Page 102 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

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Facing high rates of recidivism, a lack of rehabilitation and increasing numbers of juvenile incarceration, New York and other states have adopted therapeutic models in youth detention facilities .7 These include behavior management programs, as well as trauma-informed care . Trauma-informed care calls for us to examine the underlying trauma in a child’s life and the ways that incarceration contributes to the impact of trauma . Its implementation leads to an examination of ways to provide services to youth in lieu of punitive detention .8
As a part of juvenile and criminal justice reform, the State closed down seven of its state prisons9 and developed the Close to Home program in 2012 .10 That program, which is yet to be fully implemented, is a sea change in the way in which New York City treats its court-involved youth . The fundamental notion is that a rehabilitative, rather than a correctional model, is the appropriate and necessary approach to improve the lives of these youth . Close to Home facilities use a range of rehabilitative and evidence-based programs . These include therapeutic methods designed to provide youth with the skills and abilities to manage their lives, providing necessary rehabilitative programs and resources during and after their stay in the Close to Home facility . The programs include the use of trauma-informed care .11
The NYC Administration for Children’s Services worked in partnership with nationally recognized hospitals and mental health services to establish state of the art trauma-informed mental health screening and programs in the juvenile detention facilities . Bellevue Hospital Center’s Child Study Center established these programs to “immediately help traumatized children and young people by providing effective screening and counseling and . . . [by providing] a framework to train and educate staff within juvenile detention facilities to ensure more successful outcomes .”12
Similar rehabilitative programs are in the process of being implemented for the 16- and 17-year- olds who are housed in the notorious, draconian jail facility at Rikers Island .13 That adult facility is based upon a punitive correctional model . Despite more than a decade-long attempt to “raise
7 ellen yaroshefsky, youTh JusTice clinic, BenJamin n. cardozo school of law, reThinking rikers: moving from a correcTional To a TherapeuTic model for youTh 29-39 (January 2014), available at https://cardozo.yu.edu/sites/default/ files/YJCFeb2_0.pdf.
8 Sue Burrell, Trauma and the Environment of Care in Juvenile Institutions, naTional child TraumaTic sTress neTwork 2 (Aug. 2013) [hereinafter Burrell], http://www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/assets/pdfs/jj_trauma_brief_ environofcare_burrell_final.pdf.
9 Governor Cuomo Announces Closure of Seven State Prison Facilities, governor andrew m cuomo (June 30, 2011), https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-closure-seven-state-prison-facilities (press release); see also Thomas Kaplan, New York Has Some Prisons to Sell You, n.y. Times, May 27, 2012, http://www. nytimes.com/2012/05/28/nyregion/closed-new-york-prisons-prove-hard-to-sell.html?_r=0.
10 Liz Robbins, Last Chance for Mone’t: Program Keeps Troubled New York Youth Close to Home, n.y. Times, May 3, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/nyregion/program-keeps-troubled-new-york-youth-close-to-home. html?pagewanted=all&_r=0l; Jennifer Jensen Ferone et al., The Close to Home Initiative and Related Reforms in Juvenile Justice, vera insT. of JusTice (January 2014), http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/transition-brief- placement-juvenile-justice-reform.pdf.
11 nyc adminisTraTion for children’s services, close To home: an overview of non-secure placemenT 1, available at http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/downloads/pdf/Close_to_Home_12.pdf. See also richard mendel, no place for kids: The case for reducing Juvenile incarceraTion, 5-12 (2011), available at http://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf- NoPlaceForKidsFullReport-2011.pdf.
12 Mayor Bloomberg Announces Partnership With NYU Langone Medical Center And Bellevue Hospital To Improve Trauma Services In City’s Child Welfare And Juvenile Justice Systems, NYC (Feb. 12, 2013), http://www1.nyc.gov/ office-of-the-mayor/news/060-13/mayor-bloomberg-partnership-nyu-langone-medical-center-bellevue-hospital-to (press release, quoting Dr. Jennifer F. Havens, Director, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Bellevue Hospital Center).
13 See De Blasio Administration Ends Use of Punitive Segregation for Adolescent Inmates on Rikers Island, NYC (Dec. 17, 2014), http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/566-14/de-blasio-administration-ends-use-punitive- segregation-adolescent-inmates-rikers-island#/0 (press release).
Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality