NY State: Juvenile Justice is Worse Than We Thought

The NY Times profiled the failings of the New York State juvenile justice system today. The task force that wrote the report (staffed by the Vera Institute of Justice and chaired by Jeremy Travis, the president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice) was spurred to investigation in 2008 after years of complaints about the facilities. [Click here for another recent article in the times about the state of juvenile justice in New York State.] The report notes that these facilities are both costly and ineffective, and cites the following factors to describe the problems at hand:

"The prisons are meant to house youths considered dangerous to themselves or others, but there is no standardized statewide system for assessing such risks, the report found.

In 2007, more than half of the youths who entered detention centers were sent there for the equivalent of misdemeanor offenses, in many cases theft, drug possession or even truancy. More than 80 percent were black or Latino, even though blacks and Latinos make up less than half the state’s total youth population — a racial disparity that has never been explained, the report said.

Many of those detained have addictions or psychological illnesses for which less restrictive treatment programs were not available. Three-quarters of children entering the juvenile justice system have drug or alcohol problems, more than half have had a diagnosis of mental health problems and one-third have developmental disabilities.

Yet there are only 55 psychologists and clinical social workers assigned to the prisons, according to the task force. And none of the facilities employ psychiatrists, who have the authority to prescribe the drugs many mentally ill teenagers require.

While 76 percent of youths in custody are from the New York City area, nearly all the prisons are upstate, and the youths’ relatives, many of them poor, cannot afford frequent visits, cutting them off from support networks."

For a copy of the Task Force's full recommendations for reform, click here.

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Teenagers With Guns

A sad story has emerged from the Bronx this week, in which a 15-year-old girl from the Morrisania neighborhood, Vada Vasquez, was shot by a 16-year-old boy with no criminal record. The young man, Carvette Gentile, was one amongst a group of young men awaiting to enact revenge on another boy as a result of a fight inside Riker's Island Jail, and has admitted full responsibility.

"According to [Police Commissioner] Kelly, all of the suspects except for the shooter have a long criminal record. 'They were handing off the gun from one to the other, we believe they were attempting to get the weapon to the shooter, Carvette Gentile, because he had no criminal record,' Kelly said." (NY1 News)

This tragic story demonstrates that gang networks continue to facilitate close connections between jail facilities and street life -- and that there need to be other options for 16-year-olds like Carvette, who go from no contact to full contact with the justice system as a result of their participation in gang activities. This boy-child likely had no idea what he was getting into; now, a girl just one year younger than he is in an induced coma as a result of his actions.

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Juvenile Offenders, Life Without Parole

There's been a lot of back-and-forth recently about two cases currently before the Supreme Court concerning prisoners in Florida who were sentenced to life without possibility of parole for crimes they committed as minors.

Here's an exchange in the NY Times that does a good job of unpacking some of the complexities.

As the chart above shows, 71% of the 109 juvenile offenders serving life without parole for crimes other than homicide are in the state of Florida.

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Fixing the Information Mismatch in Juvenile Justice

Check out this article on the Change.org Criminal Justice Blog about the need for better communication in the juvenile justice system. To be clear, the views expressed are those of the author alone and do not represent any position of Rethinking Reentry.

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Report Details Severe Abuse at NYS Juvenile Detention Facilities

In spite of many efforts at reform, New York State appears to have a long way to go in cleaning up its juvenile detention system. As an article in the NY Times describes, the United States Department of Justice publicized a report today detailing such severe abuse of juveniles by detention facility workers that they merit a violation of constitutional rights.

The report follows a two-year investigation by the DOJ that found that workers at four detention facilities, run by the state's Office of Children and Family Services, regularly used physical force to restrain the young people, even though they were only allowed to so as a last resort. In multiple instances, this use of force resulted in serious injuries, such as concussions, broken teeth, and fractured bones. From the article, some examples of the byzantine treatment these young people received:

In one case described in the report, a youth was forcibly restrained and handcuffed after refusing to stop laughing when ordered to; the youth sustained a cut lip and injuries to the wrists and elbows. One boy, after glaring at a staff member, was forced into a sitting position and his arms were secured behind his back with such force that his collarbone was broken.

Another youth was restrained eight times in three months despite signs that she might have been contemplating suicide. “In nearly every one of the eight incidents,” the report found, “the youth was engaged in behaviors such as head banging, putting paper clips in her mouth, tying a string around her neck, etc.”

Not only were there multiple instances of abuse, but when the abuse did occur, staff members at the facilities indicated did not follow the correct review procedures for disciplining employees. The Office of Children and Family Services could face federal takeover of the state juvenile detention system if it does not respond within 49 days with a plan of action.

Notably, Gladys Carrion, Commissioner of OCFS, has made some great strides in improving her agency in the past few years. She has closed detention facilities that were built to house large juvenile populations but were detaining only a few young people, she has helped to build out the alternative to detention programs in New York City that divert young people from placement at upstate facilities, and she has given new life to an ombudsman's office tasked with addressing abuse of force cases. As Ms. Carrion herself says in the article, while the agency has made a lot of progress, it is clear that there is much more work to be done.

UPDATE: The NY Times published a scathing editorial about the results of this report here as well. See also four letters to the editor from Jeremy Travis, of President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Janice L. Cooper of the National Center for Children and Poverty and Susan Wile Schwarz of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Angela Olivia Burton Associate Professor at CUNY Law School, and David Brandt Professor Emertius of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

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