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Juvenile Court Detention Center receives accreditation
Published: June 12, 2015
It took years of planning, 18 months of implementing change and 72 hours of intense scrutiny to finally come to a moment in a hotel ballroom in Columbus on May 31 that lasted 2 minutes. That is when the Summit County Juvenile Court’s Detention Center received a certificate formalizing its accreditation status from the American Correctional Association (ACA) after a final examination of the court’s application and adherence to ACA requirements.
It was worth the wait.
The process began in earnest in October 2014 when ACA representatives spent three days evaluating the detention center.
The process was thorough and painstaking. The ACA requires applicants to meet a menu of 420 items that vary from the mundane to the meticulous.
In particular, there were 28 mandatory items the detention center had to pass otherwise it would have automatically failed the audit.
The ACA reviewed the detention center’s compliance in the areas of safety, security, physical plants, food service, education, staff development and training and other detention facility operations.
In the end, the court passed all of the mandatory areas and posted an impressive overall rating of 98.66 percent.
“This is a testament to the hard work and the teamwork of the detention center staff,” said Judge Linda Tucci Teodosio. “The detention center receiving its designation as an accredited correctional facility indicates that it is operating at the highest standards established by the leading organization of its kind in the nation.”
The ACA also reviewed the court’s policies and procedures for the detention center.
Melissa Gerney wrote the policies. She joined the court staff nearly three years ago and worked closely with Detention Superintendent Phil Lucco to implement the necessary changes to meet the ACA’s requirements.
Another challenge introduced in the accreditation process involved accepting those changes. Detention staff members were being asked to alter their workplace practices to adhere to the ACA standards.
“It’s human nature to resist change, especially when your detention facility is operating well, as ours is,” said Gerney. “But there were areas that needed to be addressed to meet those ACA requirements and that meant accepting new ways to do their old practices.”
The results proved encouraging. Superintendent Lucco said detention supervisors and detention officers lauded the changes and acknowledged that some of the new policies and procedures brought a fresh outlook to how to better do their jobs.
“Getting everybody on the same page resulted in a lot of discussion,” said Lucco. “In the end, consensus was reached through a myriad of methods including using examples of how accredited facilities handled certain situations; modifying existing practices we used in our own facility and following the leadership and advice of Judge Teodosio and Court administrators.”
The ACA is nationally recognized as the most influential voice for best practices in corrections. But is such scrutiny really necessary? Is receiving accreditation that important? Judge Teodosio has no doubt that it is.
“While it means that we have received the ultimate recognition from the standard-bearer in corrections, it goes beyond that, for me,” said Judge Teodosio. “It also gives the detention staff something to aspire to sustain every day they come to their jobs. They take pride in their work. Receiving accreditation demonstrates that not only to them, but to the entire community.”