A Job or a Gang (NY Times Editorial)

December 30, 2008

EDITORIAL

If the country has learned anything about street gangs, it is that police dragnets — hauling large numbers of nonviolent young people off to jail, along with the troublemakers — tend to make the problem worse, not better. Public policy should discourage young people from joining gangs in the first place by keeping them in school, getting them jobs and giving them community-based counseling and social service programs.

Federal and state programs that are supposed to provide jobs, services and counseling have been poorly financed for years. They are likely to suffer further as cash-strapped states look for ways to save money. The timing couldn’t be worse.

A new study by James Alan Fox and Marc Swatt of Northeastern University suggests that violent crime among young people may be rising, that the much-talked-about reduction in the crime rate in the 1990s may be over, and that much more must be done to prevent young people from succumbing to the gang culture.

The study also shows that the murder rate for black teenagers has climbed noticeably since 2000 while the rate for young whites has scarcely changed on the whole and, in some places, has actually declined. While more financing for local police would be useful, programs aimed at providing jobs and social services are far more important.

It is too early to say whether the numbers represent a long-term trend. But the economic crisis has clearly created the conditions for more crime and more gangs — among hopeless, jobless young men in the inner cities. Once these young men become entangled in the criminal justice system, they are typically marginalized and shut out of the job market for life.

President-elect Barack Obama’s administration and Congress will need to address the youth crisis as part of the country’s deep economic crisis. That means reviving the federal summer jobs programs that ran successfully for more than 30 years. It also means directing more federal money at proven programs that keep young people in school and out of the clutches of the gangs.

Murders by Black Teenagers Rise, Bucking a Trend (NY Times Article)

December 29, 2008

By ERIK ECKHOLM

The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places, according to a new report.

The celebrated reduction in murder rates nationally has concealed a “worrisome divergence,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University who wrote the report, to be released Monday, with Marc L. Swatt. And there are signs, they said, that the racial gap will grow without countermeasures like restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths.

The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14 to 17. In 2000, 539 white and 851 black juveniles committed murder, according to an analysis of federal data by the authors. In 2007, the number for whites, 547, had barely changed, while that for blacks was 1,142, up 34 percent.

The increase coincided with a rise in the number of murders involving guns, Dr. Fox said. The number of young blacks who were victims of murder also rose in this period.

Murder rates around the country are far below the record highs of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a crack epidemic spawned violent turf battles.

“Regrettably, as the nation celebrated the successful fight against violent crime in the 1990s, we grew complacent and eased up on our crime-fighting efforts,” the authors said.

The report primarily blames cutbacks in federal support for community policing and juvenile crime prevention, reduced support for after-school and other social programs, and a weakening of gun laws. Cuts in these areas have been felt most deeply in poor, black urban areas, helping to explain the growing racial disparity in violent crime, Dr. Fox said.

But Bruce Western, a sociologist at Harvard, cautioned that the change in murder rates was not large and did not yet show a clear trend. Dr. Western also said that the impact of the reduction in government spending on crime control would have to be studied on a city-by-city basis, and that many other changes, including a sagging economy, could have affected murder rates.

Conservative criminologists place greater emphasis on the breakdown of black families, rather than cuts in government programs, in explaining the travails of black youths.

Much of the increase, experts say, is a product of gang activity, in midsize and large cities.

“The aggregate national murder rate since 2000 has been impressively flat — not to say there haven’t been fluctuations in individual cities,” said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University. “But when you see a spike in a city,” he said, as in Chicago recently, “it very often involves young black males shooting other young black males.”

Dr. Blumstein said that while federal cuts might have contributed to the rise in murders by black teenagers, “I think there are much more endemic problems going on.”

“In the inner city, you have large numbers of kids with no future, hanging out together with a great emphasis on their street credibility,” he said. “They’ll go to great lengths to avenge an insult.” Many of these teenagers do not stay in school, let alone join the Boys Clubs or other after-school programs.

The heightened attention to security after the 9/11 attacks might, paradoxically, have contributed to a decline in crime-fighting.

“One problem we faced was a disinvestment in policing in the post-2001 environment,” said Chief Edward A. Flynn of the Milwaukee police, who served from 2003 to 2006 as secretary of public safety in Massachusetts. “I witnessed homeland security become the monster that ate criminal justice,” Chief Flynn said, as money went to security equipment and communications and the number of police officers fell.

To fight violent crime, Chief Flynn said, the police must be a visible presence in neighborhoods with high crime rates.

From 2000 to 2007, according to the report, murders in Milwaukee by whites ages 14 to 24 rose by 4 percent, while those by blacks rose by 62 percent.

This year, Chief Flynn’s first leading the department, he deployed new teams of officers to the most violent neighborhoods, having them patrol on foot and bicycles, while federal agencies helped bring down some large gangs. The number of murders this year — 70 as of last Friday — is down one-third from last year and is the lowest since 1985.

Still, Chief Flynn said, “any improvements will be temporary unless there’s more investment in the futures of our young people.”

Teen Murder at Rikers Jail (Village Voice)

New details about the slow and painful death of a Brooklyn kid. Did guards turn a blind eye?

By Graham Rayman

published: November 19, 2008

• 
  

  Illustration by Ward Harkavy

  
  
  The teen is believed to have bled to death internally after the beating caused one of his ribs to puncture a lung, sources tell the Voice.
  
  The murder has drawn more public attention than any other jail homicide in recent memory — a series of investigations, more than the usual smattering of newspaper articles, a lawsuit, the transfer of three jail bosses, desk duty for several officers, an upcoming city council hearing, and a protest.
  
  While Charnel Robinson denies that her son had any gang affiliation, the Correction Department had him listed as a member of the Crips gang, records indicate.
  
  "Whether he was or wasn't, it bears no relevance to the fact he was a teenager beaten to death under the supervision of the Department of Correction," says Robinson family lawyer Sanford Rubenstein. "He's still the victim."
  
  Bishop Wilbur Jones, the Robinson family pastor, adds, "There had to be officers who heard his cries from his cell and if it happened in the cell, somebody had to let these inmates in. The Department of Correction failed this man."
  
  The complicity of guards in inmate assaults has been a recurring problem at RNDC and other city jails, as the Voice has reported ("Rikers Island Fight Club). And other violent incidents have sparked continual criticism. (See "A Short Life Ends on Rikers Island, in a Place Where Suicide Isn't Supposed to Happen," May 27, and "Woman-on-Woman Rape Claim at Rikers," August 5.)
  
   
  
  

  ---

  Correction records indicate that two days before the fatal assault, a Blood alleged that five inmates, including Robinson attacked him in another housing area at RNDC.
  
  It is unclear what, if any, role Robinson had in that attack, because correction staff did not witness it, the records show. The alleged victim sustained a minor injury — sore ribs.
  
  The victim in the prior assault was transferred to close custody, where inmates are held in 23-hour lockdown ostensibly for their own protection.
  
  But Robinson was transferred to a less secure unit, one for inmates with behavioral problems.
  
  Publicly, the Correction Department has proclaimed faith in its gang-intelligence division's ability to separate inmates who might have a beef with each other.
  
  Robinson was seen alive in his cell at 11:40 a.m. by a guard, records show. Robinson told the guard, according to records compiled by guards, that he wanted to stay in the cell. When the guard returned, Robinson was unconscious on the bed. A review of a Correction Department document obtained by the Voice indicates that there was a gap between the beating and Robinson's treatment, but the precise duration remains unclear.
  
  If Robinson was involved in an altercation with Bloods before he was murdered,it's curious that he was transferred into a housing area dominated by Bloods.
  
  There are only two ways in which Robinson's attackers could have entered his cell without his consent: Either the guards opened the door on purpose, or they left it open long after it should have been closed. The location of guards during the assault remains unclear.
  
  Sidney Schwartzbaum, president of the Assistant Deputy Wardens/Deputy Wardens Association, says that after the earlier incident that may have involved Robinson, a deputy warden at RNDC tried to have Robinson placed in punitive segregation, where no one could have entered his cell.
  
  But the division chief's office denied the request. "He was told there was no room in punitive segregation," Schwartzbaum tells the Voice. "Inmates have been placed in punitive segregation for a lot less. The sad part is that had he been placed in segregation, he probably would be alive today."
  
  Schwartzbaum says he has complained for years that transfers of inmates facing disciplinary charges to punitive segregation have been delayed because of a lack of bed space.
  
  In connection with the subsequent beating death of Robinson, several guards were transferred, and at least two others have been placed on modified assignment.
  
  Officials with Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson have scheduled a meeting with Robinson's family for Thursday, a family lawyer said. A spokesman for that office says no arrests have been made, but an investigation is ongoing.
  
  Jones, 65, says the case is particularly tragic because Robinson was trying to turn his life around. "He was only in jail because he had to work overtime and missed curfew, violating his parole," Jones says. "He was a fine young man and he had a future in front of him."
  
  Robinson was initially picked up on a shoplifting charge for allegedly stealing a cell phone from a store. He served a few months, and was released on probation.
  
  He found temporary work at Staples. One night, he was asked to work late, and wound up breaking his curfew, Jones says. Robinson was sent back to Rikers on the violation.
  
  The teen's mother says that he told her only two days before the fatal assault that he had had an argument with someone. Mother and son last spoke by phone on the day of the assault and were scheduled to see other that Sunday. Robinson is now buried in a cemetery in New Jersey.
  
  "I could tell in his voice that something was wrong," says Charnel Robinson, who works as a store manager. "He should be here with me. The only thing I can do is bring these people to justice."
  
  She says she's also upset that Correction officials have not reached out to her. "It just really troubles me that to this day I haven't heard anything from the DOC, not even a simple condolence," she says.
  
   
  
  

  ---

  Investigators are surveying inmates at RNDC in an unusual effort to determine to what extent officers are working in collusion with prisoners — "letting them run the show," as one source put it.As the Voice has previously reported, the Bloods have come to dominate many jail housing areas, at times controlling other inmates' access to phones, recreation time and the commissary.
  
  In some cases, they are tapped to staff the "cleaning crew" which gives them extra time outside their cells and access to brooms, and other equipment that have been used as weapons.
  
  Even before the investigation is completed, Horn has transferred RNDC warden Gregory McLaughlin and two deputy wardens, in addition to the officers placed on modified assignment and desk duty.
  
  "Commissioner Horn felt that the jail was in need of stronger leadership and management," says DOC spokesman Stephen Morello.
  
  But the two deputy wardens—Mark Scott, a 23-year veteran, and Artemio Colon, a 28-year veteran—had previously initiated investigations of staff who condoned inmate on inmate violence at RNDC.
  
  Their efforts last year and this year led to at least one indictment of an officer, and several firings.
  
  Schwartzbaum says the transfers were an effort to "point fingers" at middle management without addressing the underlying problem or holding the executive staff accountable.
  
  "Accountability in this department stops at the warden's level," he says. "Although I think Commissioner Horn has done an excellent job on many things, the one criticism I have is that he doesn't hold his chiefs accountable."
  
  Two weeks before Robinson's murder, the chief's office applauded the work of the RNDC bosses, Schwartzbaum notes.
  
  "It's ironic that they moved this staff down, because two weeks prior they were told what a great job they were doing," he says. "To me this [series of transfers] is merely an attempt to say they took some sort of action."
  
  And, according to one correction source, the transfers don't really address the problem. "The extortion of inmates by other inmates has to be stopped, and the staff has to be in control," the source says.
  
  Correction spokesman Morello declined to comment on details of the investigation. "Maintaining staff integrity and providing for safety and security of all in our custody is paramount," he said in a statement. "That is why we immediately asked the NYPD, District Attorney and Department of Investigation to look into not only who may have attacked inmate Robinson but also staff behavior." The city council hearing prompted by the Robinson murder is scheduled for Nov. 24.
  
   
  
  

  ---

  Correction officials have publicly downplayed the severity of the problem of inmate-on-inmate violence at Rikers, but the incidents — particularly ones in which guards are involved — just keep taking place.The Voice was the first media outlet to report extensively on the phenomenon of guard involvement in such violence.
  
  Consider the following:
  
  • In February, Correction Officer Lloyd Nicholson was charged with ordering teenage inmates to beat other teen inmates at RNDC. As the Voice reported, Nicholson used a select group of teen enforcers under a regimen he called "the program."
  
  "Basically, it was like the movie A Few Good Men," a source told the Voice in April. "Either you were in the program or not. He thought the ones who weren't abiding with the program were misbehaving, and he used other inmates to discipline them."
  
  • Ex-inmates Camillo Douglas and Luis Soriano are suing the city, claiming that Bloods assaulted them last year at RNDC after guards purposely opened their cell doorsafter bedtime to allow the beatings to take place, their lawyer, Julia Kuan, says.
  
  When Douglas alleged to the Voice that the Bloods controlled the housing unit, Correction officials pooh-poohed it, and he was ignored.
  
  But in September, the Voice obtained internal Correction Department documents showing that top officials at RNDC were aware that Bloods indeed controlled the housing area.
  
  "Gang members known as Bloods are in fact giving orders to other inmates," wrote Captain Belinda Nicks. "They conspired to attack and assault Douglas and Soriano."
  
  Assistant Deputy Warden Zina McLean wrote in her report, "Bloods were trying to manipulate the feeding with distribution of the portions."
  
  And a May 2007 report written by the RNDC warden, Gregory McLaughlin, says the same thing in more muted tones: "It is evident that this incident was a result of Bloods attempting to influence the feeding and telephone use with other inmates."
  
   
  
  • Back in 2000, Bloods got into the cell of Bronx teen Matthew Velez and fatally beat him. Correction officers broke policy in opening his cell door and then either ignored his cries for help or failed to do the required security checks.
  
  During a 2002 trial, one of Velez's killers testified the unit was a "Blood house" and that an accomplice actually asked an officer for permission to "make it hot" — or beat up Velez.
  
  "In the house I was in," he testified, "it's very common. You go to [certain] officers. Every day, there's a fight."
  
  Little seems to have changed since then. Within the past several weeks, correction sources say, inmates in one RNDC housing area were obliged to ask permission from another inmate to enter and leave the dayroom.
  
  "We do get complaints about gang violence and collusion with officers in distributing contraband and quote, enforcing discipline, close quote, by inmates at RNDC," says Jonathan Chasen, a lawyer with Legal Aid's Prisoners Rights Project.
  
  RNDC may be more vulnerable to that kind of behavior, jail observers tell the Voice, because youthful inmates are more vulnerable than adult inmates, they don't speak up as often, and they are seen as easier to coerce by the staff.
  
   
  
  • RNDC has been the site of three suicides in the past two years, including two in the highly secure close-custody wing, where inmates are locked in their cells for 23 hours. One of the suicides was 18-year-old Steven Morales, who hanged himself with a towel after his girlfriend dropped him. The incidents have raised obvious questions about the quality of supervision in the jail.
  
   
  
  

  ---

  Guard involvement in inmate assaults has been reported at other Rikers jails as well. 
  
  In March, 2007, the city agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit involving a near-fatal assault by the leader of a house gang.
  
  The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Donald Jackson, was punched once in the head by inmate Kirk Fisher in an AMKC mental observation ward in May 2003.
  
  Jackson's head struck a piece of protruding metal on the floor so hard that he developed a blood clot in his brain and almost died if not for an operation at Elmhurst Hospital, records show.
  
  "The inmates tell us it's a really common set-up," said Andrew Stoll, a Brooklyn lawyer who specializes in police and Correction Department cases, at the time. "In a lot of the houses, the correction officers use the house gang as enforcers, and pay them with cigarettes and extra commissary."
  
  Fisher testified that, indeed, he had been "deputized" by correction officers to run the unit — a violation of DOC rules.
  
  "I was the house captain, and it was my job to enforce certain rules," he testified. "Anybody that acted up in the house, it was my job to put them in line."
  
  A deposition given by former correction officer Roger Cullen was even more dismaying.
  
  Cullen, the officer who witnessed the assault on Jackson, testified in the deposition that Fisher told other inmates when to shower, when to lock-in, and when to clean their cells.
  
  "It was like he was in charge," Cullen said, adding, "Any officer knows you're not supposed to do that — it's wrong."
  
   
  
  Meanwhile, the mayhem continues. Earlier this month, the Daily News reported that a former inmate named Jeffrey Treffy, of Queens, claimed he was forced to fight another inmate in December 2007 for the amusement of correction officers. Treffy claims that officers allowed him to get medical care only if he told doctors that he hurt himself in a fall.

Teen Found Dead in Rikers Cell (NY Daily News)

BY SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM AND ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Monday, October 20th 2008, 1:25 AM

The NYPD is investigating the murder of an 18-year-old inmate found dead in hisRikers Island jail cell, officials said Sunday. Christopher Robinson was discovered faceup in his cell Saturday morning, his body covered by welts and bruises, police sources said.

City Correction Department officials worked to revive him, but he was declared dead at 11:58 a.m., sources said.

Detectives were poring over Rikers' security tapes for hints at what might have happened, a police source said.

"He was given a beatdown, a fatal one," another police source said.

The city medical examiner will determine a cause of death, but detectives from the 41st Precinct in the Bronx are investigating Robinson's death as a homicide, police sources said.

Why Did Darryl Die? (NYTimes Editorial)

August 28, 2008

EDITORIAL

Why Did Darryl Die?

Two years after a child died there, the Justice Department is conducting a much-needed investigation of New York’s Tryon Boys Residential Center, a juvenile facility in upstate Fulton County. The investigation could take a year or more to complete. But it has already shined a klieg light on disastrous juvenile justice policies, not just in New York, but all across the country.

All too often, juvenile justice facilities are operated by workers who have not been trained to handle the mentally ill children who make up much of the caseload. Facilities also overuse dangerous restraint and disciplinary practices in which children are handcuffed, hog tied, bound to chairs or wrestled to the floor and held down.

According to grand jury testimony, staff members at the Tryon Boys facility used the so-called prone restraint strategy against Darryl Thompson, an emotionally disturbed 15-year-old. He is said by the medical examiner to have died of arrhythmia.

The two large-framed men who forced Darryl onto the floor and held him there with their bodies say that they had no choice because the child was agitated and flailing about. There is no excuse for their failure to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation immediately after Darryl’s heart stopped. According to state officials, all three staff members who were present had been trained in C.P.R. and were required to administer it. None did.

The medical examiner labeled the death a homicide, but the grand jury declined to indict the two workers.

The Justice Department will not say why it is now investigating Tryon, but the problems there clearly have not ended. This summer, according to state officials, a staff member was caught on videotape punching a handcuffed child in the face.

Gladys Carrión, the reform-minded commissioner of New York’s Office of Children and Family Services, took office soon after Darryl’s death. She has been struggling ever since to move New York away from a prison-style juvenile justice system that relies mainly on force toward one that focuses on rehabilitation. Like reformers elsewhere, she is encountering stiff resistance from the unions that represent the facilities’ staff.

To remake the system, New York State will need to downsize some facilities. It will need to hire more mental health professionals and retrain current staff members, some of whom have been doing business the bad-old way for 25 years or more. The state needs to help cities and towns develop community-based treatment programs. New York City is sensibly moving in that direction. New York and all states have a responsibility to protect children, including those who have committed crimes.

Help Younger Offenders Closer to Home (NY Times Editorial)

New York Times

July 11, 2008

EDITORIAL

One proven way to prevent borderline young offenders from becoming serious criminals is to treat them — and their families — in community-based counseling programs instead of shipping them off to juvenile facilities that are often hundreds of miles away from home. Early data suggests that New York City’s alternative-placement programs are cutting recidivism rates.

In addition to saving young lives, the community-based programs cost a lot less: $20,000 per child per year versus as much as $200,000 for holding a child in a juvenile facility. Despite that, politicians and labor unions — eager to preserve local jobs — are fighting hard to keep facilities open.

Earlier this year, Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of New York’s Office of Children and Family Services, announced her intention to close five of the state’s 22 facilities for low-level offenders and an intake center in the Bronx. A longtime advocate of community-based therapies, Ms. Carrión was fiercely criticized by the unions and communities where the facilities are located. The Legislature then restored funding for one of the facilities and the intake center. Gov. David Paterson will need to press a lot harder to close the rest of the unneeded centers and to help keep the reform effort on track.

If there is any doubt, Governor Paterson and other politicians in Albany should review the data on recidivism. About 80 percent of the young men who are placed in juvenile facilities in New York end up committing more crimes within three years of their release. Preliminary data from New York City suggests that the recidivism rate for the new community-based programs might be as low as 35 percent.

The idea is to help borderline young offenders before they turn to serious crime. Young people are required to participate in the programs as a condition of probation. Both they and their families are provided with counselors who teach parenting skills and who often mediate between troubled children and their families.

New York and other states will always need some facilities for young people who commit grave crimes. But they need to stop reflexively confining young people who present little or no risk. New York needs to greatly expand access to community-based programs. It can do that by closing unneeded juvenile detention centers and investing the savings in programs like the ones adopted in New York City.

Helping Girls as Victims, Not Culprits (Clyde Haberman, NY Times)

This article appeared in the New York Times Metro Section on July 8, 2008

Helping Girls as Victims, Not Culprits
By Clyde Haberman

Miranda’s story is typical, and yet not.

It’s typical of many girls who run away from home, only to land in the arms of older men whom they mistake for protectors. Most adults would recognize these men for what they are. They’re pimps.

She was all of 14 when she fled her mother’s house in Brooklyn and found herself “in the life” — the world of the street hustler. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into,” said Miranda, who, for reasons that should be obvious, avoided giving a last name or even a true first name.

Before long, she was arrested for prostitution. It would not be her last run-in with the law.

At least this pimp did not beat her. Her second pimp did, knocking out a few teeth and sending her to the hospital. Miranda was 16 then. She had tried going back home, but her mother lost patience with her and kicked her out. “I thought for a while that I was crazy, and I was the child from hell,” she said.

As we said, her story fits a familiar pattern with girls and sexual predators. Not necessarily typical is the way she reversed direction, with help from Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, or Gems, a Harlem-based organization that each year offers counseling and other assistance to more than 200 of the city’s Mirandas.

At 18, Miranda has just graduated from high school and is looking at possible colleges. That she is firmly on an educational track at a normal age is no small accomplishment, given her rough past. “I feel like a lotus,” she said. “A lotus starts in muddy water but grows into something beautiful.”

Also not typical are her journeys to Albany to urge that lawmakers rethink how the state deals with children — girls, in the main — who become sexual prey. Her efforts and those of others paid off a couple of weeks ago when the Legislature, by unanimous votes in both houses, passed the Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Act.

Instead of being treated as criminals, as they are now, girls age 15 and under would be viewed as victims the first time they are arrested for prostitution. They would be classified as “persons in need of supervision,” or PINS, and offered social services and protection from their pimps in a dormitory-style shelter.

Essentially, the Safe Harbor bill brings state law in line with federal statutes governing foreigners who make it to the United States in the clutches of sex traffickers. Those non-Americans are dealt with as victims, not criminals.

“Now, people born in Brooklyn will get the same treatment as someone born in Ukraine or Thailand or wherever,” said Mishi Faruqee, director of the youth justice program of the Children’s Defense Fund in New York.

It is not clear, however, if Gov. David A. Paterson will sign the bill. A spokeswoman said only that the governor would look at it once it is formally sent to him.

Were Mr. Paterson still in the State Senate, “this would have been an issue he would have been all over,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit group that focuses on prison policy. But groups like his worry that the governor might be leaning toward a veto, in part to avoid a new multimillion-dollar expense in tough times. And despite those unanimous legislative votes, an override of a veto cannot be assumed, said Assemblyman William Scarborough, a Democrat of Queens. He is a chief sponsor of the measure, with State Senator Dale M. Volker, a Republican of western New York.

A prominent opponent of the bill is the Bloomberg administration, although it has stopped short of urging a veto, publicly anyway. City Hall agrees that the girls are victims, said John Feinblatt, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator. But “the PINS process has no teeth,” he said, and so keeping these children firmly in the court system is preferable.

“Our thought was that the best way to reach them was not through decriminalization but rather using the leverage of court-ordered services,” Mr. Feinblatt said in an interview.

His assessment of the legislation was a lot harsher in an article that he wrote for The New York Post in June under the headline “NY’s Pro-Pimp Bill.” If it became law, he wrote, girls would find it relatively easy to run right back to their exploiters.

He’s wrong, says Rachel Lloyd, who founded Gems a decade ago and is its executive director. Born in England, Ms. Lloyd was “in the life” herself as a teenager. In part, the problem is one of perception, she said. “These are not kids with cancer — they’re not the kids people feel the most empathy for.”

Can’t these girls be quite a handful, though?

Ms. Lloyd is not convinced that they are all as tough as many might think. “Whatever your stereotype is,” she said, “when you sit down and talk to them, you see that a kid is a kid.”

Taking the Next Steps in Juvenile Justice (Mishi Faruqee)

This article appeared in the Gotham Gazette on June 2, 2008

Taking the Next Steps in Juvenile Justice

by Mishi Faruqee

02 Jun 2008

Over the past few years, New York City has undertaken an impressive transformation of its juvenile justice system. Breaking from the policies of the previous mayor, the Bloomberg administration has embraced the notion that providing children with community-based services and support instead of sending them to jail or prison is a cheaper, more effective approach to reducing youth crime and recidivism.

In the last two years, the city has joined with a number of non-profit organizations to create a network of alternatives to incarceration for children under the age of 16 involved in the court system. These new community-based options have led to a marked decrease in the number of children incarcerated in city detention centers and state-run prisons.

However, these reforms are not enough.

The city must change policies and practices to reduce the glaring disparities in arrest, prosecution and incarceration of youth of color. New York City must take the necessary next step in restructuring the system by developing a long-term plan to reduce detention capacity and redirect resources from juvenile jails to effective community-based programs. Closing pre-trial detention centers is the only way for the city to realize the savings from its increased use of community alternatives and to continue its progress in reducing youth incarceration.

Lock 'Em Up No More

In the 1990s, the city’s juvenile justice system relied heavily on incarcerating young people before they went to trial. Faced with a lack of community options and a punitive political climate, Family Court judges routinely placed children in juvenile detention centers while they awaited trial for misdemeanors and other non-violent delinquency charges. Because the city was locking up children charged with minor offenses, the detention population increased by 60 percent from 1993 to 2000, even as youth crime and arrests markedly decreased.

One of the most troubling aspects of the spike in youth incarceration was the disproportionate impact it had on African American and Latino youth. During the 1990s, over 95 percent of young people in city detention centers were African American or Latino. This continues to be the case today.

In response to the rising detention population, the city Department of Juvenile Justice in 1998 opened two new youth jails, the Crossroads center in Brownsville and the Horizons in the South Bronx, and jettisoned a plan to shut down the notorious Spofford detention center in the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx. By 2000, however, the department was running out of space in these three secure juvenile detention centers. Despite the fact that that the majority of detained children had been arrested for non-violent offenses, city officials did not even consider developing community-based programs.

Five years later and following the change in administrations, the mayor’s office implemented a range of community-based alternatives to detention for children charged in Family Court for delinquency offenses, such as graffiti, theft or fighting in school. The city partnered with a non-profit organization in each borough to operate community monitoring and after-school reporting centers. Notably, between 2005 and 2007, the number of court admissions to Department of Juvenile Justice facilities decreased by 16 percent.

In addition to new community programs that have reduced the use of pre-trial detention in the city, the Bloomberg administration has created other alternative-to-incarceration programs that have significantly decreased the number of children sent to upstate facilities operated by the State Office of Children and Family Services. These alternative programs have recidivism rates of between 18 and 35 percent, considerably lower than the nearly 80 percent recidivism rate for youth released from state facilities.

As a result of the new alternative-to-incarceration programs, the number of children incarcerated in state and private facilities dropped by 68 percent between 2000 and 2008. Recognizing that this dramatic population decline presented a significant opportunity to realign agency resources, children and family services commissioner Gladys Carrion proposed closing six facilities, a move that would generate $16 million a year in savings. After much negotiation, the state legislature ultimately approved shutting four facilities in its fiscal year 2009 budget.

New York City should look to the state’s example of how political will and leadership can close costly and ineffective facilities.

'Rightsizing' the City’s System

A December 2007 report from the city's Independent Budget Office revealed the staggering costs of pretrial youth detention in New York City: an estimated $84 million a year -- a 42 percent increase in just five years. It costs an average of $594 to provide secure detention for one juvenile for one day. On an annualized basis, the city spends over $216,000 to incarcerate a child in a secure detention facility. The report found that the average secure detention stay of 50 days costs the city about $30,000 per child. In contrast, the city spends around $1,300 on average to supervise one child in an alternative-to-detention program for up to two months.

As the city diverts more young people from jails, policymakers should seek to downsize the city’s inefficient and wasteful detention system. The city will not save money by diverting youth from detention unless it cuts detention capacity – either by reducing beds or shutting down entire facilities. Otherwise, every year, the city will spend more - not less - on detention.

The cost to operate detention centers is fixed. That means that, even though there may be fewer residents of each facility, it costs no less to run it. Instead the expense of running these extraordinarily expensive facilities is spread over a smaller population. As a result, the number of children in detention has decreased while the per diem cost to incarcerate youth has increased. The most sensible way for the city to reduce capacity is to honor its long-standing commitment to close the Spofford detention center.

Building a Community-Focused Agenda

Most importantly, reducing detention capacity will prevent the juvenile justice system from finding new ways to keep locking up young people of color. As the number of court admissions to detention decreased last year, there was a marked increase in the number of police admissions – children who the police brought directly to detention because the court was closed and the police could not contact a parent or guardian.

This year, just as the city has taken steps to reduce police admissions, the number of readmissions to detention has started to increase. Notably, the one constant trend has been that virtually all of those detained are African American and Latino children from under-resourced and over-policed schools and neighborhoods.

The state has a role here as well. It should enact legislation called Re-Direct New York, which would provide state reimbursement for alternatives to incarceration. It would be modeled after the successful state reimbursement plan for community programs that work to keep young people out of the foster care system. State reimbursements could also support alternatives to juvenile court, such as neighborhood youth courts and mediation programs as well as aftercare services for young people returning home from jail or prison.

The city should also develop a comprehensive plan to dismantle the “cradle to prison pipeline” for New York City’s African American and Latino children living in poverty. The vast majority of children of color in the juvenile justice system have been failed by other public systems – particularly the education, child welfare and mental health systems.

A collaborative effort between public officials and community groups can help to dismantle this pipeline by redistributing detention dollars to create quality schools, community-based mental heath services, family support programs and other neighborhood-based efforts that offer long-term help for vulnerable children and their families.

Mishi Faruqee is the director of the youth justice program at the Children's Defense Fund

For Juveniles, Alternatives to Incarceration (Neil Hernandez)

This article originally appeared in the Gotham Gazette on June 2, 2008 - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20080602/200/2547

For Juveniles, Alternatives to Incarceration
by Commissioner Neil Hernandez
02 Jun 2008

Last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged the most sweeping reform in decades to the City’s juvenile justice system which would reduce the average length of stay in detention, create alternatives to detention and placement for youth, assist young people leaving detention with re-entry into their home communities; and engage families in addressing mental health issues by ensuring uninterrupted service delivery upon release.

That reform effort has already yielded significant results. The success of the overall reform effort has resulted in a decrease in detention population levels, with the population in Non-Secure Detention group homes declining by 13.4 percent and in Secure Detention by 1.7 percent from July 2007 through March 2008.

These successes have enabled Department of Juvenile Justice to reduce capacity, cutting annual costs to taxpayers by $1.8 million.

A series of innovation programs have contributed to this.

Collaborative Family Initiative

Launched in February 2007, the Collaborative Family Initiative provides juveniles who are in need of mental health support with continuing, uninterrupted services upon release.

Nationwide, youth with mental health service needs are overrepresented in juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Of the more than 600,000 youth processed through juvenile detention centers each year, 70 percent suffer from mental health disorders. In New York City, youth with mental health issues comprise 82 percent of all juveniles in detention. On average, young people needing mental health service stay in detention twice as long as unaffected youth and are more likely to be incarcerated.

The initiative links these young people and their families to community-based providers, ensuring that after release they continue to receive critical mental health and psychiatry services in their neighborhoods without interruption or delay. The young people are enrolled in the program while still in detention so that upon release from custody, the youth receive immediate psychiatry and/or mental health services free-of-charge through community-based not-for-profit providers. Their families receive supportive counseling, direct mental health services if they have an unmet need, and additional referrals as necessary. The city pays for services to the young people for the first 90 days following release.

Participation in the Collaborative Family Initiative also has helped reduce the average length of stay in detention for youth with mental health and psychiatric needs. According to an interim report on the initiative issued May 23 by John Jay College and the Department of Juvenile Justice, 81 percent of youth released during the initial phase of the program remained with their families and were not re-arrested on new charges during the post-release period.

Risk Assessment

In another effort to ensure that the city keeps in custody only those youth that need to be detained, the department will factor in the results of the new Risk Assessment Instrument into its decisions about releasing youth to their families. The instrument was created by the Vera Institute of Justice in conjunction with the Criminal Justice Coordinator’s Office and other juvenile justice stakeholders.

Before a youth's case concludes, the tool assesses the probability of the youth returning to court and the likelihood of re-arrest. The Risk Assessment Instrument is a proven approach that has yielded significant results in other jurisdictions where it has been adopted, including Multnomah County, Ore.; Santa Clara County, Calif; Cook County, Ill.; and the State of Virginia. The risk assessment complements the Release to Parent initiative, implemented in October 2007, that enables the department to discharge those youth arrested on nights, weekends and holidays, who do not pose a serious risk to public safety.

Re-entry Supports Program

The juvenile justice system and the Family Court process can be complex and intimidating to youth and their families. Little comprehensive information on juvenile justice processing exists, and much of it involves abstract legal concepts. As a result, young people and their parents or guardians sometimes feel that they lack any kind of meaningful influence over the outcome of their case and may decide against actively participating in the adjudication process. This can result in young people remaining in detention when they simply don’t have to.

To address this, the department recently established the Re-entry Supports Program, in partnership with John Jay College, to familiarize youth and families with early-release options and to formulate tools to help young people re-entering their communities better understand and navigate the juvenile justice system and connect with local resources.

The Re-entry Supports Program will provide every resident of a detention facility with easy-to-understand information about the court process, hearings and how to act in court. Every family with a young person in detention also will receive instruction, through multi-media, a multi-lingual court guide, and Internet tool, on parental involvement and navigating the court process.

LIFE Transition Program

As part of the mayor's effort to reduce poverty in the city, the Department of Juvenile Justice’s LIFE Transitions Program targets young people with school attendance issues or performing below grade level in an effort to get them back in school. It also promotes early career exploration. The LIFE Transitions Program, which includes juvenile offenders whose cases are processed before the adult courts, is a significant investment in youth who are considered likely to enter state detention facilities. The program prepares them for transition back to their communities and enables them to continue working with the same community-based organizations upon release from detention.

The Next Steps

Given the success of the overall reform effort in reducing the demand for Non-Secure Detention group homes, the department will close two of these facilities in the city’s next fiscal year, which begins July 1. Despite citywide budget reductions, the administration has expressed its commitment to the Collaborative Family Initiative by ensuring its continued funding through fiscal 2009.

While the reforms and the results they have produced so far are compelling, simply sustaining these programs is not enough. We can and must do more for our families and our young people by investing in programs that reduce the use of detention while still ensuring public safety, and that offer the promise of more positive and meaningful outcomes for juveniles. In the last decade, New York City’s juvenile justice system has evolved from one focused on custody and security to one that promotes public safety, addresses risk factors, including mental health and poverty, and serves the needs of youth. At the same time, it strengthens families and communities.

The support of the public, including community and faith-based groups, is essential to continue these efforts and to ensure that critical services are sustained for youth and families. In addition, the department needs New York State to be an equal fiscal partner and the courts to continue this forward momentum and make certain that the goals identified in the mayor’s vision for juvenile justice reform are fully achieved.

Neil Hernandez is commissioner of the New York City Department of Juvenile Justice.
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Protecting Incarcerated Gay and Lesbian Youth (Emily Jane Goodman)

This article appeared in the Gotham Gazette on June 4, 2008
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/issueoftheweek/20080602/200/2544

Protecting Incarcerated Gay and Lesbian Youth
by Emily Jane Goodman
June 4, 2008

Young New Yorkers who are defined by themselves or others as LGBTQ - lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning their identity - are often at risk for mental, emotional and physical harm in school, at home, and in social and employment situations. They may experience discrimination, harassment, bullying and violence because of their sexuality, sexual preference and personal style. The risks these teens face in state-run residences, including correctional facilities, can be particularly daunting and dangerous.

Now the New York State Office of Children and Family Services has amended its policies to add gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation to the characteristics protected from discrimination i.e., race, creed, color, age, sex, national origin, religion, marital status, mental or physical disability. The policy is designed to protect youth from discrimination or mistreatment in all residential settings, including jails, prisons and juvenile detention centers.

"All adolescents experience developmental and social challenges," the policy statement said. "However, LGBTQ youth frequently face additional pressures based on their gender identity or sexual orientation."

As a result, the policy states, "The majority of LGBTQ youth report alcohol and drug use as common mechanisms for coping with feelings of severe isolation," additional and typical risks, which presumably must now be addressed."

What the Policy Does

Effective March 2008 all of the agency's staff and private contractors are prohibited from engaging in any form of discrimination against or harassment of youth on the basis of gender identity and expression, or sexual orientation. The policy states that discrimination or harassment of youth for these reasons by staff or other youths, "will not be tolerated."

The agency promises to retrain staff and provide information to all youth in state facilities about their rights and how to report violations. Under the policy, staff are obligated to report violations by colleagues.

The Office of Children and Family Services policy, though, goes beyond simply prohibiting discrimination. It also seeks to make these young people more comfortable with their identities.

For example, it states, "Clinicians should help LGBTQ youth explore their feelings about their gender identity or sexual orientation, along with related issues and questions, in a safe, affirming manner. Clinicians should help youth reduce co-occurring problems or distress related to their gender identity or sexual orientation, and develop their strengths, coping skills, and resiliency."

LGBTQ Decision-making Committees will have to be established in all facilities. Placement in specialized lesbian, gay of transgender units and facilities will be considered, where appropriate, for individual youth. Also, health care clinicians shall not assume any pathology simply because a youth expresses a particular gender identity or sexual orientation.

In other medical issues, those who may be taking hormones, perhaps in the context of gender reassignment, will be treated in accord with the protocols for the continuation of other prescribed medications.

Staff members have been instructed to use politically correct language and that "homosexual" or "transvestite" are "antiquated and have been replaced with "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender." Morever, each individual may choose a new first name and their preferred pronoun for self-reference. Staff must use those names and pronouns. Residents may wear undergarments of their choice regardless of gender, although uniforms are required for outer clothing. Finally, transgender youth have a right to one-person sleeping quarters and individual showers "to allow for privacy." Presumably that avoids the designation of male or female quarters.

Transgender youth may request either a male or female staff member to perform any necessary strip searches. The request "will be accommodated, whenever possible, considering staffing and safety needs."

Emily Jane Goodman is a New York State Supreme Court Justice.

Why Waste Money on Mostly Empty Juvenile Facilities?

Buffalo News Op-Ed: Another Voice / State spending

March 19, 2008 

By Mishi Faruqee

 In January, New York State’s Office of Children and Family Services announced the closing of six juvenile facilities because they are costly and ineffective. Yet State Sen. Catharine Young, R-Great Valley, and the New York State Senate leadership are fighting to keep these facilities open even though they are either mostly or completely empty.

In its proposed counter-budget released on March 12, the Senate included funding to keep three of these facilities open — Auburn Residential Center in Cayuga County, which has 24 beds and houses no children, Brace Residential Center in Delaware County, which has 25 beds and houses three children, and Great Valley Residential Center in Cattaraugus County, which has 25 beds and houses 11 children.

Each empty bed costs the state $140,000 to $200,000 per year, and the total cost to keep open these three facilities would come to more than $4.2 million in the next fiscal year. These facilities hold mainly non-violent juvenile offenders and are located hundreds of miles away from the children’s families. They also do not work. The state’s own research found that more than three-quarters of all kids who enter the state’s juvenile justice system are rearrested within three years of their release.

With the cost savings from these closings, Children and Family Services can create a network of community-based programs as alternatives to incarceration. Studies have long demonstrated that the most successful juvenile programs are those that work with an entire family rather than only with an adjudicated youth, addressing the reasons why the children committed crimes in the first place. Extensive research has shown that these programs can lower the rearrest rates by 25 percent to 70 percent.

So why is the Senate willing to throw away taxpayer money to operate under-utilized and unsuccessful facilities?

The answer is a few dozen jobs. In order to lock in the jobs in these facilities, the Senate budget resolution prohibits the transfer of staff or children from the three facilities, proposes to mandate a two-year advance notification of any facility closure (it’s now one year) and to convert the Great Valley center from a nonsecure facility to a limited secure facility.

Last year, the Senate successfully restored funding for the Gloversville facility, although the facility has not housed any children since April 2006. The Senate now would like to pay the 24 staff members at the Auburn residential center to report every day to an empty facility that doesn’t house any children.

Notably, when OCFS Commissioner Gladys Carrion announced the facility closures, she made a public commitment that her agency will work closely with the Department of Civil Services to ensure that all staff from the affected facilities will secure positions at other facilities or other state agencies.

Mishi Faruqee is director of the Juvenile Justice Project of the Correctional Associationof New York.

OCFS wants to close underutilized youth facilities

By Steve Francis - 3/26/2008 4:37 PM     News10Now

 

Watch the Video 

ALBANY, N.Y. -- "It was hard for me to transition back to the community when I was upstate," said Kyle Sullivan.

After being arrested at the age of 14 on a nonviolent charge, Kyle Sullivan said spending months in an upstate youth rehabilitation facility did little for him. He returned not once, but twice.

"We're here today to support the New York State Office of Children and Family Services' plan to close six underutilized youth facilities," said Juvenile Justice Project Director Mishi Faruqee.

Juvenile justice groups said Sullivan shares a common story that they said involves a system that for too long has been about filling beds and passing the high cost to taxpayers.

"The Senate has proposed keeping open the Auburn youth facility, the Brace youth facility, and the Great Valley youth facility," said Faruqee.

The Office of Children and Family Services planned to close six facilities to save taxpayers $16 million. But to their surprise, three of the facilities are in the Senate budget to remain open - even though there are few or no children receiving services at the sites.

"We are in a fiscal situation where the state has to close a gap of between four and five billion," said Queens Assemblyman William Scarborough. "Meanwhile, the department has to maintain facilities when in some instances you have two children and 25 or 26 staff."

This, as OCFS hopes to move to a more targeted community-based program that costs $15,000 per year, per kid - instead of using the facilities that can cost above $100,000 per kid, per year.

Officials said the alternative programs are not only cheaper, but they believe they're more effective.

Ruben Austria, a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow said, "You know what happens when we put young people upstate - 81 percent of the boys reoffend within three years."

A spokesman for the State Senate Majority told us why the facilities would remain open under their budget saying, "Three would be kept open for a number of factors, including economic factors, and we are trying to find alternative uses for the facilities."

 

The Juveniles Are Gone, Yet the Jails Remain (NY Times Article)

March 26, 2008

New York Times: ABOUT NEW YORK

By JIM DWYER

The public pays about $500 a night for each of the 25 beds in the Auburn Residential Center — a place for teenagers who have gotten into lower-grade trouble with the law, a junior-varsity jail. For the last two weeks, the beds in Auburn have been empty. And state officials expect them to remain empty, permanently.

But even with no one under the sheets, each bed will continue to cost as much as $200,000 a year, the officials say.

Auburn, near Syracuse, is one of three state facilities for teenagers that are becoming high-priced ghost jails. Brace Residential Center, in Delaware County, with 25 beds, has just two teenagers staying there, watched over by a staff of 24; Great Valley in Cattaraugus County has 10 young people and a staff of 24. Soon, Brace and Great Valley, like Auburn, will no longer have teenagers staying there.

Yet if the State Senate has its way, all three will remain open until at least January 2010.

“I believe the number of juveniles was deliberately reduced this year and the kids sent elsewhere” to justify closing Great Valley, said State Senator Catharine M. Young, a Republican from Cattaraugus County, which is in the western part of the state, near the borders of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Senate has passed a resolution that requires Great Valley and the others to remain open.

Nearly all politicians fight to keep jobs in their districts. Prisons, jails and juvenile facilities have been a source of political and economic power to upstate areas that have little other industry. Most of the inmates came from the five boroughs and the metropolitan area.

In the battle over the ghost jails, though, the fight is not simply about the local economy, but also about a system of juvenile corrections that has been in a quiet state of collapse for nearly a decade, particularly for teenagers who are not in trouble for serious offenses.

New York City has found better, cheaper ways to move teenagers onto safer ground, said Ronald E. Richter, the city’s family services coordinator.

For offenders whose home lives are filled with problems, the city now provides intense programs for the entire family, buttressing the role of adults in the lives of the teenagers. Last year, about 275 teenagers and their families were sent into these programs rather than the state juvenile system.

So instead of sending the teenagers off to state facilities that cost $140,000 to $200,000 a year per person, the city is spending about $17,000 a year, Mr. Richter said. And while the state’s juvenile recidivism rate is 80 percent, the city program had a rate of about 35 percent in its first year, he said.

Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the state’s Office of Children and Family Services, which administers the juvenile centers, says straightening out teenagers who have committed minor offenses is a job better done in community-based systems. The juvenile centers, she said, should be reserved for “young people who are a danger to themselves and their communities.”

“For most of the kids, we don’t need these facilities, and we don’t need to be shipping them hundreds of miles away from their families,” she said. “That money can be reinvested in programs that work better for these young people.”

The prison economy is a central feature of New York’s political economy. The state Public Employees Federation, which represents some of the employees in the juvenile centers, has bought advertisements in small newspapers in towns near the centers, arguing that the state is jumping the gun.

“We think it’s premature,” said Darcy Wells, spokeswoman for the union. “The police say that juvenile arrests are up by 8 percent in New York City.”

Ms. Carrión said that there would be plenty of space if serious juvenile crime rose sharply. “Even after I close the facilities, I will have 20 to 30 percent excess capacity, so I have the flexibility in the system,” she said.

Senator Young said that the community-based programs like the one in New York needed to be studied before the existing system was shut down. The current data, she said, is not adequate.

Ms. Carrión says there is no need to wait: The current juvenile system catapults needy youngsters far from the families they will eventually return to, with no changes in the households that they left.

“Almost all of the kids are black and brown,” she said. “This is the alternative boarding school system for children of color. We can do better than this.”

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

White Paper on Community Based Alternatives to Incarceration for Juveniles

A draft in progress of my atiwhitepaper. Updated drafts will be posted periodically.

OCFS Announces Decision to Close Juvenile Facilities Upstate

On Friday, January 11th, OCFS Commissioner Gladys Carrion announced that OCFS will close six underutilized facilities and downsize another, saving the state $16 million annually. “Instead of continuing to pour money into this broken system and confining these children to facilities hundreds of miles from their homes,” the Commissioner said, “OCFS has aggressively been moving toward more community-based alternatives to incarceration where these children can maintain and strengthen connections with their families and the significant adults in their lives.” OFCS Press Release

Juvenile Detention Trap - NY Times Editorial - Jan 5, 2008

One way to lessen the chance that troubled young people grow up to be full-fledged criminals is to send them to community-based counseling and probation programs instead of to detention centers where they are often traumatized and inducted into a life of crime. The community-based programs are less expensive than detention and more effective when it comes to cutting recidivism. But states and localities are often hampered by policies that provide perverse financial incentives for sending young people to the lockup. That’s the case in New York City, which is struggling to remake its juvenile justice system. Detaining one youth for a year costs city taxpayers $200,000 — many times what it costs to care for troubled children in community-based programs. Unfortunately, the system encourages officials to choose detention for juveniles. The state reimburses the city 50 percent of the cost of pretrial detention, but pays nothing for community-based alternative programs that can make all the difference in getting troubled young people back on track. Another serious problem, according to a recent study by the city’s Independent Budget Office, is that the juvenile courts close at 5 p.m. and aren’t open on weekends. Police officers who arrest young people at those times usually have no option but to send them directly to detention until the courts open. In some cases, the process can take several days. That’s outrageous — especially since statistics show that once young people do make it to court, two-thirds are defined as low-risk suspects and are released to their parents pending trial. It would never be tolerated in the adult system where the law requires that suspects be swiftly arraigned. Thanks to innovative policies, New York City has begun to reduce the number of low-level young offenders who are sent to state-run detention facilities. Many are now diverted to community-based programs where they can receive mental health and counseling services. That’s a good thing, since more than 80 percent of young men who are sentenced to detention facilities end up arrested again within three years.