Committee members used the OPEGA briefing to press department officials on staff safety and facility operations. Several senators described reports from frontline staff that assaults and disruptive incidents in some residential centers have increased and probed whether leadership had adequate visibility and response plans.

Secretary Vinny Schiraldi responded that staffing vacancies had declined from about a 16% vacancy rate when he arrived to roughly 11% overall and lower in some direct-care classifications. He said DJS trains staff in de-escalation and restraint protocols and convenes labor-management teams at facilities with persistent problems. “We train the staff on how to deescalate,” Schiraldi said, adding the agency tracks restraints and incidents and develops localized plans to reduce violence.

On monitoring protocols and video/phone practices, Schiraldi said DJS no longer records routine phone calls from juveniles in facilities, explaining in testimony, “It is not the industry standard to tape children's phone calls from juvenile facilities.” He said video recordings and other operational tools remain in use at many sites but acknowledged local variation and that the juvenile justice monitoring unit and the newly created correctional ombudsman have roles in oversight.

Lawmakers asked for specific data and outcomes

Senators asked for incident and workers' compensation metrics, trends in assaults and vacancy data; the secretary said some of those numbers would be provided to the committee and noted DJS's annual data resource guide would be released before the end of the month. Members raised concerns about isolation of frontline perspectives and urged DJS to continue labor-management engagement at facilities with repeated incidents.

Ending

DJS agreed to provide data requested by the committee, to continue facility-level labor-management work, and to coordinate with the juvenile justice monitoring unit and the correctional ombudsman to ensure staff safety and transparency.