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.