Overcrowded New York City Juvenile Detention Facilities, Children Sleeping in Classrooms

Overcrowding issues in New York City juvenile detention facilities prompt concerns about safety and capacity.

Two New York City juvenile detention facilities, Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center in Brooklyn and Horizon Juvenile Detention Center in the Bronx, are grappling with overcrowding.

The New York City Administration for Children’s Services (NYC ACS), responsible for running the juvenile detention centers, has officially acknowledged the space shortage to accommodate the growing juvenile population. To address this issue, the agency has secured a waiver from the state’s Office of Children and Family Services, temporarily permitting multiple detainees to share a single room.

Room sharing is a practice opposed by the Legal Aid Society of New York. Lisa Freeman, Director of the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Special Litigation and Law Reform Unit, emphasized the security that individual rooms offer young detainees dealing with the difficulties of arrest, particularly when housing them with peers going through the same circumstances.

The NYC ACS has resorted to housing children in classrooms overnight while they seek more suitable accommodations.

However, this arrangement has caused problems, with some detainees reportedly sleeping on cots and experiencing sleep disturbances due to safety concerns. There have been reported assaults on two clients since this change took effect, according to Freeman.

The NYC ACS contests the Legal Aid Society’s objections by stating that classrooms are supervised when children are inside them, even during the night. They attribute the beginning of overcrowding to the Raise the Age legislation, which altered the age at which a child can be prosecuted as an adult to 18 years.

According to a spokesperson for the NYC ACS, the legislation has led to an increase in 16 and 17-year-olds accused of serious crimes being placed in secure New York City juvenile detention instead of adult ones. To address the overcrowding issue, the NYC ACS is actively planning to create additional housing, educational, and programming space to accommodate the rising juvenile population.

Housing 16 and 17-year-olds accused of serious crimes in juvenile detention centers instead of adult facilities is seen as the appropriate approach, and the administration has been working on expanding the capacity of their juvenile detention centers for over a year.

The city has also increased its electronic monitoring of youth at their homes as the population within New York City juvenile detention facilities continues to grow.

Source: https://ny1.com/nyc/brooklyn/public-safety/2023/11/08/some-children-in-city-juvenile-detention-centers-sleeping-in-classrooms