With the juvenile curfew in effect, local leaders, parents and teens alike are not only concerned about young people being out past 11 p.m. They’re worried where youth violators could end up once found on the street after hours: the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS).
Under the emergency order, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) would either return individuals under the age of 18 to their homes or hold them within a precinct or facility run by DYRS until a guardian can pick them up.
“For my peers,” said Ward 8 teen Atrayu Lee, “I think instead of them understanding that certain things don’t have to be a way, they just go along, go outside and get harassed by the police.”
The system of utilizing DYRS became a point of conflict for the D.C. Council to permanently pass the Juvenile Curfew Amendment Act of 2025 that went into effect on July 16.
The bill passed with two modified amendments, one introduced by D.C. Councilmember Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who is against using detention centers to hold curfew violators, as she believes it will only further drive up the youth recidivism rate.
“All evidence suggests that exposing children to a carceral environment and treating them like criminals can lead to actual criminal behavior that negatively impacts youth, their families and our community,” Nadeau said in a statement.
Curfew violation is legally classified as a status offense or a non-criminal action due to a minor’s age. However, following the ruling, Bowser declared emergency Order 2026-086 and 2026-091, expanding the program of sending youth in violation of the curfew into the custody of DYRS.
Records of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice have shown that MPD sending youth who violate curfew to the Youth Service Center has been occurring since Fiscal Year 2023.
According to DYRS, youth are temporarily housed on the non-secure side of the center to be supervised by trained staff and provided meals and recreational activities.
Although the curfew violators are separated from committed youth, advocates like Penelope Spain believe the process still introduces them to the criminal justice system.
“You’re going into a locked Sally port, where you are going to be processed through doors that open on one side, close you into a box, and then open on the other side,” she explained to The Informer. “You are in a jail-like experience.”
As the curfew further becomes a permanent part of District life, Lee’s mother Charlene Golphin considers removing him from activities and work opportunities that would require him to be out past the curfew.
“I try to tell him to make sure he makes the curfew, but in some cases he cannot make the curfew because he is working. His school is over now, but he had different school events that he was attending, trips that did not end until after the curfew time,” said Golphin.
Detention Centers Become Shelters for Curfew Violators, Racial Disparities Persist
For Golphin and Lee, and many Black families across the District, staying safe and out of DYRS custody amid the youth curfew comes with an additional concern: race.
“You have to spend money to be [in commercial areas]. And even beyond that, when you’re there, I feel like you’re profiled,” Atrayu said. “If you’re a group of teenagers and you’re Black, no matter how disruptive or not disruptive that you are, the police are there.”
In 2025, 116 youth were admitted to DYRS to await an arranged pick-up either from a parent, guardian, or a representative from Child and Family Services (CFSA). Out of that total, 112 were African American youth, who waited an average of two hours to be released from custody.
These findings reveal racial disparities.
According to a 2025 report by the Council for Court Excellence (CCE), Black males disproportionately make up the vast majority of committed youth– with 86% committed in 2023. Further, while African American youth make up 52% of the young people in the District, as of May 21, 2025, all those held at the youth services center were Black.
African American youth make up 52% of all youth in D.C.
By the end of May 2026, 18 youth had been admitted into DYRS custody, with 16 of them being African American. A significant spike between June 15 and June 22 showed 10 youth admitted to DYRS.
Parents like Golphin are working to keep their children from adding to those numbers.
“The reason why I feel like it’s a lose situation [is] because if your children are doing things to better themselves,” Golphin told The Informer. “And if you cannot go pick them up or have somebody pick them up so they won’t be involved in getting caught up with the curfew, then they go to jail and then you can go to jail.”
Further, as the curfew mandate continues, there are concerns about whether the current DYRS infrastructure— from space to staff— will be enough to appropriately care for youth out past 11 p.m.
“Whether you’re seeing other young people who are charged with offenses or not, you are in a carceral situation to then be processed through, say, for a health screening or into a holding cell where you’re basically going deeper into this facility that is a jail.” said CEO of Open City Advocates and former public defender Penelope Spain.
DYRS Faces Further Challenges Amid Staff Shortages, Overcrowding
Despite the care DYRS has been able to give to curfew violators at this time, the department continues to face challenges of staff shortages, overcrowding and educational programming.
“We have a good bit of turnover among our staff. Some of it is through the nature of the work,” DYRS Director Sam Abed said. “It is very difficult work particularly for our frontline staff, the YDRs (youth development representatives), where I believe we experience the highest amount of turnover. We also have a good deal of mandatory overtime which contributes to the burnout.”
The staffing shortage leads to other difficulties.
Attorney Anya Kreider of Disability Rights DC, visits DYRS facilities to speak with youth about their experience. What she is often told is that, due to a shortage of staff groups, youth may stay inside their rooms more than others. However, this system violates D.C. Code 24-912.
“The more time the youth are in their room, the more isolated they are,” Kreider said. “The less interaction they have exacerbates lots of other issues.”
In addition to needing more staff, having enough places for youth in detention centers to live and sleep, a concern that has reached the council and mayor.
“I wanted to turn to the bed expansion,” said D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker, chair of the Committee of Youth Affairs said at a budget oversight meeting for DYRS in May.
However, for Kreider, more beds are not the answer and add to the challenges DYRS already faces.
“The issue with both increased law enforcement responses and increased bed capacity is that we’re setting youth up to be institutionalized, which worsens the ongoing overcrowding issue,” Kreider explains. “It raises staff and stress, and then leads to increased conditions and concerns. Meanwhile, D.C. is decreasing resources for youth, in regard to mental and behavioral health crisis response.”
The Fight to Keep DYRS Programs, Creating Safe Spaces in D.C. Overall
One of the DYRS programs whose efforts remain under threat to assist with the behavioral health crisis is Credible Messengers, a program that assigns experienced advocates to act as mentors for court-involved youth. These mentors become a fundamental aspect of the youth’s life and family.
“We are that male father figure that a lot of them didn’t have, or that one constant that’s always in their life,” said Antony Petty, a mentor with Credible Messengers, “…that’s always there when they need them, always there when they need to go somewhere if they got a doctor appointment or if they got to go get an ID, or just want to go out.”
The D.C. Council reallocated 2 million for the program after the mayor’s proposal cut it entirely. Nonetheless, Petty continues to face the difficulty of ensuring the budget is enough for mentors to live day to day.
“We have done all the things needed for us to be eligible to [work]with these youth. So just to hear that the funding is cut, it’s really a hardship for a lot of people,” Petty told The Informer, “not just the credible messengers, but the youth, the family and the community as a whole.”
D.C. Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At-Large) said a cut to such programming directly contributes to conversations about curfew challenges.
“What bears on me is this issue that we’ve talked about since COVID… and that’s trauma-informed care and how we are managing that, not just in [DYRS] but in our schools,” Bonds said. “And my colleague may not like this when we talk about curfew and we talk about the takeovers.”
For Spain, overall increased law enforcement, such as the curfew, National Guard, ICE and more, have made it challenging for young people– even those who are not court-involved– to seek refuge to simply be kids.
“I think that the richness of our city is that diversity, that deep culture, the history, the sense of place and pride that our families feel for being in these neighborhoods,” Spain told The Informer. “And now to to say: ‘This is no longer your city, this is no longer your neighborhood. You are no longer invited here very quickly smacks of racial racism and classism and exclusion.”
As Lee works to speak out against the curfew, Golphin said she hopes her son can encourage local leaders to emphasize the importance of safe gathering spaces for youth, to avoid involvement with agencies like DYRS.
“My son even went to speak about the curfew. It seems like it’s like they don’t care. You know, it’s kind of like this is what we’re going to do,” Golphin said. “I have hope that they’ll [newly elected officials] practice what they preach…that some of the things that they said we’ll start to see eventually. I know it’s going to take time, but I am hopeful.”
