Organizational Change in Juvenile Justice

New York’s Close to Home initiative will soon launch

Alexandra — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 20:54:15 +0000

The proposed date on which New York City’s ‘Close to Home’ initiative will begin accepting children into its facilities is September 1, 2012. The City’s Administration for Children’s Services, which will be in charge of the new initiative, has already released a list of recommended service providers, and a detailed plan, which includes a list of responses to community members’ comments about the initiative. The list of service providers will be familiar to many who work in the field of juvenile justice and child welfare in New York, as it includes some of the city’s largest social service agencies, many of which have existed in New York for years.

If the plan is accepted, starting on September 1st, many young people who will have been designated as being accepted for being placed in what are called ‘nonsecure’ facilities operated by the Office of Children and Family Services, but which are actually locked facilities, will be, based on determinations made by the appropriate agencies, instead placed into city-run ‘Non-secure Placements’ or other facilities that are designated along a continuum of care. These Non-secure placements will be run by the provider agencies identified by the city, and will be small, 20 bed residential facilities, based loosely on the ‘Missouri model’ of juvenile residential placement.

The Office of Children and Family Services, which will ultimately have oversight over this process, has produced a helpful list of questions and answers on this process.

I have recently written an op-ed for City Limits magazine on the young people who will be left out of this initiative. In the op-ed, I express some of my concerns about these teens who get left behind. As progressive juvenile justice reforms like the ‘Close to Home’ initiative happen with increasing frequency across the country, it seems important to look at the ways that teenagers are understood and treated within these context, analyzing the differences between those who are seen as the redeemable and those who are not.

The New York City Administration for Children’s Services is hosting a series of community forums on realignment

Alexandra — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:16:17 +0000

These forums have already begun, and are taking place in neighborhoods which have been designated as having high rates of ‘sending’ to upstate residential facilities. The East Harlem and Staten Island forums remain:

Manhattan–East Harlem

Friday, March 16, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College

2180 Third Avenue (corner of 119^th Street), New York, NY 10035

Staten Island–Stapleton

Monday, March 26, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

Gerard Carter Community Center

230 Broad Street, Staten Island, NY 10304

More information about the fora can be viewed here.

New York’s realignment plan announced

Alexandra — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:52:49 +0000

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last week that his budget would include a provision to reform the state’s juvenile justice system by providing residential and community-based care in New York City for young people adjudicated as delinquents who are from New York City, rather than sending them upstate. Called the ‘Close to Home’ initiative, the legislation proposed through the budget would allow cities in New York with populations greater than 1 million to implement ‘close to home’ initiatives for young people adjudicated as delinquents. The statewide agency currently responsible for residential care, the Office of Children and Family Services, would be responsible for approving all local plans for residential care, and overseeing the local plans.

Under the new plan, the Office of Children and Family Services is authorized to close existing juvenile facilities if the populations become low enough to warrant such closures, providing 60 days notice of such closures.

Details of the governor’s plan can be viewed here and in more detail here.

Children’s Defense Fund releases important data about youth justice in New York

Alexandra — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:56:30 +0000

The Children’s Defense Fund of New York has just released a toolkit on youth justice which can be used by educators to teach students about juvenile justice reform. The toolkit includes important data about how many youth become enmeshed in New York’s system, the costs of secure care, and what kinds of reforms are currently being undertaken.

Innovative programs in residential care: the Work Appreciation for Youth program

Alexandra — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:27:46 +0000

I recently learned about a program offered by Children’s Village, an agency for children in New York’s child welfare, mental health, and juvenile justice systems, which provides support to youth leaving residential care. Under the program, called the Work Appreciation for Youth model, Children’s Village provides mentorship and guidance to youth leaving care, school placement services, and work experience and work ethics training. The young people in the program are also provided with stipends if they meet certain program goals, such as saving money. The Child Welfare League of America has evaluated the program, and it has been replicated at a number of other sites. You can read a case study of a program participant on the Child Welfare League website.

New York State Juvenile Justice Strategic Plan

Alexandra — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:35:35 +0000

The New York State Juvenile Justice Steering Committee has released a strategic plan for implementing juvenile justice reforms in the state. Components of the plan include the development of system governance and coordination, an effective continuum of diversion, supervision, treatment, and confinement, accountability of system and actors within the system, shared data and information driven systems and policy. This plan will have some ongoing action steps, and it is critical that these plans of action be monitored.

Launch of National Center for Youth in Custody

Alexandra — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:32:09 +0000

This month, the National Center for Youth in Custody, which is co-directed by the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators and the National Partnership for Juvenile Services, has been launched. The Center’s mission is described in this way: to advance the field of juvenile justice by providing training and technical assistance and by disseminating effective practices and approaches to the justice community. It will be exciting to see what kind of work this Center might do to improve the care of young people involved in the juvenile justice system.

Annie E. Casey foundation report on youth incarceration

Alexandra — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:58:48 +0000

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has just released a report in which they make a case for reducing juvenile incarceration. The report provides data on the extent of confinement, its costs, and the alternatives to incarceration which are available. The report provides comprehensive and up-to-date data on the issues surrounding the incarceration of young people in this country, and has a wide array of simple, easy to read charts and figures. The report largely recommends a wholescale reduction in the use of incarceration, citing the iatrogenic nature of confinement. However, this report also recommends that incarceration and residential care only be used for what the author terms the ‘dangerous few.’ This term is frequently used by those who point to the need to use risk assessment instruments to sift out the ‘bad’ kids from the rest. One ‘danger’ or ‘risk’ in appealing to this idea that the only young people who should be in residential care is that it elides the complexity of the growth and development processes of young people who come to the youth justice system, and somehow places the ‘dangerous’ kids in the realm of the irredeemable, while ‘the rest’ as not. Instead, I would question the use of this language of ‘danger’ and offer that young people charged with violent crimes should be treated as such: not necessarily as ‘dangerous’ kids, but as young people who live in a violent world which has placed them on a path to committing violent offenses. As such, these kids, like all of their peers, need to be in a setting where they can build insight into their past, empathy for others, and a sense of themselves as individual actors. While many programs discussed in this report are admirable attempts at helping young people develop, it is imperative that more attention be focused on addressing young people’s development beyond the offense itself, and to the individual. Additionally, much of the emphasis in reports about residential care has been on length of stay and conditions of confinement, but we cannot ignore the importance of healthy staff-youth relationships, strong educational and vocational programming, meaningful ‘out of school’ time activities, and strong clinical support as imperative aspects of good residential care.

Youth magazine issue devoted to the experience of institutionalization

Alexandra — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:52:52 +0000

Represent, a magazine devoted to the voices of young people in care, has an issue devoted to the experience of being institutionalized. This is a fantastic issue, with stories written by young people with a wide range of experiences–from foster care, to group homes, to residential treatment centers, to detention. The stories are really wonderfully written and have some great and fresh perspectives.

Mayor Bloomberg commits significant funding towards youth job development in NYC

Alexandra — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:00:45 +0000

Today, Mayor Bloomberg announced that he would be donating funds from his private foundation to a major new jobs initiative for young men in New York City. These funds would be matched by George Soros. This initiative seems to be an important and essential step in the city, particularly in light of research which indicates the stark unemployment figures for young men of color in the city. According to the Community Service Society, only one in four young black men has a job in New York City, and New York has the highest ratio of young people in the country who are unemployed or not working.

This could promise to be an exciting new initiative, particularly if it is connected in a meaningful way to the countless young men who are cycling in and out of prison in New York.