Mary Moriarty and Elliott Payne: There’s a system failure in a key area of juvenile justice

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As leaders in Hennepin County and Minneapolis focused on improving community safety, we are deeply concerned about the urgent crisis stemming from lack of appropriate out-of-home treatment options for young people with complex mental health needs. We are particularly concerned about children who are found not competent to stand trial by a judge because they are not capable of understanding the legal proceedings or assisting their lawyer. When a child is found not competent, their juvenile court case must be dismissed or suspended, as the Constitution requires.

There is a small group of children in our community who have been found not competent and therefore cannot have their needs addressed in the juvenile justice system, but whose behaviors are leading to significant harm to themselves and the broader community. The law requires that children who are not competent cannot be held in the juvenile detention center. But that does not mean that we should not address their critical needs. The lack of appropriate placements with the necessary resources and security to address their needs has created an unconscionable and unsustainable crisis.

Every day we see firsthand the impact of this crisis. Young people are released from the juvenile detention center to the community after a court finds them not competent and they quickly return to the high-risk behaviors that led to their previous arrest. Although we are talking about only a small number of children, the impact on their lives and the safety of our community is significant. Some children as young as 10 to 13 years old face upward of 50 case submissions as a result of this cycle of arrest, incompetency finding and release without appropriate placement.

Fundamentally, this is a system failure. We are grateful to see that Hennepin County is now stepping into leadership to address this issue by convening a work group to develop a plan to address placement options for county-connected children with complex needs in both the human services and juvenile justice systems (Hennepin County Board Resolution 24-0402). However, we cannot wait until April 2025 for a final report and recommendations.

This issue has been studied repeatedly over the last decades (Report to the Minnesota Legislature, Working Group on Youth Interventions, February 2024; Reimagining Residential Treatment, Hennepin County, 2022, and Juvenile Out-of-Home Placement — A Program Evaluation Report, Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor, January 1999), and what we need is clear: residential placements with varying levels of security in our community that are resourced and staffed to accept and successfully treat our young people with complex needs. We need urgent and immediate action to address this issue now.

Although we recognize that there are barriers, including licensing and funding, we urge this work group to act with urgency to implement solutions on these barriers instead of drafting another report studying the issue. And while we deeply value working collaboratively with our partners across the seven metro counties, the crisis in Hennepin County is acute and this work group must focus on immediate action in our community.

At this critical moment, we do not need to reinvent the wheel or study this issue again. We must act with urgency to address the identified barriers and invest in residential placements in our community that can meet the complex needs of our most vulnerable youths. Every day that passes is a day that puts these youths and our broader community at significant risk of serious harm.

Mary Moriarty is the Hennepin County attorney. Elliott Payne is president of the Minneapolis City Council.