Allegheny County Council takes step to fill juvenile detention advisory board

An Allegheny County Council committee Tuesday moved forward with three finalists to fill a position on the Juvenile Detention Board of Advisors.

“We owe it to the youth and their families to make sure that they are getting what the facilities say they are getting, and that they do feel protected, and they do feel that they are making progress,” said finalist Terri Collin Dilmore, a clinical and forensic psychologist and assistant professor at Howard University.

She said one of the goals for the board was to ensure “there are mechanisms in place where we are able to see that … these systems are accountable.”

The state-mandated board is meant to offer a community perspective on the operations at the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center. It’s responsible for compiling an annual report recommending a budget for facility maintenance, but it otherwise has no statutory authority.

The committee had eight names before it, each recommended by council members, and winnowed down to a short list of three. Along with Dilmore, the finalists included Rabbi Moishe Mayir Vogel, executive director of the Aleph Institute, a Jewish humanitarian organization, and Lee Davis, director of violence prevention at Greater Valley Community Services.

The full council is expected to approve those choices at its meeting next Tuesday. Their names will then be sent to County Executive Sara Innamorato, who will pick one to join four other board nominees of her choosing.

The 10-member body will also include Innamoroto herself, County Controller Corey O’Cononor, and three citizen members appointed by Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas President Judge Susan Evashavik.

Council rejected the first five nominations Innamorato sent over in July, arguing that they were introduced in a “hurried and uncollaborative way,” without council’s input. At the time, members urged Innamorato to seek their suggestions when selecting candidates.

A judge agreed, and codified council’s input on Innamorato’s picks as part of a deal to settle a lawsuit filed by council after it was given little say in Shuman’s reopening.

During its Tuesday meeting, the committee did not recommend two of the more controversial candidates before it: Abolitionist Law Center community organizer Tanisha Long and social worker Maria Guido. Both were subject to what they described as harassment ahead of the meeting for their support of Palestine during the war in Gaza and for the prison abolition movement, which seeks to eliminate the carceral system and address the systemic issues that lead to crime. Guido withdrew her name from consideration Tuesday morning.

Long argued that her views and experience working with children charged as adults would have benefited the board.

“Everybody's always like, ‘She's an abolitionist, and how can she believe in the Shuman Center?’ It's not whether or not I believe it should exist. … I realize that it does,” she said. “And since it does [exist], you need somebody who works in the criminal legal system with people who are directly affected by it, who understands that even though something exists — and I would rather it not — we have a duty to protect the rights of the children in there and provide as safe of a space as possible.”

Shuman was formerly run by the county but shut down in September 2021 after the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services revoked its license to operate. It reopened last summer after millions of dollars in renovations, under new management from the Latrobe-based nonprofit Adelphoi, and with a new name: Highland Detention at Shuman Center.

The county had to bring in a private operator to “stop the bleeding,” Davis told committee members while they discussed his board nomination Tuesday.

“We had a lot of kids out here with gun issues doing a lot of things,” he said. “But I believe the county should, at some point, learn from the past and create a better system. And I believe us being on that board will help y’all do that.”