Racine County’s Trauma-Informed Youth Development Center to Support Zero-Detention Goals

Racine County, Wis., had for years dealt with a situation experienced by many communities across the country. While the county aimed to provide in- custody youth with a supportive, tailored rehabilitative environment, the facility available was ill-equipped to help meet this progressive mission. In July 2023, however, the county broke ground on what promises to be a transformative facility that gives youthful offenders the space and resources to thrive.

“Our current facility is a traditional adult correctional design and is not conducive to a Cognitive Behavioral Therapeutic approach to change,” said Edward Kamin, workforce solutions manager for Racine County. “We currently have good outcomes as related to recidivism and earning educational credits, and [with this new facility] we expect those outcomes to go from good to fantastic.”

The county’s new 48-bed, 70,000-square-foot Youth Development and Care Center (YDCC), which will open in early 2025, will serve an estimated 400 boys and girls annually in a trauma-informed environment that will ultimately move the county to a zero-detention model. Achieving this goal means reducing the number of youth in detention, increasing education and resources for youth in custody, and providing a welcoming and inviting environment for healing and rehabilitation.

The facility was brought to fruition through the vision of Jonathan Delagrave, a Racine County executive who died unexpectedly in June 2024, but was a committed advocate of the project and moving away from the county’s antiquated model of juvenile rehabilitation and care.

Together with the construction team of national contractor Gilbane, the design team of Milwaukee-based RAMLOW/STEIN and national design firm Treanor was eager for the challenge to design a structure and spaces to align with this progressive vision.

Trauma-Informed Design

The concept of trauma-informed architecture, which uses design techniques to support occupants’ healing and resilience, did not exist when the county’s previous, youth facility was built. Similarly, normative design, which often integrates furniture and finishes that resemble those used in traditional non-detention settings, would not become part of the common design lexicon for years. The previous youth facility, a windowless portion of a former office building, now stands in sharp contrast to the new YDCC.

“Racine County wants to find ways to empower youth as well as their families through visitation, programming, and opportunities, creating a more community-based, normative and trauma-informed environment that supports the potential for each resident to transform,” said Andy Pitts, justice design principal with Treanor. “That means moving to a facility designed with care, intention and purpose.”

The new facility, built on a natural greenfield site, offers views to the surrounding landscape and wetlands outside and will support a teaching garden and micro nursery. Inside, it will foster innovative approaches to treatment, education, safety, family reunification and rehabilitation.

Treanor has significant experience designing for all age ranges and correctional populations, and the process of designing a highly progressive and trauma-informed space for youth required a special approach, starting with scale.

“It’s really rewarding to design facilities where kids feel safe and secure and that give them the treatment they need to stay out of the system going forward,” Pitts said. “That’s our goal and that requires working with the staff to create that environment.”

The team first looked at breaking down the size of the living units and making sure each unit had its own space where kids could move from different heights of volume and that responded both to their physical and emotional needs. It was also critical to attach outdoor space adjacent to housing units.

Serving the Client

In addition to working closely with facility staff members and county officials, Treanor and RAMLOW/ STEIN also went straight to the most important client population: the residents. The design team invited the youth to review photos of various spaces, offer feedback and test furniture options.

“Any chance that we have to work with the kids is really beneficial,” Pitts said. “They began to see how their contributions would become a permanent part of the space, and it gave them that sense of pride and accomplishment.”

Racine County was an enthusiastic partner in this inclusive approach from the project’s outset.

Kamin called the entire project development experience very positive. “Both the design and construction teams were a pleasure to work with,” Kamin said. “We had to make a number of key designs changes due to budget. Cuts on a passion project are never easy and both teams helped us through those design changes.”

“This client wanted to make a difference,” Pitts said. “We still had to follow Department of Corrections guidelines, but we found ways to align those guidelines with the county’s goals.”

Designing for All Users

The design team took a comprehensive approach to the facility, putting as much consideration into the public spaces as it did in the more secure rehabilitative areas.

“We really focused on the approach of the building from a civic perspective,” Pitts said. “We didn’t want it to feel like a detention facility, so there is a large glass box that is adjacent to the front door, which serves as a multipurpose community space for family events and staff training.”

Additionally, the warm, wood-ceilinged entryway de-emphasizes the security station. The secure circular courtroom located adjacent to the public space creates an environment where all parties that are involved in the court proceedings sit in an oval layout to reinforce a positive outcome. The facility also includes a family visitation area with access to an open courtyard. Located in the middle of the building, is a larger courtyard that is both a passive and active recreation space. The design uses the building as a secure perimeter, avoiding the need for more visible and intrusive exterior fencing and security measures.

Softening Secure Areas

Within the YDCC’s secure areas, the design team put even more innovative ideas and techniques into action. Alongside traditional classrooms are vocational and life skills training areas where kids can learn barber, culinary and music skills, with the flexibility to host and other types of workforce development programming. The design team was careful to separate education and living/ recreation spaces to give kids a sense of movement and structure to their days — and to keep an emphasis on education.

Materiality was significant to the project regardless of the space’s function. The design team intentionally chose non-traditional products such as 4-inch color-integrated block walls (as opposed to larger and more institutional painted block) with anti-graffiti coating to reduce maintenance needs. Adding cross-laminated timber products further softened the environment, and color- changing LED lights shift in color temperature throughout the day in response to kids’ psychological needs. Even the televisions were placed in locking wooden cabinets instead of plastic boxes.

“We talked a lot about textures, colors and furnishings with the staff, making sure they’re durable and respond to their needs but that are also a little bit more normative and respond to what the kids need,” Pitts said.

A Trauma-Informed Safety Approach

Typically within juvenile populations, the housing and staffing ratio is one staff member to eight residents. Recognizing that it’s not always easy to find eight kids that get along, the design team considered how the layout of the housing unit might allow for more flexibility, creating a housing unit that allows the movement of different bedrooms from different areas.

“One of the things that hopefully we’re going to find successful is how we’ve broken down the housing units,” Pitts said. “We took a different approach with this client to be able to break down the numbers.”

The design team also realized that sometimes the best rehabilitative solution requires a more secure environment.

While the facility visibly embraces a more normative approach, safety and security remain paramount. The design creates clear views between day rooms and allows staff members to monitor corridors to minimize the staff requirements and support easy circulation patterns.

Additionally, the private family rooms offer one-on-one visitation while also offering direct supervision. These secure spaces provide comfort for families through the addition of play areas and nooks for younger siblings as well as access to a secure and visible outdoor space.

“The county didn’t want this facility to be just for the kids, but they wanted to create more times for families to have meals and celebrations together,” Pitts said.

A Model for the Future

When the project debuts and Racine County is able to implement these design and treatment methodologies, Pitts is eager to see how the design performs into the future and how it might one day support a zero-detention environment.

“I’m excited to see how we can take the success of that project and then facilitate that to the next client,” Pitts said.

Caption for featured image: The design team invited the youth to review photos of various spaces, offer feedback and test furniture options that were eventually integrated into the new Racine County Youth Development and Care Center. Photo Credit: Treanor

This feature originally ran in the January/February 2025 edition of Correctional News.