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September 6, 2022   |   By The New York Community Trust
Spotlight on Juvenile Justice: Ensuring Young People Can Reach Their Potential

The “Raise the Age” advocacy campaign, sponsored by The Trust, used rallies and other means to convince the state to stop treating minors as adults in criminal court.

 

While it may seem obvious that a child is not an adult, the New York criminal justice system ignored that distinction for more than 50 years, tragically altering the lives of tens of thousands of teenagers; with an alarmingly disproportionate number and severity of punishments meted out to Black and Latinx youth.

To help young people succeed, The Trust makes grants to an array of educational, behavioral health care, and youth development programs. As part of that effort, The Trust has a long history of supporting reforms to the school discipline and justice systems, including the historic “Raise the Age” advocacy campaign, which ended New York’s treatment of minors as adults in criminal court. Young people who make a mistake deserve a second chance, not entrance into a downward cycle of isolation and trauma.

“I didn’t think I had a place in society—now I do and I’m paving my own path,” said Cali JordanGotay, who was formerly incarcerated, became an intern at exalt, and today is a college graduate and running her own business.

Trust grants that address young people and the justice system focus on three areas: prevention, systemic reform, and support services.

Prevention: Rethinking school discipline

Young people often test boundaries and have conflicts in school. Too often those incidents lead to escalating punishments, including arrest.

With our support, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Advocates for Children of New York, and Make the Road New York have worked for years to improve school discipline procedures by advocating for decriminalizing student misbehavior, reducing the number of police officers and metal detectors in schools (starting with elementary schools), and creating educational environments that support youth development.

The common practice of suspending a student—sometimes for something as minor as bringing cough syrup to school—can be the beginning of a path of no return. In the school year prior to the pandemic, there were 32,800 suspensions citywide. Black students are suspended and expelled three times more than white students. And Black and Latinx students are 66 percent of the high-school population, but comprise 90 percent of the arrests.

Students who are suspended or expelled are nearly three times more likely to be involved with the justice system the following year than peers who remain in school despite similar behavior.

Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility has trained staff to reimagine discipline policies at many city schools—and suspension rates have dropped as much as 72 percent.

“Many kids come to school with a host of challenges that are no fault of their own,” said Cassie Schwerner, executive director of Morningside. “What they want, more than anything, is a sense of safety, a sense of love, a sense of trust, and a sense of community. That’s what they crave.”

Morningside trains staff and students to create supportive classroom communities that build trust and connection, reducing the incidence of conflicts and harms. Everyone practices skills in articulating their feelings and navigating conflict. When someone does something hurtful, schools use “restorative circles,” where staff and students gather in a structured format to have a group discussion to resolve the situation.

“Whether you’re the student who is doing the bullying or the student who is bullied,” Schwerner said, “starting to have a language for addressing your needs and stopping a harm—that’s an incredibly powerful skill that’s going to translate into adulthood.”

“Suspending a kid just reinforces this notion that they don’t deserve our love and support,” continued Schwerner, “so all of that behavior tends to cycle and continue. If you can interrupt that behavior, you can bring that person in close and restore that person’s sense of self; you also start to restore the community and figure out ways to address the harm that everyone can participate in.”

“When a student is told to leave a classroom or a school building,” Schwerner said. “You’re adding more harm and continuing to reinforce that something is wrong with the young person; not that they made a bad choice. In the long term, throwing the kid out of class is not a solution for our society.”

Our Long Island Community Foundation has supported Struggling to Reunite Our New Generation (STRONG), which reconnects young people with schools and their communities. The group has diverted teenagers from violence and gangs by creating individualized strategies that include counseling, literacy classes, vocational training, and field trips.

Discussing feelings at PS214 in the Bronx during a “restorative circle,” which allows students to negotiate conflicts and build community. Photo by Carolina Kroon for Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility

Systemic Reform: Diverting Teenagers from Adult Prisons

Until a few years ago, 16- and 17-year-olds who were arrested in New York State were treated as adults, with traumatizing and even deadly results. New York and North Carolina were the only two states where the justice system treated minors as adults.

“We often say in child welfare and juvenile justice that one bad case makes bad law,” said Jennifer March of the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. “There was a reactionary response to a number of horrific crimes and then we had decades of punitive policies towards young people.”

Children who have been detained or jailed are significantly more likely to commit additional—and more serious—crimes and are five times more likely to die by suicide. Findings like these helped fuel the statewide Raise the Age advocacy campaign to raise the presumptive age of criminal responsibility to 18 so that 16- and 17-year-olds would no longer be incarcerated with adults, but rather would be eligible for support services to help them get back to school and on track.

The Trust was an early and consistent supporter of the campaign, which after a protracted political battle, led the state in 2017 to direct 16- and 17-year-olds to Family Court or a special section of criminal court where judges receive special training. And no young people were placed in adult facilities such as Rikers Island.

“Raise the Age was the tipping point and acknowledgment that children are children, and we should treat them in an age-appropriate manner,” said March. “Now there’s been a lot more momentum for further reforms.”

The recent rise in violent crime, however, has spurred calls to roll back the Raise the Age reforms.

“There are times when elected officials look for easy solutions to really complex social problems,” March said. “And fortunately, we successfully countered calls to roll back the law. The Raise the Age campaign is leaning into advocacy for investments that actually promote real community and youth safety: employment, housing, education, and behavioral health care.”

Support Services: Giving Young People a Way Back

In his work with exalt’s youth development program, Noreaga Reyes works as an intern at a dog-friendly café in the East Village. Photo by Marty Lipp

Of course, some young people were already involved in the justice system before these reforms went into effect. And now that they are in place, the reforms rely on effective programs to give them the support they need to move forward and succeed. The Trust supports several programs that help young New Yorkers who were involved with the justice system pave a positive way forward.

exalt achieves this with career-oriented internships for court-involved young people recruited by judges and police officers. Once enrolled, the youth are trained on hard and soft office skills, placed in internships, supervised while they work, and coached on college and career plans.

Through exalt, 17-year-old Noreaga Reyes of Brooklyn works as an intern at the Boris and Horton “dog café,” where he tends to the needs of coffee-sipping East Villagers and their canine pals, who scurry and tumble among the tables.

Reyes said the internship has been “life changing,” in part because of what he has learned from older co-workers and customers. At their suggestion, he is reading books about money management and his Puerto Rican heritage.

But his life could have taken another direction. Two years ago, Reyes was arrested after going for a ride with a cousin who had stolen a car. “I realized I was lucky enough to get out after only one night in jail,” he said. “And that I never want to be in that situation again.”

“I didn’t want to be on the streets,” he said. “exalt taught me to start focusing and be more serious in life. I’m proud of myself because I’m doing better in school. I’m way more busy. I don’t have time to chill with the wrong crowd.”

He wants to finish high school, master a trade, and then start saving for college, where he plans to learn how to run a business—his business. “I want to make a difference in the world,” he said.

In the city of New Rochelle, a unique court diversion program that received start-up grants from our Westchester Community Foundation is being studied for replication elsewhere in the state. Grants to the Center for Court Innovation helped launch the “Opportunity Youth Part” in the New Rochelle City Court, which diverts offenders ages 18 to 24 out of the court system and connects them with community-based services, including academic support, job training, mental-health counseling, and mentoring.

A Better Path Forward

The Trust will keep fighting for a brighter future for young New Yorkers struggling to reach their potential. Subjecting young people to punitive approaches has proven to be an expensive failure. By creating systems that help them discover and achieve their dreams, even after they have made a mistake, The Trust is laying the foundation for a healthier, fairer, and stronger New York.

If you are inspired to take action based on what you learned in this Spotlight, then consider:

  • Sharing this article with a friend or family member and talking about it.
  • Volunteering at a charity that advances juvenile justice reform.
  • Donate to a charity from your donor-advised fund to help youth-serving nonprofits, like the ones found in this guide.
  • Leaving a legacy by establishing a permanent fund to address juvenile justice or other causes that are important to you. If you would like to discuss how you can design a philanthropic legacy through a will, trust, or beneficiary designation, contact giving@nyct-cfi.org.

 

Press Contact Information

Peter Panapento
peter@turn-two.co
(202) 531-3886

Courtney Biggs
cbi@nyct-cfi.org
(212) 889-3963

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Press Contact Information

Peter Panapento
peter@turn-two.co
(202) 531-3886

Courtney Biggs
cbi@nyct-cfi.org
(212) 889-3963

>> Get our press kit <<

Statue of Liberty in Red