The state broke its promise to jailed youth. We’ll all pay for it

When 43 young men living at the Green Hill juvenile lockup were abruptly handcuffed and sent to state prison last month, lots of people surely assumed they were the worst of the worst — unrepentant and irredeemable.

After all, the state Department of Children, Youth and Families argued that conditions at Green Hill were so dangerous they had no choice. The atmosphere was a tinderbox about to explode, officials said. To get control they needed fewer inmates.

These guys, all convicted felons in their early 20s, had been granted the chance to live at a juvenile facility because Washington legislators like to think of themselves as progressive. And progressive thinking says correctional policies should follow brain science that shows young people’s neurobiology is still developing — that is, malleable — until age 25. This plasticity means youths can be influenced, for good or ill, in ways older people cannot.

For that reason, in 2018 the state passed a law known as “Juvenile Rehabilitation to 25.” It allows young adults who previously would have been sent straight to prison to remain in youth lockups for intensive therapy and education, a true chance at rehabilitation.

Or so goes the promise.

Initially, the main question about JR to 25 was whether these young adults would be a destructive influence on the minors living with them in Washington’s juvenile facilities. Not to worry, state officials said. The older inmates would create a calming sense of order for the wild young ones.

Yet officials rounded up and removed those very guys, many of whom were indeed acting as mentors and leaders. Two dozen of those sent to state prison were pursuing degrees through Centralia College. Six were within months of earning their associate’s degrees, five were weeks away from a bachelor’s of applied science in management.

“They were the highlight of our teaching week,” said Joseph Burr, a Centralia English teacher who directs the education partnership with Green Hill. “Their perseverance was surprising to us, actually uplifting. We were seeing change, without a doubt.”

The Department of Children, Youth and Families was so excited about this progress that it invited reporters to watch 11 of these young men graduate in June. They were presented as success stories, their names inscribed on an honorary plaque, even though several still had a few final credits to earn this summer.

Then, without warning last month, they were hustled onto buses by a squadron of guards dressed in black. It was chaos. No one was allowed to pack belongings, medication or keepsakes. Not even a toothbrush. One young man had no shoes on. Another wasn’t permitted time to grab his glasses.

And the residents who’d been paraded in front of the media? Those within weeks of earning a college degree were simply unenrolled.

“Dear Resident,” read the six-sentence note each inmate received. “Please know this decision was made with your safety and well-being in mind …. Respectfully, Juvenile Rehabilitation leadership.”

“I found it hilarious,” said Aiden Swegles, 22, by phone from the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton. He was not laughing.

Locked up for the first time at 12, Swegles was in and out of county and state facilities for a decade before being sentenced to nine years for attempted murder.

He was not much interested in education when he landed at Green Hill in 2021. But Swegles began taking classes and quickly became inspired enough to complete his associate degree, then announced his intention to pursue a bachelor’s in sports physiology. The Phi Theta Kappa honor society inducted him. Upon his release in 2028, Swegles wants to pursue a doctorate. The commitment of professors at Centralia changed his life, he said.

Burr, the English teacher, describes a similar experience. The partnership with Green Hill began in 2020, with a single intro-to-college course and nine students. Soon, 15 had signed up, and the teachers from Centralia realized many could earn full degrees. Before the plug was pulled last month, Burr and his colleagues were teaching 40-50 Green Hill residents each quarter. “I think they realized this was the healthiest thing going,” Burr said. “College became the cool place to be.”

Mondrell Robertson, 24, was 15 credits away from earning a bachelor’s degree. He was 19 when convicted of murder and sentenced, initially, to the Monroe Correctional Complex. Though the pandemic shut down virtually all educational programming there, Robertson scavenged old textbooks and convinced a prison elder to teach him informally.

Under JR to 25, Robertson landed at Green Hill in 2020, where his hunger for learning was widely noted. He earned a 3.9 GPA and made the Centralia College President’s List with Highest Honors.

Then, on a Wednesday afternoon in July, a guard told him he had to unenroll. “They said it’s either that or F’s on your transcript, and we’re going to confiscate your laptop and books,” Robertson recalled.

Was there a discipline issue, I asked, some penalty he’d incurred? Robertson said two days before he had been part of a “peaceful protest” over being served cold meals. He assumed the abrupt end to his education was a punishment in response. Even so, it puzzled him.

“I couldn’t understand why they would jump to education as a means of discipline because the biggest driver of rehabilitation is education,” he said in a phone call from Shelton.

“School was my everything, the only thing keeping me sane over there, my only source of peace. So it felt like they were trying to hurt me.”

He wondered why no one said anything about the college cut-off, why it was treated as no big deal. Two days later, after guards stormed in to load Robertson and 42 others onto prison buses, the true agenda became clear.

“I worried about my mom — how would she know where I was? It felt damn near like being kidnapped, to be honest.”

The legal system appears to agree.

Last week, Thurston County Judge Anne Egeler tartly reprimanded a lawyer from the attorney general’s office, who’d defended the mass transfer to prison.

“Their rights have been invaded,” she said, demanding that all 43 young men be returned by this Friday.

DCYF, which runs Washington’s youth prisons and has now breached a settlement agreement it signed last year promising not to move youths without due process, requested an extension. No dice, said Judge Egeler.

Lawyers will continue to dicker. But it’s worth noting that wherever these young men do their time, each will be released in the next few years. And when they emerge, they will have less faith in the laws of a state that flouted them itself.