A seat separates them. A young black girl and a young white boy.
They may not know each other, but this much they have in common: they're sad, or angry, maybe even desperate.
The sour looks on their faces and their down-turned heads give it away — and the fact that they're sitting in the middle of the crowded Tulsa County Juvenile Bureau waiting area on a sparkling weekday afternoon.
It's this way every day at the 46,000-square-foot facility at 315 S. Gilcrease Museum Road. Children and their parents pour in with their problems, lawyers and staff huddle around them to help and no one, it seems, has the time or space to properly address the issues that put them here in the first place.
"It is really important for families to feel comfortable, and when we have such small spaces and such older facilities, it doesn't create that environment," said Karissa Martin, a Juvenile Bureau intake officer.
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Martin works in one of the bureau's many tiny offices. Some are old closets that have been transformed into office space. If she is lucky, she can get three people into her office for a conference. That doesn't work with larger families, she said, or when more than one family is involved in a case.
"We need to understand that there is a need out there to help these juveniles and with a bigger facility, it would be a tremendous help," she said.
Tulsa County residents will have a chance to provide that help April 1 when they go to the polls to consider two 15-year sales-tax initiatives. One calls for a 0.041 percent sales tax to fund construction of a new juvenile justice center to replace the Juvenile Bureau; the other asks voters to approve 0.026 percent sales tax to fund construction and operation of four new pods at the Tulsa Jail.
The Juvenile Bureau provides state-mandated services such as probation and counseling for young criminal offenders and their families who find themselves before a judge in the Tulsa County District Juvenile Court, which is also crammed into the Juvenile Bureau facility.
Court staff has it no better than Juvenile Bureau staff. Only one courtroom is large enough for a jury trial.
"It's incredibly too small and it is incredibly ineffective," Brent Wolfe, director of the Juvenile Bureau, said recently as he stepped inside Courtroom 4, which holds eight people.
Juvenile Court also hears abuse, neglect and adoption cases, so the Department of Human Services has a narrow room in the building with five desks to do its work. It's right down the hall from the bureau's only two staff restrooms — one for women, one for men. Each has one stall.
Public defenders do their work in this building, boxes of files spilled into the hallways. The Sheriff's Office has a presence, too: a tiny office/holding cell just off the waiting area and right next to Tulsa County Juvenile Court Chief Judge Doris Fransein's courtroom.
"Just all kinds of things can happen coming up the halls," said Sgt. Denise Corley of escorting young people through the building.
Wolfe likes to note that "a majority of them (young people) do go away and don't come back into the system and that is the good news."
But some stay, under lock and key, in the detention center. About 800 to 1,000 young people a year are held in the Juvenile Bureau's 55-bed detention center. Most for 14 days or less, and always with full access to school and other social services.
But at night, it's into their cells: roughly 5-feet-by-10-feet concrete rooms with a mattress-covered concrete slab for a bed, a metal sink and little natural light.
Wolfe said even the toughest hard-on-crime types soften when he swings the cell door open to show them what awaits inside.
"Yes, kids need to be locked up sometimes, it's true, for our safety and their safety," Wolfe said. "But this is not the best we can do for them."
The new detention center envisioned by county officials would include 96 beds and have a separate wing for females — something absent from the existing detention center.
Most important, officials say, it would be designed more like a dorm and include more open space and natural light.
"Why is that important?" said Detention Supervisor Alondo Edwards. "Because it helps shapes the minds of the kids when they are in custody.
"When you go in that room and close that door, all the programming in the world doesn't change the fact that you are in an small cell where you barely get any light (with) big metal doors that slam and clink around."
County Commissioner Karen Keith is one of the major proponents of the new juvenile justice center. She said county officials don't have a site set for the new Juvenile Bureau facility, but she is certain about the need for it and the importance of the work done there.
"They're incredible people," she said of the staff. "It's amazing what they do."
Tulsa County criminal justice tax proposal
What: Tulsa County has called a countywide election on two 15-year sales tax initiatives. One resolution asks voters to approve a 0.041 percent sales tax to fund construction of a new juvenile justice center; the other resolution asks voters to approve 0.026 percent sales tax to fund construction and operation of four new pods at the Tulsa Jail.
When: April 1
Effective date: July 1
Tax impact: If both taxes are approved, the sales-tax rate in the city of Tulsa would remain the same because an equivalent city sales tax is expiring. The sales-tax rate in other parts of the county would increase by 0.067 percent. If only one of the taxes is approved, the sales-tax rate would drop in the city of Tulsa and increase elsewhere in the county.
Project summaries
TULSA JAIL EXPANSION
Estimated construction cost: $9.3 million
Estimated operational expense: $1.7 million a year
Improvements: Two pods for general population; one pod for juveniles; one mental health facility
JUVENILE JUSTICE CENTER
Estimated construction cost: $45 million
The center would consolidate all Tulsa County Juvenile Court facilities into one facility.
The building would include courtrooms, meeting rooms, administrative offices and a 96-bed detention center. It would also serve as the new home for the Community Intervention Center.
Source: Tulsa County
Kevin Canfield 918-581-8313
