Scott County to open new Youth Justice Rehabilitation Center

Scott County plans to open its new, larger Youth Justice and Rehabilitation Center soon into the new year.

County officials gave tours of the new facility and held a ceremony to commemorate the building’s completion on Tuesday.

The new center will have roughly twice the capacity of the current juvenile detention center on Fourth Street and will have space for meetings, school, recreation and programming.

The building, designed by Wold Architects and Engineers, emphasized incorporating natural lighting and cool colors like green and blue into the building.

Construction started on the facility at 4715 Tremont Ave. Davenport in October 2022.

County officials have touted the new YJRC as a modern replacement for an aging facility that was converted from a car dealership in 1980 to become a juvenile detention center.

“We’re excited to have a modern facility that provides seamless access to community-based diversion programs, as well as a more positive environment to teach how one’s actions cause harm to others, to take responsibility and to make restitution to the community,” Board of Supervisors Chair Ken Beck said. “This building will accommodate the needs for both education, programming, and safety, and it is located close to their homes.”

The new building will have more flexible meeting space for young people detained there to do school work and intervention programming.

It will also host dedicated space for the multi-government-funded Coordinated Assessment Program, which is run by nonprofit Family Resources and connects families with housing, food, health care and other resources. The county also runs programming such as the auto-theft accountability program, in which young first-time offenders who are accused of stealing a car meet with the owner of the car and work out a restoration plan.

County officials say the added number of beds will allow enough space to keep young people housed in the county where they have family and support structures and allows the county to separate the young people according to guidelines, rather than sending them hours away to open beds.

The current facility has an operational capacity of 14-16 people. The new building design has 40 beds, YJRC Director Jeremy Kaiser said. It will be licensed to operate 36 beds and county officials plans to staff 25 beds once it opens.

Kaiser said the center is currently hiring for about five new employees.

Currently, four young people from Scott County are being held out of county, Kaiser said. This year, the county has had as many as 10 residents placed in other facilities at one time, he said.

The original budget developed for the new center in 2022 was $31 million. So far, the county has put about $26.1 million toward construction costs and building equipment, paid for mostly by the county’s general fund tax dollars.

Crews are still working to outfit the building, but Kaiser said they are projected to come in under budget.

No American Rescue Plan Act funds were used in the YJRC portion, as was previously planned. But a portion of the county’s ARPA funds were dedicated to the additional space for general county government operations on a separate floor.

The new juvenile detention center’s size and funding sources were met with opposition in 2020 from national criminal justice organizations and the local NAACP, which said the facility will be too big for the county’s future needs.

Photos: Scott County Youth Justice Rehabilitation Center ribbon cutting ceremony

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