City officials said that under the new arrangement, youths who commit crimes but are not considered dangerous will have easier access to an expanding assortment of in-home programs managed by the Administration for Children’s Services, the child welfare agency. This will allow them to stay in their neighborhoods with their families while following a strict set of rules requiring them to stay out of trouble, keep curfews and meet educational goals, officials said.
Juvenile offenders, usually between the ages of 11 and 16, are typically in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice before trial and sentencing. The department, which handles about 5,500 offenders a year, places them in group homes or in one of three detention centers. A judge’s typical options at sentencing are to release offenders on probation or send them to one of the state’s juvenile prisons or residential facilities run by nonprofit organizations.
Under the new plan, city officials will more frequently recommend to a judge that a young person be allowed to return home, provided the family submits to intensive visits by therapists and social workers supervised by the Administration for Children’s Services.
That type of community-based therapy, meant to set young offenders on more productive paths in life, is a growing alternative to sending youths to notorious state-run juvenile prisons, which a state task force recently described as broken, ineffective and dangerous. The prisons are also expensive, costing the state and city $215,000 per youth annually. The system uses 28 complexes throughout the state to house about 900 young people, many of whom have committed only misdemeanor crimes like theft.
“Our No. 1 recommendation was that the state system of juvenile prisons be downsized,” said Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who led the task force, “and the key element of success in meeting that goal is to provide effective community-based strategies for young people so judges don’t have to send them off to juvenile detention.”
Ms. Gibbs said the administration had worked for years to reduce the number of youths who are sent to juvenile prisons, while increasing the capacity for community-based programs with family intervention and therapy. Since 2002, the city has reduced placements in state juvenile facilities by 56 percent.
In the last several years, Ms. Gibbs said, the administration has developed a more finely tuned process to determine the level of risk juvenile offenders pose to the public, and whether youths should return home or be sent to detention centers.
“We’re detaining fewer kids over all, and now we’re detaining the right kids, the high-risk kids,” Ms. Gibbs said.
City officials said the increased use of in-home treatment programs would save money. By one city estimate, each Juvenile Justice Initiative treatment costs $17,000, a fraction of the cost of state detention facilities.
The city could also reduce costs by combining the administrative duties of the Administration for Children’s Services and the Department of Juvenile Justice. Ms. Gibbs said it was too early to tell what those savings might be, or whether the merging of the agencies would result in layoffs.
While some advocates and nonprofit providers said they were concerned about how the Administration for Children’s Services, which has recently seen cuts to its budget, will handle the disruption, several said that they were generally enthusiastic about the plan.
“Over all, change that helps
see young people and families as a whole is positive,” said Susan Jacobs, the
executive director of the Center for Family
Representation. “As an advocate, I would applaud a change which recognizes
the complexity that children are part of a family.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/nyregion/21juvenile.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
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