Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(Boy on porch)
Vincent Schiraldi, Commissioner, NYC Department of Probation: Increasingly, since the '80s,
we've looked at kids more and more like mini adults.
Annie Salsich, Director, Center on Youth Justice, Vera Institute of Justice: In the '80s and '90s, there was this super-predator scare.
Vincent Schiraldi: And we sent them to prison environments, put razor wire around them, hired guards to guard them, put them in jump suits.
Annie Salsich: There was like a lot of, like, a cultural and press conversation going on in the media
about teenagers being incredibly scary and dangerous.
Gladys Carrion, Commissioner, New York State Office of Children and Family Services: Unfortunately, what happens is they become,
in many instances, certainly not all, but hardened criminals.
Annie Salsich: There were magazines that came out sort of portraying young people as these frightening individuals
that you could see on the street.
Michael P. Jacobson, President & Director, Vera Institute of Justice: It's amazing how many kids across the country we send, essentially, to juvenile prison.
For things that we wouldn't necessarily send adults to prison for.
Evan Elkin, Director, Adolescent Portable Therapy, Vera Institute of Justice: The assumption has always been
that separating young people who have committed a crime from society is the thing that protects; that creates public safety.
Vincent Schiraldi: But when we take kids out of their home environments when they get in trouble,
and send them to these faraway institutions up in the Adirondacks
and think that somehow we're going to cure them of what ails them and return them to the South Bronx
better able to cope with what they're gonna find when they get there.
Michael P. Jacobson: To overuse it, to default to it, for all punishment, for kids who are guilty of low-level, nonviolent misdemeanors,
to put them in these facilities when we wouldn't put an adult in jail for what they did, that's insane.
Annie Salsich: Right now, it costs $240,000 to lock up a young person for one year.
It's incredibly expensive.
Michael P. Jacobson: These facilities, for the most part, are poorly run.
Vincent Schiraldi: The kids are getting beaten up in those facilities up there, when they're not being neglected.
Michael P. Jacobson: They provide poor rehabilitation services, and that's reflected in the across-the-board, obscenely high recidivism rates.
Vincent Schiraldi: They get rearrested in numbers that would challenge a government bureaucracy if we were trying to hit those numbers.
Gladys Carrion: Currently, our system has had a recidivism rate of 89 percent.
Michael P. Jacobson: We know that taking them away makes them worse.
Gladys Carrion: I say often that I run a training school for criminals. You know: up and coming criminals.
Vincent Schiraldi: Various things are necessary for successful reform. One of them, unfortunately, is scandal.
Annie Salsich: There were articles out about really poor conditions of confinement.
Vincent Schiraldi: Some kids were killed at facilities.
Kids were systemically having their jaws broken and their bones broken, for trivial matters like talking in line,
or stealing a cookie at lunch.
Gladys Carrion: And so the governor decided to create this task force for the transformation of juvenile justice, to help us think:
What do we do to improve our system?
Vincent Schiraldi: Also, wisely, they hired the Vera Institute of Justice to staff that.
Gladys Carrion: They were the right group of folks to bring in to help us. They had a track record. They know New York.
They are New York in many, many ways. And so it was an easy fit.
Annie Salsich: The governor launched this task force to have an independent body of stakeholders
from across law enforcement, prosecution, the defense, the judiciary, advocacy groups, community-based groups, service providers,
to come together and really take a critical look at the juvenile correctional system in the United States.
Gladys Carrion: Vera was wonderful. Vera was like the project manager in many ways in that it helped guide the process by doing the research,
by collating the data, by doing analysis.
Michael P. Jacobson: No one wanted a sort of blue ribbon commission that write a nice report that would just sit on a shelf.
It had to and would have an impact.
Gladys Carrion: After a year of deliberation and hard work, we had this task force that issued a report.
It provides a blueprint and really outlines: These are the things that you need to do.
(Text on screen): Charting a New Course. A Blueprint for Transforming Juvenile Justice in New York State. December 2009
A report of David Paterson's Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice
Michael P. Jacobson: You know, but even before that task force, Vera's been working on this issue a long time.
What Vera has done and what the whole system is now trying to do is keep these kids in the community,
but to do something for them and their families.
Margaret diZerega, Director, Family Justice Program, Vera Institute of Justice: Vera works with juvenile justice agencies
to help them integrate more family-focused approaches into their work.
So, rethinking visitation policies, case management practices.
Vincent Schiraldi: This isn't just about "tear them all down and let the kids go free." That's ridiculous, right?
So, we're gonna need to take a very careful look at the young people in these facilities, and a very careful look
at the kinds of programs that are working nationally to help young people flourish in the community.
(Text on screen): Adolescent Portable Therapy, established by Vera, 2001.
Evan Elkin: To create a treatment option like APT,
where families are given an opportunity to shape the treatment on their own terms, in their own communities, in their own homes,
is a very empowering experience.
Yes, treatment can take place in an institutional setting.
But the restrictive, punitive nature of it doesn't necessarily go hand-in-hand with an empowering treatment experience
that will really lead to positive change in a person's life.
Margaret diZerega: Case management staff started calling families on a monthly basis and giving them an update on how the youth was doing.
It's a very simple step, but it speaks volumes.
Evan Elkin: We bring them together with their families. We work with kids in context; in the family context.
It's in real-time. It's not abstract.
We're not asking them to talk about their families in an abstract sense in a room somewhere far away from their families.
We work with their families in the here and now.
And it works.
Michael P. Jacobson: It may be counterintuitive for some people to understand: "You mean you can lock up fewer kids and the people can be safer?"
Gladys Carrion: In fact, we have about 53 percent of the young people in my system there now are there for nonviolent, low-level misdemeanors.
Michael P. Jacobson: That's why I think a lot of these reforms will happen,
because in the end you can spend a lot less money that we spend now,
and people and kids and communities will be better off.
Gladys Carrion: What's next? Well, you know, it's more work, to make sure that we're implementing change.
Vincent Schiraldi: Incremental reform, at this point, is not gonna cut it.
Annie Salsich: Right now is an incredibly exciting time to work in this field.
The good work is also getting the positive attention now, not just the scary anecdotes.
Michael P. Jacobson: It doesn't mean it's easy. There are still political issues. There are still unions to deal with.
So, none of this is easy. But there is a moment now.
Annie Salsich: And shifting from this sort of punitive approach, and really working towards an approach
that holds young people accountable and makes sure that they are given opportunities to succeed.
Vincent Schiraldi: Family has a voice again.
That's where the task force and Vera's work helped point us to, and now we have to close the deal.
(Text on screen): Family Justice Footage Courtesy Brian Quist. Music Courtesy Music Box.
Video Produced by Nick Davis Productions.
Vera Institute of Justice