PublicSource: “Nearly a year after Allegheny County’s youth detention center reopened, a board charged with monitoring its safety and services has been assembled. County Executive Sara Innamorato announced its appointees last month — a process delayed by litigation over her predecessor’s controversial choice to hire a private contractor to run the facility.

The appointees bring a range of experiences across the legal, academic and social service fields to the board. It notably includes several who spent their careers combating the mass incarceration of Black youth.

Meet the picks for the new detention advisory board

One is a longtime violence interrupter with lived experience in the juvenile legal system. Another runs a nonprofit serving women and girls facing racism, poverty and violence. Yet another is a psychologist studying multi-generational trauma in Black youth. And one of two family court judges appointed to the board has criticized the county’s lack of diversity on its bench and done pro bono work to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline….

An executive at Adelphoi, the facility’s private operator, told PublicSource it ‘values the board’s advisory role’ and ‘will collaborate by providing the necessary information to support their work and maintain transparency in operations.’

Tanisha Long, a community organizer for the Abolitionist Law Center, was one of the loudest critics of the county’s decision to hire Adelphoi. She was nominated by Hallam to be council’s pick for the board, but was eliminated during a council committee’s vote for three finalists — a process Long felt was ‘deeply politicized.’ She gave Innamorato credit for appointing “people who are really great,” but noted the board lacks the voice of a young person who was incarcerated at Shuman.”

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