Good morning.

I am Ward Five Councilmember Zachary Parker, Chair of the Council's Committee on Youth Affairs.

Today is May 7th, 2026.

We are meeting in room 123 of the John A.

Wilson Building and virtually via Zoom.

The time is now 9 46 a.m.

And I am calling to order this budget hearing for fiscal year 2027 for the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services.

I want to thank my colleagues that joined us last week for our public roundtable focused on providing alternatives to young people so that they are not gathering in these team takeovers.

And this today's oversight hearing is an extension of that work, thinking about how do we promote the well-being of young people in the care of DRS.

If you are joining us to testify online, please make sure you to accept the upgrade to panelists' offer when committee staff send it to you.

We will begin with public witnesses and then transition to our government witness.

Public witnesses will have five minutes if they are representing an organization and three minutes if they are speaking for themselves.

Government witnesses, I will have 10 minutes to speak with multiple rounds expected.

Today I am pleased to hear testimony from members of the community, advocates, and our agency partners about the mayor's budget for fiscal year 2027.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from DRS about what it believes it needs to be successful over the next year.

I'm pleased to see the following.

This budget includes very significant increases to the capital budget for more bids at the youth services center and new beginnings.

But questions remain as to what investments there will be for more than just housing units.

An essential part of this is ensuring that DRS can provide comprehensive reentry services so that our youth have the tools they need to exit DRS and transition safely back into the community.

As we turn to the budget, I'm particularly interested in making sure that D R S is providing youth with career coaching and job application guidance as part of that pre-reentry process.

The Road Act is the district's primary legislative tool to battle juvenile recidivism.

It requires that every child at DRS have a specially tailored plan for rehabilitation and for their transition back to their homes.

During this hearing, I hope to learn more about the agency's work to come into compliance with that landmark legislation.

And I will just note also that I know there's, as I mentioned at the outset, great public interest in how do we prevent more of our young people ending up in the care of DRS.

And so I will continue to think about how do we prevent more young people entering that pipeline and what investments generally we should be making even outside of the agency.

And so with that, I'm going to start and turn to our public witnesses for the day.

First, we have Eduardo Freer from the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative.

Anya Kreider with Disability Rights DC, Magnalina Chungis, with the Council for Court Excellence.

Dominique Moore with Life Rain.

I am not seeing Dominique Moore, so we will go to Penelope, Spain with open city etiquette.

I feel like you've spent a lot of time at the Wilson Building lately.

With that, you may begin.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chairperson Parker.

My name is Eduardo Ferrer, I'm award five resident, an associate professor at the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Clinic and Policy Director at the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Initiative.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today regarding the proposed budget for DYRS for fiscal year 27.

Specifically, I asked this committee to eliminate the capital funds allocated over the next four years to expanding the number of jail and prison beds for children in the district, and to restore the cuts to operating funds for case management, economic opportunities development, youth engagement, and community outreach.

As the chairperson well knows, DYRS's proposed capital budget for FY27 includes $29 million over four years to expand the number of housing units at the Youth Services Center by 10%, and the number of housing units at New Beginnings by 50%.

Moreover, DYRS's proposed operating budget seeks to increase DYRS's residential and secure facilities budget by a combined 14 million dollars, while cutting its community-based services budget by over $4 million, a nearly 50% decrease, and also decreasing the investments in case management, educational and vocational opportunities, and violence prevention services.

Now, first, expanding the number of beds at YSC and New Beginnings over the next four years and allocating significantly more money to residential and secure facility lines in the next year is unnecessary.

While YSC has been near or uh at capacity since about January 2024, it was well under capacity for the six years prior to 2024 and has been mostly below or at capacity for the past few months, including being 10% under capacity as of yesterday morning.

Moreover, the overcrowding and associated ills observed at YSC in 2024 and 2025 were in large part a function of DYRS's dysfunction.

Specifically DYRS's failure to meaningfully and timely address the awaiting placement population held at YSC and its staffing issues.

Indeed, for much of 2024 and 2025, the awaiting placement population hovered between 20 and 30 young people and reached a high as high as 41 youth.

Even as of yesterday, when YSE was under capacity, 19 youth, which represented over 20% of the youth at YSC, were youth who are awaiting placement.

As a result, recent and historical data combined with the central role that the awaiting placement population played in overcrowding demonstrates that it's not necessary to build additional jail and prison beds for our children or significantly increase the residential and secure facilities budget next year.

Instead, we need to actually address the awaiting placement population and staffing issues.

Second, adding 40 new hardware secure housing units for youth will cost the district significantly more than the 29 million dollars in capital expenditures because it will structurally change DYRS's operating budget moving forward.

More housing units are just are not just a one-time fixed cost.

Once more housing units are built, DYRS will need more youth development representatives, medical staff, food, clothes, electricity, water, cleaning staff, et cetera, to be able to run those units.

Moreover, this increase in operating costs would come at a time when the cost of secure placement per day at DYRS has already ballooned over 50% between FY22 and FY25, increasing from $130,000 per day in FY22 to nearly $200,000 per day in FY25, or nearly $73 million per year, which as the council member knows is about the same as DPR's entire budget.

As a result, given the proposal calls for building 10% more housing units at YSC and 50% more housing units at New Beginnings, we can expect the associated operating costs to be substantial.

Given this administration is in its final months and the tightness of the FY27 budget, now is not the time to commit to the significant sunk cost and set DYRS's budget on a new trajectory that represent that out that represents the outgoing mayor's philosophy and priorities.

Third, by spending heavily on detention and incarceration, while cutting direct investment in youth families and communities, DYRS proposed FY27 operating and capital budgets moves the district further away from what works.

Detaining and incarcerating children does not promote rehabilitation or reduce recidivism.

To the contrary, detaining children makes it more likely that a young person will recidivate, drop out of school, struggle to find gainful employment, makes it more likely that they'll end up in the adult system, and that they'll suffer lifelong collateral consequences, including poor physical health and adulthood, worsening of existing physical and mental health problems, and a shorter life expectancy.

This is not the path we should be committing to in this moment, especially when we know that DYRS does not provide rehabilitative services at YSC by design and is struggling mightily to provide meaningful rehabilitative services and new beginnings.

In sum, this budget seeks to bind future mayoral administrations to the same reactive, ineffective, and harmful carceral approach to developing our young people and promoting safe communities that has undergirded the current administration's philosophy and failures.

Now is the time to turn the page, not ingrain this approach into our budgets for year to come.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and I'm available to answer questions.