Durham commissioner ‘disturbed’ by group comparing youth home to concentration camp
A Durham County commissioner says community groups are spreading misinformation about the county’s planned $30 million youth detention center.
At a commissioners meeting Monday, Vice Chair Wendy Jacobs said a petition by Durham Beyond Policing, a coalition that seeks police reform and reinvestment in human services, is contributing to public “confusion” about the new facility.
“As a Jew, I was very disturbed to receive an email from Carolina Jews for Justice, comparing the Youth Home to a Nazi youth concentration camp,” Jacobs said during the meeting. “And I am concerned about the misleading information causing harm.”
Max Parish, an associate of Durham-based Carolina Jews for Justice, wrote to Jacobs that he learned about the Holocaust in Hebrew school and, from his father, how his grandparents had survived time in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
“It may look nothing like what my grandparents went through in Southern Poland, but we know the hurt and trauma that will be felt by this generation, too, of kids who are forced to spend their time locked up in confinement. ... Our babies deserve better,” Parish wrote.
Durham Beyond Policing is now circulating a petition against the county commissioners 5-0 decision in December to hire Raleigh-based Bordeaux Construction Co. for the nearly $27.6 million project at 2432 Broad St.
The new 36-bed facility will replace an existing 14-bed facility on the site, The News & Observer has reported.
The Youth Home was the first of its kind in North Carolina when it opened in 1947, according to the county’s website.
As early as 1988, as the county grew, it was recommended the county expand the center or build a bigger one.
The existing Youth Home will be demolished once the new building is occupied.
NC ‘Raise the Age’ law
Durham County agreed to build the new Youth Home in 2019, after 16-year-old Niecey Fennel killed herself in the Durham County jail.
Fennel died before the state’s “Raise the Age” law took effect that December. It prohibits housing juveniles in adult jails and gives more time in the juvenile justice system to older teens who might otherwise have been prosecuted as adults.
“This board has made the decision to provide a youth home because we want to support our children here in Durham County,” Jacobs said. “If we don’t have a youth home, the situation does not go away — our children will be sent to [juvenile detention in] another county.”
Durham Beyond Policing stated the “commissioners [have] quietly gone about approving a $30 million new and expanded the Durham youth home.”
But Jacobs noted the board has discussed the new Youth Home many times.
Planning committee members included former judge and state Rep. Marcia Morey, representatives from the Durham County District Attorney’s and Public Defender’s Offices, N.C. Central University Juvenile Justice Institute and Carolina Justice Policy Center representatives, and county and city representatives, the website states.
“This has been on this board’s agenda 24 times since 2015 and has been publicly discussed for many years,” Jacobs said.
This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Durham commissioner ‘disturbed’ by group comparing youth home to concentration camp."