The Legal Aid Society has a demonstrated track record of independently representing low-income New Yorkers and opposing city policies and practices that are harmful to low-income children and adults. At the same time, we have always supported creative city initiatives to prevent and ameliorate problems that are experienced by low-income families and individuals. The city's "Close to Home" initiative to bring troubled children back to city facilities—near their families and their supportive communities—instead of placing them in expensive and failing juvenile detention facilities upstate is such an initiative that should be supported.
Experts in juvenile justice agree that the use of secure detention exposes troubled young people to an environment that more closely resembles adult prisons and jails than the kinds of community and family-based interventions proven to be most effective in addressing abhorrent adolescent conduct. These secure detention facilities have traditionally been indistinguishable from adult prisons and have a well-known history of unspeakable mental and physical injuries to children as young as 11—death, broken arms and noses, disrupted education and deflated spirits, dreams and hopes.
