New York Halts Plan to Add Jail Space for Youths
By Michael Cooper
Originally published in The New York Times, June 26, 2002
New York City has backed away from a plan to spend $65 million to expand jail space for children accused of crimes, halting a construction project that had become a focal point in the debate over the city's juvenile justice policy.
The plan had called for building 200 additional beds in detention centers for children 10 to 16. Advocates for overhauling the city's juvenile justice system fought the proposal. City officials had said they were simply running out of space in their existing centers.
But as part of the budget agreement reached last week by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the City Council, $53.2 million that was to have paid for the project was removed from the city's capital budget. The remainder of the money will be used for maintenance and upkeep at the Department of Juvenile Justice's existing facilities.
Neil Hernandez, the commissioner of the Department of Juvenile Justice, said in an interview that the number of juveniles in locked detention, which rose steadily in the late 1990's, had been falling in the last two years, and he said that he was "cautiously optimistic" that the department would have enough space without the planned expansion.
From 1993 to 2000, the average daily population in juvenile detention centers rose by 60 percent, to 379 from 237, even as reports of juvenile crime fell by 28 percent. The average population dropped to 357 in 2001 and fell to 287 early this year.
The City Council hailed the move. "I think that the mayor heard our cries and the cries of the activist communities and used common sense to take that money out of the budget," said Councilman James E. Davis of Brooklyn, chairman of the juvenile justice committee.
Mishi Faruqee, director of the juvenile justice project at the Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group, said, "Now that it's out of the budget, we're calling on the city to expand their alternatives to detention programs, so there can be a long-term reduction in the incarceration of juveniles."
