Tomas E. Gaston
New York City’s juvenile detention centers have become overrun madhouses where the worst teen inmates rule, thanks to Raise the Age and other state “reforms.”
Per last week’s harrowing Department of Investigations report, Raise the Age — which requires that 16- and 17-year-old perps be housed in juvenile detention centers, not jails, and lets them stay until they’re 21 — combined with bail reforms that condense the worst-of-the-worst teen offenders into youth facilities has “fundamentally altered” the population of the two juvies, Horizon and Crossroads, with an overload of “older” detainees “facing more serious and violent charges.”
The facilities are now bursting; since Raise the Age kicked in, there’s been an “880% increase in residents aged 16-21 at Horizon and a 444% increase in residents aged 16-21 at Crossroads.”
The number of inmates booked on murder charges more than quadrupled.
And the older, larger, more dangerous population is completely bulldozing staff: “Nearly every staff member with whom DOI spoke consistently stated, in substance, that [Administration for Children’s Services] was ill-prepared for the new demographics of the [Raise the Age] population, particularly the residents’ age, physical size, and violent criminal history.”
And so the “residents run the facility.”
The culture of out-of-control violence includes a case where where two inmates “attacked [a] third resident with a razor blade” and another where an inmate “repeatedly punched” a staffer in the head and “put their arms arounds his neck.”
Most damning: “After an incident where a resident slashed an employee, staff reported
hearing the resident say, ‘cutting season on staff has just begun, and we are 17 so nothing will happen.’”
Straight from the horse’s mouth: Dangerous perps know they’ll skate, no matter what terror they unleash.
Utterly laughable disciplinary policies make it worse: When violence or misconduct broke out, ACS responds with “the least intrusive and least restrictive intervention necessary,” including “non-physical” tactics such as “non-verbal communication, para-verbal communication,123 active listening, and verbal intervention” — methods more suited to cherub-faced preschoolers than lawbreaking teens.
DOI mildly terms these methods “insufficient to maintain order in the facility.”
Duh: The state flooded juvies with teen murder suspects and expected the staff to gentle-parent them into being well-adjusted, stand-up citizens.
The ACS also employed a point system, “STRIVE,” to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.
How’d that work out? Well, one teen flipped out over not receiving STRIVE points and “punched a staff member in the face, chest, and abdomen.”
The DOI’s 15 recommendations include stronger disciplinary methods and “weapons-defense training and self-defense training” for staff; reported assaults have gone down since some of these reforms have been implemented.
But there’s only one true, long-term fix: Violent older teens need to be separated from the rest of the youth detainee population.
Teens booked on serious charges don’t belong in juvies, where they’ll be treated with kid gloves; they belong in adult jails.
And they plainly shouldn’t be allowed to squat in youth detention until they’re 21.
Repeal or at least repair Raise the Age.