Under Carrión’s leadership, OCFS has shifted its focus from incarcerating kids convicted of misdemeanor offenses to getting them help in their own communities instead. The agency will reserve incarceration for only the most serious juvenile offenders.
“We must focus on genuine rehabilitation and treatment,” Carrión said. “We believe our funding is better spent on supporting a community-based system where these children can maintain and strengthen connections with their families and the significant adults in their lives.” She describes the closures as the first step toward transforming the system.
Now that Carrión has put her agency on the path toward a community-based treatment model for lesser juvenile offenders, groups affected by the change are wondering if and how the state will help pay for it. Only $863,000 of the $14 million saved by closing the facilities will be reinvested directly into community programs. (The remainder will be used to hire staff for facility-based and aftercare programming.)
Some leaders in the field proffer suggestions for how OCFS can ensure that needed mental health, substance abuse, and education services are in place – while others worry that plans for building community capacity are inadequate or even nonexistent.
“Those programs and services that need to be in place are still few and far between and we’ve not begun at all to match the services with the level of need that exists,” said Meredith Wiley, New York State Director for Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a nonpartisan national anti-crime group.
There were 2,610 children, the vast majority boys, in state juvenile correctional institutions as of last spring (the most recent OCFS data available), many of whom were incarcerated for low-level offenses and who have complex health and educational needs. Six out of ten youngsters in state custody are from the five boroughs.
Changes in New York City’s juvenile justice system have made it possible for Carrión to push for system transformation at the state level. That's because in recent years the Department of Juvenile Justice and other city agencies have funded a patchwork of alternative to placement (ATP) programs that help divert children from the state juvenile corrections system. As a result, Family Court judges in the city now send nearly 28 percent fewer children to upstate placement facilities—from 1,319 in 2003, to 952 in 2007.
With fewer city kids sentenced to placement, many of the 241 beds in the six OCFS facilities slated for closure have been empty for some time. For example, Cayuga County’s Auburn Residential Center, a non-secure facility for girls between the ages of 13 and 17 and one of the six facilities set to close in January 2009, only houses three children but has 21 empty spots (though it still employs 25 people). Since 2002, OCFS has reduced correctional capacity by 620 beds, including this round of closures. The agency points to underutilization as one of the primary reasons for closing the facilities.
