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.
One percent of all American adults are now in prison or jail, the Pew Center on the States reported earlier this year. That's more than 2.3 million people. In New York alone, 62,260 adult spent their days behind bars at the end of last year. Out of every 100,000 New Yorkers, 482 were incarcerated.
While New York's incarceration rate may seem high, it falls in the lowest fifth of states, with a few -- Louisiana, Texas and Georgia -- incarcerating people at twice the rate of New York. (Louisiana imprisons 1,132 people for every 100,000 state residents.)
The current numbers for New York come at what maybe the end of a kind of prison boom in the state. In 1972, New York's prison population was at about a 20-year low. Then the state passed the Rockefeller drug laws, setting jail sentences of 15 years to life for selling relatively small amount of drugs. The prison population soared. During Gov. Mario Cuomo's first term -- from 1983 to 1987 -- the number of people in state prisons increased by some 10,000. In his 12 years in office, Cuomo would add more prison beds in New York than all the previous governors in state history combined, at a cost that would eventually reach about $7 billion, Eric Schlosser wrote in the Atlantic.
The state's prisoner population continued to climb, reaching 71,750 in 2000. Then, the numbers began to decline. Currently about 62,260 individuals are in state prisons.
Felony rates in the state have fallen dramatically, fueled by the large decreases in serious offenses in New York City. And in 2005, the state enacted some reforms in the Rockefeller drug laws. Finally, experts and even ordinary citizens have questioned whether mass incarceration has really increased public safety.
"Through the 1980s, policymakers abandoned the philosophy of rehabilitation. Keeping criminals off the streets and exacting retribution became the main goals of punishment," Harvard sociologist Bruce Western has written. But, according to Western, this approach can be self-defeating. "Incarceration reduces the yearly earnings of ex-prisoners by 40 percent and increases the risks of divorce and separation. A steady job and a good marriage provide pathways out of crime, but incarceration undermines these steps to an honest living," he said.
This week, we look at the changes in incarceration in New York, both among adults and under the city's juvenile justice system. Writers examine efforts to further reduce detention, of both adults and young people. Two articles -- one on health care on Rikers and the other on protecting particularly vulnerable juvenile inmates -- examine treatment of incarcerated people.
Cutting Prisons, Keeping Prisoners: Crime and the number of felons are down in New York, but the state continues to keep its prisons open, eating up money that could be used for drug treatment, better supervision of released offenders and improving parole.
Rating Health Care Behind Bars: The city recently renewed its contract with the company that provides health care on Riker's Island -- even though the provider has repeatedly failed to meet the city's own standards.
How to Reform Juvenile Justice: While applauding steps the city has made to improve its ways of dealing with young offenders, much remains to be done, an advocate writes. Now, she argues, the city must close detention facilities and reduce the glaring racial disparities in the system.
Keeping Young People out of Jail: In six years, New York City has greatly reduced the number of young offenders held in detention. The city's director of juvenile justice describes what's been done and what the administration plans to do next.
Protecting Vulnerable Youth: Young gays and lesbians frequently find themselves victims of discrimination and harassment, and the situation in correctional facilities can be even worse. A new state policy tries to address that. Also, making criminals pay -- more and more.
Â
Who knew there were provisions for wagons and regulations for kite flying around the city's telegraph system within the city's fire code.
Well, no more.
After a three-year review, the City Council unanimously approved a revised fire code on Wednesday. The code was last revised in 1913. In response to changing times, the update requires more informative evacuation plans and includes construction sites into fire safety management.
In addition to updating the code, the council also approved a budget modification to fiscal year 2008 -- initially approved last June -- which included an additional $2.2 billion surplus from tax revenues. The move sparked some opposition from several council members, who said they did not have enough time to review the documents and questioned the additional surplus found by the administration.
The council also approved a lease for a recycling station in Sunset Park.
The city's new fire code ( Intro 732-A ) will bring the city's standards in line with the International Fire Code and with the city's recently revised building code in order to improve safety conditions, said officials.
The plan, which goes into effect in July, will require the development of a fire safety program for construction sites and provisions for rooftop access. Under the new code, temporarily vacant buildings will also have to maintain their fire safety systems.
"Oh course it's not as sexy as the building code," said Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. "But it's still very, very important."
Many of the new provisions might pertain to tragedies like the Deutsche Bank fire last August, where the fire safety system, including the building's standpipes, was not fully maintained while it was being taken down floor by floor.
Though some buildings, like the the United Nations, will not be covered by the fire code, because they are out of the fire department's jurisdiction. Scoppetta said the department is in the process of reviewing some of these so-called loopholes.
Scoppetta said the department's primary focus was on safety, but it did consider some of the code's economic impact on construction and building costs. Officials said the City Council and the department received feedback from multiple industries, from fire extinguisher companies to real estate boards.
What is typically a procedural issue turned controversial on Wednesday when the City Council considered a budget modification that took a unexpected $2.2 billion surplus and used it to prepay debt in 2009 and 2010.
Though the council approved the change unanimously, members raised concerns that they had not had enough time to review the documents. The budget modification, which is an inch thick and about 130 pages, was released to some members during a political meeting 24 hours before the vote.
"There should be a minimum time period," said Councilmember Alan Gerson.
The vote came on the heels of an effort by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has presented herself as a reformer and champion of transparency, to make the budget process more transparent following the City Council's slush fund scandal.
Other members questioned the use of the city's surplus -- especially when the Department of Education is facing budget cuts.
Both Quinn and the council's Finance Committee chair David Weprin said paying down debt was a smart move.
"It may appear that the city is flush with money, but we're not," said Quinn. "We have to use that money to pre-pay debt or we'll be in a worse place."
Councilmember Lewis Fidler and others questioned the administration's motive for this newfound surplus. Fidler suggested the over estimation of spending and under estimation of revenues during budget negotations could be a tactic to keep the City Council's spending in check. The council has to approve a balanced budget by June 30. But if a surplus appears later in the year, the mayor can determine where the extra money will go.
"The Office of Management and Budget underestimates revenue every year so we don't spend money they don't want us to spend," said Fidler. It's just another way of maneuvering the budget dance, he added.
As part of the Bloomberg administration's solid waste management plan, approved by the City Council in 2006, the city is dispersing the recycling and waste facilities throughout the five boroughs.
As a result, Sunset Park will host a large recycling station, operated by the Sims Group, to manage part of the city's sorted trash. The station, which will receive material via barge, will be more than 1 million square feet. The council unanimously approved the lease of the 30th Street Pier to the Sims Group for the facility.
To see how else the city manages its waste, check out Gotham Gazette's Garbage Game. Â