, it had been a backlog.

We worked it down.

In fact, we had a truancy clinic coming out of the 2023 school year.

There was some, at that point, eight hundred cases that were still outstanding.

That's down, that was down from 2,000 that were, even after we had gotten a report on what cases that are self-corrected, and what cases were still in a truant status.

And in most instances, a lot of families weren't able to navigate the system of, process of enrolling their children.

Didn't have access to the internet, didn't have the ability to travel to pick up records, shot records, all of the things you'd need in order to get your child registered.

We worked with the school system in making sure that got done.

And of the 840 something cases that we had still outstanding when we did the clinic, we resolved about 48% of those cases.

- When you've got a, last question on this, just 'cause people ask me, and I'm sure they ask you, and when crime is on people's minds, for young people who are chronically truant, chronically, it isn't those sort of more bureaucratic and administrative things which are real.

What are those steps you take with a child?

- Okay.

Heretofore, before my administration, it was an automatic referral to the District Attorney's Office for prosecution for basically child neglect, educational neglect.

We worked out a process that gave the parent an opportunity to self-correct.

And so the system will give a notice to the parent that the child is truant, we'll try to address that directly with the school, and through Memphis and Shelby County Schools.

If it then continues, we will consider it D&N, Dependency Neglect, a filing petition of educational neglect.

If it continues after then, then it results in referral to the District Attorney's office.

So we try to work a process where the parent can actually self-correct, and we try to get address the problem, whether it's registration, whether it's access to computer systems, going on the internet, travel vouchers to go take the child to the doctor and get shot records.

We try to work with the families to make sure we address the problems and impediments, but then if the child is still chronically truant, we have to deal with the parent.

- I keep saying gonna go to Bill but one last question.

How often do you have to, at this point, go to filing something that goes to the D&N?

- Haven't had to yet.

- Okay.

- We have a truancy docket, and we handle it twice a week.

And we address those concerns.

And we haven't had very few cases come back that far down the road where they need a referral to District Attorney's office.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Bill Dries.

- Let's talk about detention for juveniles.

What is the current state of the agreement between the court and the Sheriff's Office?

- Well, - Do you want to- - Yeah, sure.

- go first?

- So the juvenile court judge and I have been working really, really hard to try to get a proposal together that could effectuate the transfer of the facility from the sheriff to the mayor's administration, particularly corrections.

And so that process is ongoing.

We've gotta hear from the sheriff to make sure that he agrees to the process.

But we've proposed that to the sheriff along with the timeline.

I mean, if the sheriff agrees, then that means that corrections, and the mayor's administration would take over all the domains of responsibility on an interim basis, and subject to the juvenile court judge's authority.

And so those include things like the transportation, where you wanna make sure that the kids can get to the courtrooms.

Facilities maintenance, the landscaping, the yards.

It's a multi-acre property.

It has to be maintained.

The staffing, the policies and procedures, and also the onsite programming.

So a lot of that programming right now is housed within Hope Academy.

They're our partner with Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and they provide the educational services for the Kids Center in the detention.

But there are opportunities for additional programming.

The juvenile court judge is, is prepared to take on some of their responsibility for additional onsite programming.

So that's where that sits.

So we have the proposal out there, we're ready to begin the work.

In fact, we've already started some of that work, and we're waiting to hear from the sheriff that he wants to get outta that facility, and transfer the facility.

- And the original deadline was the end, calendar end of 2024.

What's the timeline like now?

- Well, let me speak to that.

The original deadline the sheriff requested-- - Yeah.

- Was the end of 2024.

As you know, the sheriff was budgeted for the 2024 fiscal year to run detention all the way through to the end of fiscal year, which is June 30th.

And then, of course we were displaced out of our building.

We thought it'd be a couple of weeks, and it ended up being close to eight months.

During that time period, there was no transport from detention to the juvenile court building.

And the sheriff's decision not to resume transport after we were back into the building has caused some significant problems with our docketing.

There's one courtroom at the YJEC, and it's difficult to handle the delinquency cases, which covers about three or four different courtrooms on an average basis, as well as my 208 dockets, which are, which are the serious offenses that are being committed, alleged to be committed.

But in any event, the timeline that the sheriff wanted was not allowing for the fact that we needed to have a budget put in place for us to run the detention center, as well as arrange for transport.

And I thought that it, when we got to the end of the fiscal year when the mayor had sent notice, excuse not the mayor, the sheriff had sent notice to us that he was gonna relieve the detention center, it was at that time that we realized we needed to take action to try to preserve the status quo as it was.

- So you're kind of on standby with the arrangement until the sheriff signs off on the thing that you've worked out?

- Right.

With the proposed MOU, yes.

- Right.

Right.

Corrections center guards handling juveniles, is this something they'll need more training for?

- No, that's exactly right.

So for us to take over the facility on an interim basis, is not something that can be switched on overnight.

We think this is at least a six-month process.

And as it sits, as we wait to hear back from the sheriff, we believe the earliest we could go into the facility full steam would be October 1st.

And one of the things that has to happen first is, as you say, the current correction officers that are under the mayor's administration would have to undergo training.

And we would train all our people to make sure that we could fill holes where necessary, and not just train a subset of those officers.

So that'll take some time.

And obviously that curriculum, and that training process has to be approved by the state.

And so we will do that.

The good side of this though is, if this proposal is approved by the sheriff, and he makes plans to X the facility as he's requested, we'll be able to resolve the litigation, and keep our legal costs down, and have a path for having the facilities run, you know, under the authority of the juvenile court judge until some other solution or options present themselves.

So we feel pretty optimistic about it, but yeah, they would all have to be trained.

But we feel pretty good that we could effectuate that kind of training, and get the state approval for that training.

And we've already started some of that process.

In fact, you know, a lot of my people are taking the tours of the facility, trying to understand the layout of the facility.

And I've already been in contact with the state to try to, you know, get the required approvals.

- Right.

And to be clear, this is a facility that is on Old Getwell Road?

- Yeah, the juvenile detention facility, the Youth Justice and Education Center is on Old Getwell Road.

It's recently renovated, so it's brand new facility in a lot of ways.

And the facility that currently is under the mayor's administration is at Shelby Farms.

So we have a corrections facility at Shelby Farms.

We've got about 1,100 inmates there.

They are adult inmates.

And so, as you say, we have adult inmates, state inmates, and we have federal detainees.

And as you say, the management of that kind of campus is very different from the management of a youth facility, and would require very different training and specialized skills.

But we think we're in a position to do it.

- Right.

And Your Honor, what additionally is involved for juvenile court?

What would the court be doing that it's not doing now on this specific task?

- Well, when you refer to what we're not doing, we're doing everything that we have been doing pre- being displaced out of our building.

- Okay.

- Our docket stood back up.

The problem is when a youth is detained out at YJEC, we have to have court conducted there.

And there's only one courtroom.

At 616, we're able to do several delinquency dockets over an array of different services.

And a lot of times, because of the fact that we are required to do our dockets there at the YJEC, because that's where the youth are being housed, I have the 208 dockets.

So if I, for instance, schedule a transfer hearing, but we're required to do a detention hearing, if a youth is picked up, we've gotta give them a hearing within 72 hours, the same courtroom has to be utilized.

So a lot of times I have to shut down a transfer hearing, continue it to another date, because they've gotta come at 1:00 and handle that docket.

And we're talking about delinquency cases, which cover three dockets, as well as detention, which is an additional docket.

And it's problematic.

It's caused docket compression, and it is doing us a disservice, because we could probably have expedited the disposition of a child's case to the point where they can be back out in the community, have resources in place, adequate supervision within the household, but that's not going on.

- So it's better for you to have, transportation is critical- - Absolutely.

- To this, to get them to your facility on Adams so that you can do the full range, and do more than one thing at a time.

- That's correct.

And you also gotta understand there are other community partners that work with us who provide services these children need, and they're put in place there.

We don't have adequate administrative space to handle that wide array of services out of one courtroom with a small number of administrative offices.

It has to happen at 616.

- Was the sheriff's decision on this a surprise to you?

- He had asked before, if, whenever we were, if we would consider taking it over.

And then we had some discussions back and forth going into the new detention center, whether he would have adequate staffing.

He assured us he would, he said he would send over a compliment of about nine additional detention officers at the onset of taking over the Youth Justice and Education Center.

And then we had a number of, well we hired CJJA, which the Consortium of Juvenile Justice Administrators, to give us some technical information.

They will be assisting us once we do start to transition into the Youth Justice and Education Center.

But there was not enough information being given from the Sheriff's Office to make an informed decision by CJJA.

We continue to work with CJJA.

In fact, we're working with the county to try to get a contract to have them give us technical assistance on our transition into the center, what we need, training, giving us things like advice on what should go into a curriculum, and trainings officers, as well as the type of programs we need to have in place.

So, it's important that we work and communicate with the sheriff.

And we're still open to doing that, and we're hoping the sheriff will come to the table, and work with us on that goal.

- And one more point, mayor.

What do the dollars look like on this, and what pots do the dollars come out of?

- So we're, so we're at the start of the conversation.

As juvenile court judge, a lot of that is gonna be informed by, or at least the baseline is gonna be informed by what the sheriff tells us.

So we are waiting on information, first as I already put it, for agreement to the general contours, the timeframe that we put forward, and the transition from the Sheriff's Office to corrections.

But in addition to that, we do need information about what kind of budget, in other words, the number of positions, and the budget behind those positions that the sheriff is willing to put up for us to go into the facility.

Because there's certain positions that the sheriff currently holds that are associated with the campus, but we don't know what those are.

We don't know how much budget is behind those positions.

And we need the sheriff to kind of volunteer that information.

And so once we get that information, then we'll have a baseline, and from, you know, our perch, we'll be able to build a real budget around what additionally is needed.

And you're right, it may be, it may be very, very costly, but I am pretty confident that once I get that baseline, as I go through the budget processes, as I normally do, that we'll be able to build a budget that accomplishes all of these different domains from the transportation, to the on-site programming, to the facilities maintenance and so forth.

- About how many people every year, young people, children come through juvenile court?

And let's focus for a second on criminal.

'Cause I know there's all kinds of custody issues and so on that get, shouldn't be forgotten, child support and so on that come through your office.

But in terms of criminal, something that might involve detention, how many young people are we talking about?

- Now, again, you have to distinguish- - I just, really, is it hundreds?

Is it tens of thousands?

It's probably something- - No it's not tens of thousands.

- Yeah, it's somewhere in between there.

- It's a few hundred.

I'm saying 600 or 700 in terms of serious offenses.

- Okay.

- And then there are some that don't even touch our system, those that are given summons in lieu of arrest, and often those are diverted.

They go to the Resource Center that the county has.

And if they determine that this matter should be diverted because of the nature of the offense, it's not that serious, that child would be diverted from our system, so we would not know.

But in many instances where it's a serious offense, we're talking about 600 or 700 on an annual basis.

And let me say this.

Of those that we've had that are first time presenting to the juvenile system, we have had a very, very, very low recidivism rate-- - Recidivism, meaning they come back to the system.

- Come back to the system.

- And they're not.

- We're talking about 2, 3%.

- Yeah.

Even in-- - Serious offenses.

- Yeah.

Serious offenses.

You've been in two-plus years.

And you know, you came at a time crime across the country was spiking.

It was spiking here.

Crime is down generally, you know, twenty percent I think is the number in violent crime.

There was some number that of auto thefts, which had a lot of attention through the peak of crime.

And I think MPD said, give or take for 2024, there were about 950 car thefts in 2024, about 9% were done by people 18 and under.

So, there's a lot of attention on it, that the media puts on it, I think for lots of reasons.

It's sad, it's scary.

It's disorienting I think for a lot of people.

Two and a half years into this, what works in terms of lowering that recidivism rate, and keeping it going down?

- Putting attention on what these youth are facing in our community.

I was hearing a report yesterday on one of the news stations, that the referral of children in our school system to mental health services is way up.

Coming outta the pandemic, we had a significant number of children who were disconnected.

That is, they are not in school, not in a work training program, and not in a job.

So we've gotta address those problems.

And that's one of the things we're doing in our court system.

We are actually working with Southwest, and some of the other technical schools.

I want to mention Olympic Staffing.

Trey Carter had started that, along with the Pew Institute.

And they have a contract now, a grant to train youth 16 to 18 years old, or 19 years old, I think they'll take up to, on logistics, on transportation jobs.

And we are trying to be proactive in preparing children that are not necessarily gonna go to college, but need to have a good working job, to direct them to resources that train them in the technical skills.

- For those hundreds of kids, and it's a good reminder that it's hundreds.

It seems like more, but that's still too many.

I mean if I can say that awkwardly.

- Well then these other offenses, you're probably looking at a couple thousand.

- Yeah.

And okay, so shoplifting, or more minor offenses.

- Property crimes, burglaries, - Property crimes, burglaries.

For the violent offenses, I mean this has been a topic as long as we've been doing the show, of this whole question of transferring them to adult court.

There are a couple things going on there.

There's a lot of momentum towards a blended sentencing.

I don't know where the status of that is.

- It's become effective January 1st.

- Okay.

So let's, what is blended sentencing, and what does it mean for your office?

- It is an extended jurisdiction.

And a lot of, the downside of it, we hadn't really anticipated.

We're looking at what the consequences are gonna be to our numbers.

For instance, a 16 or 17-year-old picks up a carjacking case, or a murder case, murder one, murder two, or attempt thereof, they're a direct transfer.

So, - To adult court.

- To adult court.

- Okay.

- Where the only thing the juvenile court does is make a determination of probable cause, whether the offense was probably, whether there was a crime that probably occurred, whether you're probably the person that committed it.

And then after that, we don't go into the other factors, like the child's prior record, whether or not the transferable to a institution for the developmentally disabled or mentally ill, and what their community factors are.

And if they've had any prior attempts through the juvenile court system at rehabilitation.

We don't go through that.

It's gonna a significant impact on our detention, and on the adult supervision, because, for instance, if a child commits a class A felony, or a criminal attempt murder, it would be a direct transfer.

Now if they are determined to be a serious youthful offender, that, if they commit another offense, adds on another three years if it's a class B felony, and another four years, if it's a class A.

Well, those people will be supervised in the adult system.

And, if they have to be detained in the adult detention, well prison, a penal farm, then it has to be sight and sound distance between them.

Even though they are technically an adult, they're still considered a youth because the original offense was in the juvenile system.

So it's a lot of things we have to work through.

- There was also a proposal, and I'll go back to Bill.

We just have five minutes left here, but DA Mulroy was on the show a month, two months ago talking about how, and he's been advocating for, and others have advocating for when setting bail, that the judges, judicial commissioners have some idea of prior offenses from a juvenile.

Right now, they don't know that there, maybe this young person has committed 10 prior carjackings.

He would like for the judicial commissioners, the judges to know that.

But he said he worked out an arrangement with you, that sometimes he can see into that.

- We haven't worked out the arrangement.

I'm working on it.

I'm receptive to the idea, but it has to be thoughtful.

I'm not going to allow a youth's information to go into the adult system unrestricted.

It has to be requested by a judge, or pretrial services, which is under the jurisdiction of the judges.

And it has to be germane to the charge that youth is facing as an adult.

And so I've been talking with the Juvenile Justice Judges Association, I've gotten an opinion written by the District Attorney's Association saying that, there's a statute that allows us to do that.

We have to work out a framework and an understanding of how that process is gonna work.

- So is the, is the concern, so if the prior offense is this person has carjacked with a weapon 10 times, I would imagine you're more inclined to want that information to go over to the judge, because it's, if they've been picked up again for a carjacking or some sort of violent offense?

- Well, it's not a decision whether I want that.

I think they're entitled to that information.

- Okay.

- And it certainly, it informs the decision of the person setting bail and bond.

- Is the other extreme examples, 'cause I'm being, just to make it simple here.

They've been arrested for shoplifting once or twice, and now they're, they're over here, and it's not a serious offense.

Is that where you have this latitude to say, "Well, that really doesn't need to be, that information does not need to be shared."

- Yeah, and shoplifting- - It's a minor offense.

- Is one of those, is a minor offense.

It would not be shared.

It's more your more serious offenses it would be.

- Bill, we have just a few minutes left here.

- Before you were mayor, you were a University of Memphis Law School professor.

So what's your thinking on this?

Seeing prior Juvenile- - Well, you know, I'm probably more cautious than the conversation is right now.

And I think the, I think the judge is right that it has, there has to be a framework in place.

But I'm really cautious about using juvenile offenses against juveniles.

I mean, just on the face of it, I think that juvenile offenses generally be expunged, and juveniles, you know, get a chance, they get a chance at adulthood.

And so, I mean, I know that goes against popular opinion and so forth, and all the things.

But the reality is, I think these juveniles get a chance to become adults, and get to be judged on their adulthood.

And so I think there should be, you know, some protections for juveniles who have juvenile offenses.

- Does blended sentencing complicate what we talked about earlier, training corrections officers to work with juvenile offenders?

- Well the problem there for us just operationally, is that it is likely to produce a larger universe of potential people that could be housed in one of our facilities, the youth facility and so forth.

And so we just have to figure out whether or not we have the capacity, facility wise, to house an increased population.

So it's just another thing where the population could grow with blended sentencing, because authority of the judge with respect to some of these offenses would grow.

And right now if you look at our juvenile youth detention facility, there's over a hundred kids in there.

And I think most of us who are inside of this process would say that's probably too many.

And our, probably our goal is to have fewer than a hundred kids in that facility.

So we've got too many already.

And we know the cost of housing a juvenile in a facility is sky high, right?

The state's cost of housing a juvenile for a year is over a hundred thousand dollars.

And so, the cost of that is just, is extremely high.

And so those are just the practical considerations.

- Right.

And Your Honor, I was unclear.

A juvenile who becomes an adult while they're being detained as a juvenile, do they go to the correction center adult section?

- No, they would stay in the juvenile system.

- They stay with that.

- The date of the offense determines how, whether it stays in our system or goes to the adult system.

- All right.

- The age, rather.

- We had so much more to talk to you about, and we ran outta time, but we really appreciate it.

We'll try to get you back, both of you back on.

We'll also reach out to the Sheriff, Floyd Bonner, to talk about this and other issues around public safety and criminal justice.

But that is all the time we have this week.

Thanks very much for joining us.

If you missed any of the episode, you can get the full episode at WKNO, at Daily Memphian, or at YouTube.

And you can get prior episodes, DA Mulroy, Brent Taylor, London Lamar, Mayor, Paul Young some months ago now, but still relevant information.

So that's all at WKNO.org, Daily Memphian, YouTube.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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