Harger: Green Hill School Detention Center is beyond repair, time to start over

This can’t continue. We need to talk about Green Hill School, because Washington taxpayers are funding something that has gone terribly, systematically wrong.

Green Hill is called a school. It’s not. It’s a maximum-security facility in Chehalis holding young men who committed serious crimes as juveniles. Murder. Rape. Armed robbery.

They were under 18 when they offended, and the theory is that teenage brains aren’t fully developed, so they deserve different treatment. Eighteen is the magic number: Commit a crime at 17, you’re a juvenile whose brain is still forming. Commit the same crime at 18, you’re an adult heading to adult prison.

Most inmates at Green Hill are now between 18 and 25 years old. If they committed these crimes today, they’d be in Walla Walla. They are grown men behind razor wire, not kids in classrooms.

Now, there’s a school of thought here about adolescent brain development and second chances. The theory sounds reasonable: Provide therapeutic settings with education and job training that adult prisons don’t offer. And when done right, fewer of them end up back in prison.

But here’s what’s actually happening inside Green Hill. A female employee just pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct with an inmate. Having sex with him, smuggling marijuana, recording video together. She now faces seven years in prison.

Not a one-time instance at Green Hill School

She’s not an outlier. She’s a pattern. KING 5 reported this is the sixth woman in the past year accused of or fired for sexual misconduct there. Another employee dressed as a DoorDash driver to smuggle marijuana hidden in burritos to an inmate. Another coerced inmates into recording sex acts. Chehalis Police have opened 21 custodial misconduct investigations in Green Hill School since 2024.

What strikes me is the silence. At least six employees were preying on inmates, and their colleagues either didn’t know or didn’t care. One is bad enough. By case six? This is institutional failure.

I’ve covered the Washington government for years. This is different. This is an agency committing crimes against those in its custody while claiming to rehabilitate them.

And I question: A 16-year-old sentenced to 30 years for murder isn’t getting “rehabilitated” by staying here until 25, then heading to adult prison. We’re just delaying the inevitable in a system where misconduct thrives.

Green Hill, as it exists today, cannot be salvaged. Start over. Transfer adults with long sentences to actual prisons. Create smaller, truly supervised programs for younger offenders who might benefit. Start over with new leadership and real accountability.

Six women. Twenty-one investigations. Millions in settlements. Zero accountability. These young men, however terrible their crimes, deserve correctional officers who don’t commit crimes against them. It’s not a school. It’s a scandal factory. And every Washington taxpayer is funding it.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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