NY Governor Seeks Juvenile Justice Reform

Following reports about major problems in New York’s juvenile justice system, Governor Paterson is proposing changes, including reducing the number of youth in state custody and establishing greater oversight for the juvenile facilities.  The New York Times provided coverage yesterday in its “City Room” blog:

Paterson Proposes Juvenile Justice Overhaul

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Gov. David A. Paterson introduced legislation on Wednesday to begin overhauling New York’s troubled juvenile prison system, in what aides described at a first step toward broader changes long sought by critics of the system.

The legislation would prohibit judges from placing youths in state juvenile prisons unless they had been found guilty of a violent felony or a sex crime or a judge had determined that a youth posed a significant risk to themselves or others. Such a move would set the stage to significantly shrink the number of youths in state custody.

The bill would also establish an independent office to monitor and, where necessary, investigate problems at the state’s youth prisons, which are run by the state’s Office of Children and Family Services.

“We have a responsibility to provide the highest level of care to the children in the custody of the state,” Governor Paterson said in a statement. “This bill will create a mechanism for ensuring that systemwide issues are evaluated by an independent body and that only youth who have committed certain crimes or who are deemed to be a significant risk to public safety are placed with O.C.F.S.”

Both are steps recommended last year by a task force appointed by Mr. Paterson and led by Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The task force found that New York’s juvenile prisons were broken almost beyond repair, with young people battling mental illness or addiction held alongside violent offenders in abysmal facilities where they received little counseling or schooling and sometimes faced physical abuse at the hands of guards.

The problems are so severe that the United States Department of Justice threatened last year to take over the entire state system unless New York officials moved to fix them. Negotiations to avert a takeover are ongoing.