Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/new-york/page/8/)
Last Wednesday, we ran a story that began, “Mariah Charles woke up on Tuesday faced with a difficult decision. Does she take a plea to a crime she didn’t commit or go to trial — face the two officers who slammed her to the ground, arresting her on her way to school — and risk losing.”
After it happened, the beating, the arrest, the sudden violence on the way to school, the high school sophomore wasn’t the same.
Mariah Charles woke up on Tuesday faced with a difficult decision. Does she take a plea to a crime she didn’t commit or go to trial — face the two officers who slammed her to the ground, arresting her on her way to school — and risk losing.
Ninety-nine percent. The number sent an audible gasp throughout the City Council chamber. Chief of Detectives Dermot F. Shea had just read off the percentage of people of color on the NYPD’s controversial — and until now — largely secretive gang database.
The program is short: two counseling sessions, two hours each. But for teens and adults who have been arrested for the first time, it can save them from a lifetime with a criminal record.
Herbert Murray, more than 6 feet tall and beanpole thin, held his clipboard and began to walk along the line of people outside City Hall Park in lower Manhattan who were waiting to join the one-year anniversary rally for the #CLOSErikers Campaign.
Jessica Moskowitz hesitated before she sat in one of the pews in the back of an Episcopal church. The 16-year-old is Jewish and had never been inside one.
Solitary confinement is not allowed for inmates younger than 18 at federal and state-run facilities in New York, but for teens like Imani — held in a county jail, waiting for their cases to be heard — it’s a common practice. Local jails use solitary as punishment, and since many counties rarely have separate facilities for juveniles, isolation cells are also routinely used as holding cells for minors.
As one of the millions of people across the country and around the world who participated in March for Our Lives events this past weekend, I felt that I was standing on the precipice of a new youth movement that might — just might — change the world in fundamental ways.
New York City has completely eliminated the prison population of kids younger than 16, thanks to Close to Home, a program that allows juveniles to stay in small group homes closer to their communities.
But although many city officials and advocates consider Close to Home a success, it’s threatened by major potential budget cuts in Albany, New York.