Columbia, South Carolina – South Carolina is about open a ground-breaking psychiatric treatment center meant to change mental health care for young people behind bars. Announced during a recent celebration, the $23 million William R. Byars Jr. Treatment Center is expected to open in November 2026 and provide much-needed services to youngsters with mental health problems who are now held in a state detention center.
Just a 20-minute drive from the Broad River Road Complex of the Department of Juvenile Justice, the facility will first house up to 24 youngsters and has intentions to increase capacity to 32 when needed. The center will be 50,000 square feet with high ceilings and strong security measures including unscalable walls and fences.
Senator Katrina Shealy of Lexington, a key advocate for the center, highlighted the urgent need for such a facility.
“About four years ago, advocates and agency heads told Shealy they didn’t have the resources to care for “some of our sickest children,” she explained as reported by the SC Daily Gazette. Prior attempts to place these teens in private centers often failed, as many providers were unwilling to take on the challenge due to the severity of the cases.
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The state budget approved in July 2022, which set $20 million to start the project, marked the beginning of the initiative to create the treatment facility. Head of the Department of Children’s Advocacy Amanda Whittle pointed out that intensive site visits and layout ideas included in the planning stage guarantee the facility would satisfy the special needs of its occupants.
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The facility bears the name Bill Byars, a former head of DJJ and family court judge who is recognized with major agency improvements during his time. With this center, which seeks to fill in the voids created by earlier administrative changes and funding cuts, his legacy lives on.
Correct Care of South Carolina will oversee treatment center operations. Renowned for operating the Sexually Violent Predator Treatment Program for the state, this company offers significant expertise in running mental health treatments.
The main objective of the institution is to create a therapeutic atmosphere bridging the gap between the basic mental health care being offered at the juvenile detention center and conventional psychiatric hospitalization. The current DJJ director, Eden Hendrick, underlined how inadequate present tools are to manage serious mental disorders inside the jail system.
“We do the best we can, but these youth need something more,” Hendrick said.
The construction of the treatment center is a component of larger initiatives aiming at enhancing mental health treatments prior to young people interacting with the criminal justice system. Up to 70% of young people housed in detention facilities, according to Robby Kerr, head of the state Department of Health and Human Services, could have a mental health diagnosis. He underlined the significance of community-based care as well as the continuous necessity to grow mental health services—including counselor numbers in educational institutions.
Officials are confident that this new institution will establish a standard for more thorough and preventative mental health treatment while the state awaits the completion of the center, guiding young people towards a more bright, law-abiding future.
