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 Department of Investigation said Thursday.
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, signed after crime had plunged, 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 a 75-page report from the department.
Staff members were not equipped to deal with the deluge, according to the report. The vast majority of workers said that residents run the facilities, according to the report. It described riots where the police were called after staffers were punched and kicked.
Employees were so worried about being stabbed that they wore layers of clothing under their uniforms, and supervisors have told employees to let minors keep contraband like marijuana, because it kept them calm.
New workers were told to give “residents what they want if you don’t want issues,” the report said.
After one worker was slashed, others overheard the minor who did it say that “cutting season on staff has just begun, and we are 17 so nothing will happen,” the report said.
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 city’s Administration for Children’s Services, which runs the facilities, said that because the investigation ended in May 2023, the report did not reflect that even as the population grew to 134 minors at Horizon and 132 at Crossroads this year, the number of assaults on residents and staff fell substantially at both centers.
“Despite the increased census, violence is down, supportive programming has significantly increased, restorative work with youth is making a difference, and we are seeing improved educational outcomes for youth in detention, including more high school graduations, G.E.D. attainment and college participation,” Stephanie Gendell, a spokeswoman for the agency, said.
The investigation relied on the accounts of more than 100 current and former staff members, union representatives and thousands of pages of incident reports, and could catalyze the debate over Raise the Age. Supporters of the laws have said the criticisms scapegoat vulnerable young people, who must be treated differently from adults. They say that critics overlook the problems that underlie crime, such as a failure to fund anti-violence programs and cuts to education.
The Legal Aid Society in a statement noted the long hours of workers at the centers, where employees reported 60- to 80-hour weeks as a result of attrition and forced overtime.
“Staff who are forced to work up to 16-hour shifts cannot be expected to effectively manage those in custody,” the organization 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.”
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.
Politics has made it more challenging for supporters to keep changes in place.
In 2023, after a tight gubernatorial election where Republicans made rising crime a campaign issue, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she would overhaul a measure passed around the same time as Raise the Age that barred judges from requiring bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.
Bail reform and Raise the Age were both cited in the report released on Thursday.
The laws “fundamentally altered the juvenile detention population, rendering the existing disciplinary measures and institutional responses insufficient to deter misconduct, including acts of violence,” the report stated.
Ms. Strauber said she was not calling for the repeal of Raise the Age or taking the older minors out of the centers.
The report includes 15 recommendations, including better training and a deeper examination of behavioral management tools, such as using a rewards system to improve residents’ behavior, that have not been effective since the population changed at the centers.
Ms. Strauber noted that the city’s children’s services administration can ask a court to move minors to adult facilities. But between March 2022 and July 2023, the administration filed only four petitions, for two 18-year-olds and two 20-year-olds. In two of those cases, the petitions were filed only after each resident had been cited for dozens of incidents, including physical assaults.
The city agency uses the petition option “very infrequently,” Ms. Strauber said.
The report recommended increasing the use of the petition, but the agency rejected the idea, according to the report.
“More frequently filing petitions to vacate securing orders for residents over the age of 18 runs counter to the research and recommendations issued by experts in the field,” the agency said.
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