He was a passenger in a stolen car--though, to this day, he maintains he didn’t know the car was stolen before he accepted the ride. The police picked him up after the driver, an older acquaintance, crashed the vehicle.
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Instead, she told the police to keep him overnight--setting in motion a chain of events that would result in him going upstate until his 18th birthday, at a cost to taxpayers of $125,000 a year.
“She said, ‘The first time you get arrested, I’m going to let you spend the night in the precinct,’” he recalls. Like many parents, she couldn’t have realized the consequences.
Many kids arrested for riding in a stolen car will never see the inside of a juvenile facility. But whether they get sent upstate for this or almost any other crime depends largely on whether they’ve been attending school, have a sober parent at home, ever got into fights--almost anything besides the crime itself.
At sentencing, or “disposition,” in family court lingo, judges are required to impose the least restrictive alternative in keeping with a young person’s best interests and the need to protect the community. In practical terms, judges look at the supervision in a child’s home--and usually that means scrutinizing their mothers. They’ll look at a parent’s mental health, whether she’s a substance abuser, even housing conditions. It’s all part of assessing whether she is able to exert authority over the youngster.
Nym’s mother was in court with him the day he was sentenced. But it was too late. The judge decided that his mom couldn’t handle him.
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The number of young people sentenced to confinement upstate is shrinking. There were 2,142 in 2002, down from 2,740 in 1995.
Yet more and more of them are being sent up on less serious crimes, according to data from the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). In 2002, for the first time in at least 10 years, admissions to juvenile facilities for crimes against property outnumbered those for crimes against people.
In 2002, 140 young people were confined for criminal mischief, such as graffiti or vandalism; 294 were for larceny--shoplifting, snatching a bag from an empty office, and the like; and 111 were for riding in a stolen car. Another 237 cases were related to drugs, marijuana included. The Vera Institute of Justice reported last year that more than half of the juveniles incarcerated had committed misdemeanors.
Family Court judges make these decisions, but they’re guided by the New York City Department of Probation. The agency makes recommendations to judges about whether a young person should be locked up or paroled pending trial. It can decide to divert a case before it even gets to court.
If a defendant is found guilty, probation conducts an investigation and makes a recommendation. Its reports are critical to judges’ decisions in moving to “place” a young person in jail or let them go.
The Department of Probation is now making major changes in how it deals with young people like Nym. It is collaborating with the Vera Institute’s Project Esperanza to ensure that more young offenders remain in the community instead of in jail.
