NYCLU, Rev. Al Sharpton and Children’s Defense Fund-NY Call for Reform in New York’s Juvenile Justice System

After a damning investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) into four of New York State’s juvenile prisons, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network, and the Children’s Defense Fund-NY today gathered on the steps of City Hall to demand reforms to end the culture of neglect and abuse at these facilities.

Though there have been several significant reforms made to the state’s juvenile justice system over the past two years in response to an ACLU report, the advocates underscored the urgency and severity of the abuse of youth in four upstate prisons and demanded that there be a review of every case where youth were subjected to physical or mental abuse and every case where inappropriate physical restraints were used.

After a damning investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) into four of New York State’s juvenile prisons, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network, and the Children’s Defense Fund-NY today gathered on the steps of City Hall to demand reforms to end the culture of neglect and abuse at these facilities.

Though there have been several significant reforms made to the state’s juvenile justice system over the past two years in response to an ACLU report, the advocates underscored the urgency and severity of the abuse of youth in four upstate prisons and demanded that there be a review of every case where youth were subjected to physical or mental abuse and every case where inappropriate physical restraints were used.

“These children desperately need care, rehabilitation and a therapeutic environment but what they’re getting is a government-sponsored nightmare of Dickensian physical and mental abuse,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “The state has made significant policy changes to improve the care many children in the juvenile justice system get, but it’s still not enough – we need a massive culture change to end the abuse that has led to the death of one youngster and been devastating to so many more.

“As Office of Children and Family Services Commissioner Gladys Carrion has recognized, the children who are subjected to these abuses are almost exclusively back and Latino. It would be irresponsible not to ask the question, would these abuses be allowed to continue if the children reflected the demographics of New York State?”

In findings made public yesterday after a year-long investigation, the DOJ documents a shocking culture of abuse and neglect of youth in four facilities operated by the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS): Louis Gossett, Jr. Residential Center, a facility for boys in Ithaca; Lansing Residential Center, a facility for girls also in Ithaca; Tryon Residential Center, a facility for boys located outside Johnstown; and Tryon Girls Residential Center, located adjacent to the boys’ facility.

The children in these facilities – youth who are all younger than 16 when arrested and overwhelmingly black and Latino New York City residents – are placed in facilities hundreds of miles from their home and families. They tend to suffer from a variety of mental health issues, substance abuse problems and a number of other special needs, including trauma as a result of sexual assault and abuse. They end up in these facilities for often minor reasons – more than half of those in the system have been arrested for nonviolent misdemeanors, from truancy and turnstile jumping, to graffiti and marijuana possession.

But instead of finding a therapeutic environment, support services and rehabilitation, the DOJ concluded that youth at these four centers are instead meeting terrible physical and mental abuse. In an Aug. 14 letter to Gov. David Paterson, the DOJ said that conditions at the centers “violate constitutional standards in the areas of protection from harm and mental health care.” At each facility, the DOJ found that:

• Staff consistently uses excessive force as a way to punish youth and attempt to control behavior. Minor incidents such as slamming a door, laughing or glaring result in serious injuries to boys and girls, including broken teeth, lacerations, fractures and concussions. Staff also escalate confrontations by responding to minor disciplinary issues with force.
• Staff place children in inappropriate restraints, such as violently pinning a youth face-down on the ground. At Lansing, which can only house 50 girls, 123 children were injured as a result of this practice in one year. Inappropriate restraints are also used on youth with mental health issues who in turn engage in self mutilation or otherwise hurt themselves. Youth also complain of sadistic techniques such as the “hook and trip” – restraining the child’s arms behind his or her back and then tripping his or her legs so the child falls to the floor face first.
• Administrators consistently fail to adequately investigate use of force incidents and often do not take corrective actions for staff members involved in excessive force incidents.
• Staff fail to provide youth adequate mental health care and treatment, including failure to diagnose or evaluate mental health problems; inappropriate medication practices, including not monitoring youth for side effects of psychotropic medications; and insufficient services to address youths’ substance abuse problems.

“The state has an obligation to treat our children in a manner that respects their human dignity,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network. “It has tragically failed in that duty. We cannot rest until this situation is rectified and we are assured that every OCFS employee is treating youth in a humane, therapeutic manner.”

Abusive conditions at the state’s juvenile prisons have been a source of controversy over the past several years. In September 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch released a report documenting alarming abuse and neglect of girls being held at the Tryon and Lansing Residential Centers.

The report, Custody and Control: Conditions of Confinement in New York’s Juvenile Prisons for Girls, found that prison staff often used inappropriate and excessive force against girls. Among numerous horrifying incidents, it documented the excessive use of a forcible face-down restraint procedure that often resulted in facial abrasions and other injuries, including broken limbs.

Two months after the report was published, in November 2006, a 15-year-old boy died at Tryon after two employees inappropriately restrained the boy, pinning him to the floor. When the boy stopped breathing, the employees walked away from him without performing CPR.

Two weeks after the boy died, the New York State Inspector General and the Tompkins County District Attorney released the results of a 10-month investigation of Gossett, which found, among other issues, staff covering up incidents and youth receiving inadequate mental health services.

“The Justice Department has confirmed that, even after we raised the alarm in 2006, the abuse of children in New York’s juvenile prisons has continued,” said Mie Lewis, an attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and author of the ACLU’s report. “These abuses show that internal oversight is not enough – we need an ongoing external check to ensure that the abuse finally ends.”

This pattern of abuse is not only illegal and unconstitutional, but it doesn’t work. According to a recent OCFS recidivism study, 90 percent of children who return home get rearrested again before they turn 30 – in other words, New York’s children are coming out of the system worse than when they went in.

Though the picture painted is bleak, the story of OCFS since 2007 is actually one of slow transformation. Under the leadership of Gladys Carrion, New York’s juvenile justice system has adopted policies that reject the costly, failed punitive approach and instead embrace a community-based rehabilitative approach.

Over the past two years, OCFS has closed 13 residential centers and embraced close-to-home alternatives to incarceration. Youth now receive treatment in their own neighborhoods and there are less than 1,000 children living in OCFS residential facilities. After years of abandonment under the Pataki administration, the Office of Ombudsman has been rebuilt and has conducted unannounced visits to facilities with access to all residents; a 26-member Independent Review Board was established; and the governor created a Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice.

“There is new hope for juvenile justice in New York State under Commissioner Carrion, but we need to know that no matter who is in control of OCFS that the health and safety of our children is protected,” said Mishi Faruqee, director of juvenile justice for the Children’s Defense Fund – New York and a member of the Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice. “Politics cannot determine the fate of our kids.”

OCFS has also implemented a new restraint policy, reducing the criteria by which children may be restrained and prohibiting the use of excessive physical force. OCFS also began tracking and monitoring the use of restraints by developing a new automated system. That system, however, still identifies Lansing and Tryon as problems.

Though so many policies have been changed, the DOJ report reveals a persistent, deep-seated culture of abuse at these facilities. Among the most shocking revelations in the DOJ report is that though some abuse is getting caught, OCFS is unable to punish staff who engage in the violent acts of misconduct. To that end, the advocates outlined a series of steps the state must take to ensure the health and safety of all youth in OCFS custody:

• The governor’s office and OCFS must embrace and follow the DOJ’s recommendations and work with the DOJ to step up efforts to overhaul the juvenile prison system and ensure policies are in place that create a therapeutic and rehabilitative approach for youth.
• The state must develop a plan to ensure that every OCFS employee who has direct contact with children complies with OCFS policies regarding the therapeutic model of treatment. OCFS must be able to put employees on notice that violations will be treated as gross misconduct that could lead to termination.
• The state must review every case where a child has been determined to be in need of mental health services, or subjected to physical force or restraint. A short timeline must be developed so that every youth gets an appropriate placement and treatment plan.
• OCFS has reversed a decade of neglect and revived the ombudsman’s office and turned it into an active vehicle to advocate on behalf of New York’s children. OCFS must urge the state to go even further and create a wholly independent child advocacy office or transform the ombudsman’s office into an independent review agency, as called for in the ACLU’s report. This office would create an on-going external check on OCFS, investigate and assess allegations of abuse system wide, and identify good rehabilitation models that can be replicated across New York.
• The state legislature must hold hearings to determine if the problems that exist at these four facilities exist any where else in the state.
• The DOJ and OCFS must make public the expert findings that the DOJ relied upon for its report with regard to four institutions.
• The state must promote alternatives to incarceration including community based facilities where children receive services and treatment locally, and reduce the population at these facilities to the extent possible.
• Reallocate sufficient OCFS resources to provide adequate mental health staff to meet these facilities’ needs.
• The ACLU identified a pattern and practice of inappropriate sexual conduct at Tryon and Lansing, but the DOJ is largely silent on these issues. OCFS must address the concerns raised by the ACLU about sexual abuse and strip searches.
• The DOJ and OCFS should develop measurable benchmarks and a clear, short timetable for compliance and create a mechanism to explore whether the needed reforms can be achieved within a reasonable time frame or whether the four facilities should be closed and the youth in these facilities transferred out.