<<previous | index | next>>
A number of problems in New York’s girls’ juvenile facilities urgently require correction. To end its dangerous overuse and misuse of the forcible face-down restraint technique, OCFS must bring its internal policies into compliance with domestic and international law by revising them to permit the physical restraint of children only as an option of last resort in genuine emergencies. OCFS must take immediate and vigorous measures to implement this narrower policy through thorough re-training of all facilities administrators and staff. Facilities employees who use excessive force should be punished. In addition, OCFS should make it a priority to develop safer techniques of emergency control.
The absence of meaningful oversight of OCFS facilities must also be addressed. At a minimum, OCFS should ensure that the Ombudsman’s office is sufficiently well staffed to carry out its legally mandated functions, constitute a functioning Independent Review Board (IRB) staffed as required by state regulations, and open its doors to outside monitors.
Those with immediate authority over New York’s juvenile justice system, the Governor and OCFS Commissioner, should be held accountable for seeing that these reforms are implemented and for ensuring that conditions for all children confined in New York meet international, national, and state standards of safety, health, and dignity. To date, they have failed to do so.
We believe that the foregoing immediate changes are necessary to mitigate the most dangerous conditions in OCFS facilities. More fundamental institutional changes—requiring action by the New York State Legislature in addition to the Governor and OCFS Commissioner—need to be made, however, for significant improvements in girls’ and boys’ conditions of confinement to occur. First, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU urge passage of Assembly Bill 6334/Senate Bill 6877, creating an independent state Office of the Child Advocate to oversee all juvenile justice and foster care facilities. While internal oversight in the form of a functioning and fully staffed ombudsman’s office and IRB may help remedy some of the most urgent abuses, external, independent monitoring is crucial to ensure the fair and humane treatment of New York’s most vulnerable children. Second, as an overarching goal, the Governor, OCFS, and the State Legislature should work diligently toward a system in which few if any children are held in prison-like environments but instead receive the help they need in their homes and communities.
Detailed Recommendations
To the Governor of New York and the Commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS)
Reduce the use of large, remote, prison-like facilities to the greatest extent possible, realizing that rehabilitation and community safety are in almost all cases best served by more humane, effective, and economical home- or community-based care programs.
o Expand the ability of juvenile courts to keep children in their homes and to shorten periods of incarceration by vastly expanding the existing “Evidence-based Community Initiative” (EbCI).
o Phase out prison-like facilities in favor of small, home-like, post-adjudication facilities located close to children’s communities and employing a rehabilitative philosophy.
So long as juvenile facilities continue to operate, review all policies and procedures to ensure that each genuinely contributes to the goal of rehabilitation.
Ensure that policies and practices affecting girls serve their needs and do not reflect outdated stereotypes. At the very least, girls should always receive care, protection, assistance, treatment, education, and training on par with what is given to boys.
Immediately bring OCFS use of force policy into compliance with national and international standards regarding the use of force against children by replacing the existing broad grounds for use of physical restraints with the widely accepted standard of permitting force only when a child poses an imminent threat of injury to self or others and all other means of control have been exhausted. Train all facilities staff as to these standards and punish staff who use excessive force against children.
Collect and make publicly available cumulative statistical data on the use of restraints in each OCFS facility.
Diligently explore alternative means of emergency intervention.
Discontinue the use of mechanical restraints on children except when strictly necessary and as a last resort.
Never use physical, mechanical, or medical restraints as means of punishment.
Ensure that conditions in “non-secure” facilities are meaningfully less restrictive and prison-like than those in secure facilities.Discontinue the practices of strip-searching children except when absolutely necessary for reasons of safety and security.
Improve staff recruitment, screening, training, and supervision with the goal of curtailing violence and degrading treatment of all kinds and promoting the formation of nurturing, non-exploitative relationships between staff and girls in which the girls’ needs and safety are paramount.
Strictly enforce policies prohibiting sexual contact, harassment, or abuse of children.
Strictly limit the use of male staff in girls’ living quarters.
Upon receiving an allegation of sexual misconduct, immediately suspend the implicated staff member pending investigation. Conduct thorough internal investigations of all complaints of abuse, refer all such complaints to Child Protective Services and the New York State Inspector General, and impose appropriate punishment on staff members found guilty of misconduct.
Ensure staffing by an appropriate number of mental health professionals to provide mental health services to confined girls, and ensure that everyone providing counseling has sufficient qualifications.
Ensure that procedures are in place to provide prompt and consistent access to physical and mental health care to all confined children, and ensure that nonmedical staff do not interfere with access to care.
Respond to self-cutting and other forms of self-harm, which signal psychological needs, with appropriate mental health services. Stop punishing girls for acts of self-harm.
Strictly implement policies prohibiting the disclosure of confidential personal, medical, and other information by staff to anyone not authorized to receive such information. Impose discipline on staff members who violate children’s right to privacy.
Offer quality productive and recreational activities throughout the day, including on weekends, to drastically reduce the degree of isolation and idleness experienced by confined children. Girls should not be left idle or left in their rooms for extended periods, which is currently a significant problem especially on weekends.
Adopt and enforce explicit policies prohibiting discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) children, and children who do not conform to gender stereotypes. Include such policies in all policy and training manuals. Report and record incidents of discrimination based on sexual orientation or any other basis, such as race or religion, by staff or girls.
Provide high quality training to all OCFS staff and administrators in how to relate to LGBT and gender non-conforming children with sensitivity and support.
Increase the number of teaching staff in each facility and ensure that each teacher is property trained and qualified as a means of providing all incarcerated children, especially those with special educational needs, with quality schooling meeting their individual needs. OCFS educational programs should also strive for continuity of education, facilitating children’s reentry into public schools at the same grade level they would have occupied had they remained in public school.
Consistently provide vocational training of a quality and variety meeting the needs of girls when they leave facilities and enter the work force. At a minimum, provide girls with vocational opportunities on a par with that offered to boys. Conduct research to determine the career fields most likely to offer stable, lucrative employment for girls following their release.
Consistently provide adequate writing materials and a full stock of art supplies to permit incarcerated girls modes of self-expression. Respect the privacy of girls’ journals and other possessions.
Foster peer support through social activity among girls. Ensure that any restrictions on peer interaction are reasonable and are designed and enforced with an eye toward rehabilitation, especially at Tryon Reception Center, where social isolation is the most severe.
Improve family members’ access to facilities in remote locations by creating shuttle-bus services, transportation reimbursement, or other means.
Increase opportunities for children to maintain contact with family members, such as increasing visiting hours and permitting children more frequent and longer telephone calls home.
For each incarcerated child, regardless of age, establish a comprehensive reentry plan created with the child’s participation and tailored to her individual needs and abilities. Where possible, work with the child’s family to facilitate positive family reunification.
As to each child who is under 21 and has not earned a high school diploma or GED at the time of her release, make all necessary arrangements to reenroll her in school prior to her release.
At reentry, provide each child who cannot return to her family with a foster placement or another form of transitional housing.
Immediately fill youth aide, youth counselor, and educational vacancies to ameliorate the severe, chronic shortage of staff.
Increase staff levels so that each employee has a manageable workload, can attend mandated trainings, and need not regularly work overtime.
Provide counseling, mentoring, and other training mechanisms for line staff and administrators to help them better respond to the demands and stresses of the uniquely difficult environment within facilities.
Review required qualifications and credentials for line staff and counselors working directly with children. If higher qualifications are called for, revise salary levels to attract better qualified staff.
Comply with existing state regulations providing for a reasonably independent and functional ombudsman’s office. The ombudsman’s office should be physically located outside of OCFS headquarters, and should to the greatest extent possible be independent from OCFS administratively and substantively. The ombudsman’s office should be allocated sufficient funding and staff to perform its functions in a meaningful way, including making frequent in-person visits to each facility.
Ensure unimpeded access between the ombudsman and incarcerated children via telephone and post. To this end, prominently display information regarding the ombudsman’s office in each unit of every facility, including information on children’s right to contact the ombudsman and contact information for the ombudsman’s office. Consider establishing a hotline and/or a locked box in which children may deposit messages forwarded directly to the ombudsman.
Reestablish the statutorily mandated Independent Review Board, comply with legal requirements as to the number and qualifications of its members, and ensure that it meets regularly, inspects OCFS facilities, and carries out all of its enumerated functions.
Ensure compliance with international standards calling for regular inspections and other means of control of facilities by independent monitors. Such monitoring should be frequent, regular, unannounced, and unrestricted.
Ensure that the grievance system operates so that each and every filed grievance is responded to promptly, fairly, and in sufficient detail.
Establish systematic data gathering for key indicators of children’s welfare and facilities’ performance, including data regarding the history, placement, and post-release success of children referred to OCFS. This data should be gender-, race-, and ethnicity-disaggregated. In particular, collect and disseminate comparative data on the recidivism rates of children remanded to OCFS facilities and those participating in the Evidence-based Community Initiative (EbCI).
Make all non-confidential data collected by OCFS freely available to the public as a measure of accountability and to counteract the invisibility of girls in the system.
Conduct and publish a comprehensive annual survey of all incarcerated girls to discover problem areas and shortcomings in facilities.
To the New York State Legislature
Adopt Bill A.6334/S.6877, creating an independent Office of the Child Advocate to oversee all juvenile justice and foster care facilities. The Child Advocate would have capacity beyond that of the ombudsman and complete independence from OCFS, allowing impartial, comprehensive review and analysis of OCFS’s performance. Ensure sufficient allocation of funds permitting the Office to function effectively.
Adopt Bill A.6502, also known as the SAFETY (Safe, Fair and Equal Treatment for Youth) Act, prohibiting discrimination and harassment in OCFS facilities based on sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity, as well as race, national origin, ethnicity, religion and disability, and requiring OCFS to train staff to respond appropriately to incidents of discrimination and harassment.
Adopt Bill A.6597/S.4423, also known as the Safe Harbor for Exploited Children Act, creating community based programs for prostitution-involved children who are currently incarcerated. In addition, adopt legislation recognizing that children’s legal inability to consent to sex should preclude the arrest of commercially sexually exploited children for prostitution.
Encourage each assembly member to conduct unannounced visits to OCFS facilities whenever possible, particularly those in remote locations, as authorized by section 519 of the Executive Law.
To the New York Courts
Refer children to prison-like OCFS facilities only as a measure of last resort, when there are no alternatives consistent with the child’s well-being.
As to children referred to OCFS, order whenever possible the provision of services through the “Evidence-based Community Initiative” (EbCI) or other home- or community-based programs as an alternative to incarceration.
Issue a detailed order assuring proper individualized treatment and services for each adjudicated child. Ensure that OCFS fully complies with all provisions in court orders and consistently provides high-quality services to referred children.
- Encourage each judge and eligible court officer to conduct unannounced visits to OCFS facilities whenever possible, particularly those in remote locations, as authorized by section 519 of the Executive Law.
Recommend confinement of children in prison-like OCFS facilities only as a measure of last resort, when there are no alternatives consistent with the child’s well-being.
As to those children referred to OCFS, recommend whenever possible the provision of services through the “Evidence-based Community Initiative” (EbCI) or other home- or community-based programs as an alternative to incarceration.
In all cases, ensure that judges are presented with information concerning effective community-based options they can consider in lieu of incarceration.
To the New York State Office of Mental Health
Dramatically increase the number of qualified mental health care staff available at OCFS facilities, both for youth and staff. Ensure the existence of programs for girls addressing physical and sexual abuse and other victimization.
Regularly review the quality of mental health care provided in juvenile facilities. Pay particular attention to the quality and quantity of individual and group therapy provided and the appropriateness of prescribed medication.
- Regularly monitor OCFS educational facilities to assure compliance with all federal and state educational standards.
- Implement a memorandum of understanding and a cooperative relationship with OCFS to assure automatic transfer of credits from OCFS schools to New York public schools. This should include developing syllabi for classes offered in OCFS and making any other recommendations necessary to bring the two educational systems into harmony.
To the New York State Civil Service Employees Association and Public Employees Federation, the unions representing OCFS facilities staff
- Support the immediate abandonment of OCFS’s current overbroad use of force policy, which causes needless injury to confined children as well as staff, in favor of a far narrower policy permitting the use of force only as a last resort in genuine crises.
- Help transform OCFS facilities into humane working environments for staff as well as safe living environments for girls by supporting key reforms such as ample staffing and improved staff hiring, training, and supervision.
- Support broad-based reforms such as movement toward less prison-like facilities and procedures, in-depth monitoring of facilities conditions by internal and external observers, and legislative reforms making OCFS facilities safer, fairer, and more humane.
To the United States Department of Justice, Special Litigation Section
Investigate the conditions of confinement of girls in New York commitment facilities. An investigation is particularly warranted in this case not only because of the nature of the complaints HRW/ACLU has received but also because OCFS currently lacks its own adequate investigatory mechanisms and impedes full investigation by outside monitors.
Extend an invitation to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women to investigate the conditions of confinement of girls in New York commitment facilities.
To the United States Congress
Amend the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to enforce the equitable treatment of boys and girls, and ensure that gender-specific services are provided to girls. Require states to gather and provide recidivism rates and other data demonstrating the success of their treatment, educational, and other programming.
Consent to ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- Ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child once the Senate has given its advice and consent.
Investigate the conditions of confinement of girls in New York’s juvenile facilities, whether alone or in conjunction with other United Nations children’s rights and women’s rights experts
September 2006
<<previous | index | next>>
|
