Workers at New York City’s two juvenile detention centers are struggling to control an exploding population of minors charged with serious crimes, an influx that has led to assaults, threats and the discovery of weapons including ceramic blades, razors and scalpels, The York Times reports, based on a 75-page Department of Investigation report. Jocelyn E. Strauber, commissioner of the Department of Investigation, said in an interview that the system has become unmoored. “We are talking about a chaotic situation,” she said. The Legal Aid Society said that more releases were part of the solution. “Staff who are forced to work up to 16-hour shifts cannot be expected to effectively manage those in custody,” the statement said. “Rather than expose them to the conditions outlined in the report, these young people would be better served in their communities where they can receive adequate services and support.”
City investigators began examining the centers after 2017, when state legislators signed the Raise the Age law, which sent most 16- and 17-year-olds accused of crimes directly to Family Court or to judges with special training. The law meant that even those under 18 accused of violent crimes were no longer placed in adult jails on Rikers Island and were sent instead to the juvenile centers: Horizon, in the Bronx, and Crossroads in Brooklyn. Between April 2018, six months before the law was enacted, and May 2023, the number of residents of the centers who were 16 and older and accused of murder rose to 134 from seven, according to the report. Staff members were not equipped to deal with the deluge, according to the report. Yet critics of the report note that when legislators passed Raise the Age, they attached $800 million in funding that was supposed to go to programs that have been shown to reduce youth violence, like after school activities and jobs. Much of that money still has not been released, said Sebastian Solomon, interim director for Greater Justice New York at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit. “The fault is not with Raise the Age but with the execution,” he said.
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