Florida and New York

 Photos here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HfCGY0Aar9XV2tFPZc3W1reSmkkeHQGr?usp=share_link

Jacksonville, Florida

Tourism

I stayed in a place called St Augustine, which was the first colonised town in the USA by the Spanish. It’s a gorgeous seaside location and I spent the day on a hop-on, hop-off trolley learning about the history of the place and wandering through the streets. I walked around the city of Jacksonville, which seems to have every type of food and shop imaginable. I went to a mall and felt like I was in every movie I’d ever loved as a teenager.

Jacksonville Street Gangs

I visited the Duval Regional Youth Detention Centre on Valentine’s Day. The Major (head of the centre) was a man who had worked in the system for decades and admitted he had no idea why I was there or why I would choose Jacksonville in a list of places to visit to learn about youth detention. I said I had been referred by the USA’s National Gang Research Centre and he said that made sense. They have a lot of street gangs, with names and locations related to the streets or neighbourhoods the young people grow up in (e.g. ATK KTA, 1800, 45 street). Nation-wide gangs like Crips and Bloods do not have as much membership as the local street gangs here. The Major’s boss, the Chief, had also come to meet me. He said there is love, belonging and family to be found in a street gang. It’s hard for the department to replace this, “going back to a street where you live inside your gang makes leaving impossible, so prevention is the only answer”. We talked about some of the preventative work happening in Jacksonville, like free family counselling, in home, for any person connected to the young person. There is also proactive programming in schools and the community. The local police have been working hard to increase the use of civil citation, which is an alternative to arresting a young person and includes programs, community service and case management which, if completed, means the young person’s record does not show any interaction with the justice system.

The Chief said he had been around for a long time and if he had advice for us, it would be to intervene early while the gangs we are dealing with only include young people. He said before long, those kids become adults and learn how much money they can make by recruiting younger kids to do their visible crime while the older members “take hold” of the city financially. The public glorification of the gang lifestyle through social media and rap music is an issue when it comes to encouraging young people to leave gangs. The staff at the Duval Regional Youth Detention Centre in Jacksonville talk to young people about the lifestyles of the rappers who are singing about the streets – the rappers walk everywhere with security guards and return to mansions at the end of the day, but "Poverty follows the young people from youth detention home with them".

Youth detention in Jacksonville

I learned there is no minimum age of criminal responsibility in Florida, and the Chief remembered a time in the 1990s when there was a 5 to 10-year-old unit in youth detention. It’s hard for me to fathom how this could be ok in anyone’s eyes.

When I arranged my visits to youth detention centres around the world, I had mistakenly assumed the system was like ours and there was just one type of setting for young people who are remanded or sentenced by a court. In Florida there are secure facilities for young people on remand, such as the one I visited, and other settings for young people who had been sentenced by the court. The people at the remand facility tried to arrange a visit to a residential (sentenced) facility but I had to fly out the next day, so I didn’t get to see one. I learned those facilities are contracted out to non-government organisations and are monitored by the state government. I couldn’t bring my phone into the detention centre, which currently houses 78 young people, so I could only take a photo from the outside. It was a traditional prison-like setting with institutional furnishings and minimal home-like decoration. Young people are remanded in the facility for approximately 28 days. Behaviour is managed through a points and rewards system, with rewards including access to a recreation room and a later bedtime.

Florida is unique in that the state government operates both community and secure youth services, with the local counties not having a role. This was familiar to me as the state government is responsible for case management and programming in the community as well as youth detention. There are some secure facilities with a specific focus on sexual offending, drug and alcohol and mental health treatment. Generally young people sentenced to a secure facility are not given a timeframe by the court, the residential facility recommends release or further treatment. As in Missouri, young people in Florida can be “direct filed” to the adult system and treated as an adult by the court, receiving an adult sentence for their crime. I was speaking to a staff member in the centre about young people in Australia all being treated as young people by the court and she said “Wow! What does the community think about that?”

New York

Tourism

What can I say – New York City is as incredible as everyone has always told me it is. I have walked and walked through Times Square, Manhattan, Central Park, Soho, West Village, East Village, Chelsea and Harlem. As part of my tours of youth detention I was driven through the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. There were definitely some places I was pleased to see through the window of the car instead of walking through alone. I have been on a mission to try a slice of pizza from as many places as possible and my verdict is Joe’s Pizza for the win. I’ve been up the Empire State Building, cruised to the Statue of Liberty and walked through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have been to a live comedy show (red brick wall backdrop and very strong drinks), seen the Book of Mormon on Broadway and watched people for hours on the New York subway and all the streets. This place has an energy like no other, it has seeped into my skin, and I’ll never forget it. My absolute best moment was when Susan Sarandon walked past me at a crossing in West Village. I am happy to say I didn’t push a camera in her face or ask her to stop and take a selfie with me, but it took all the strength I had not to be that person.

The system

After seeing three different states in the USA, I am coming to the realisation that each state manages youth justice completely independently of each other. In some places the state has complete authority, in other places the primary decision maker is the local county. In New York as in all the other places I've been, young people can receive a life sentence. The State of New York manages young people who have committed serious felonies in secure facilities upstate, and provides oversight over the City of New York, which has the lead role in managing lower-level youth offenders in their Close to Home placements. Young people were removed from Rikers Island two years ago, a prison on an island in the East River in the Bronx, where they were previously accommodated for serious crimes. Adults also reside in Rikers, and it has a reputation for poor treatment of inmates. There is a public petition to close down Rikers to all prisoners. New York State no longer sends young people to adult facilities – all young people are accommodated in youth-only facilities, which is different from the other two states I have visited.

Gangs in New York

The Bloods and the Crips are strong here and many young people are aligned with one of those two gangs. Young people are normally attached to a local chapter of the larger gang, dictated by strict boundaries (e.g. street corners), and there can be conflict between chapters. Because the Bloods and Crips are well established, the older members often use younger people to do their more visible crime. I was told that last year the law changed to not allow anyone younger than 11 years old to be locked up (a youthful offender is now managed on probation in the community). The concerns raised by staff here were that younger children would be sent out to do all the crime, knowing they can’t be locked up for anything less than serious violent crime. Young people in gangs are separated while in most secure settings. There was no-one who could tell me anything that ‘worked’ once a young person is part of a gang, “That’s their home. That’s their protection”. Prevention programs exist here, such as the Cure Violence program, which introduces previous gang members as mentors to children in schools and other programs.

The Cure Violence program, which started in Chicago but is also now well established in New York, involves people who are credible messengers to mentor young people, provide immediate support following incidents of violence in the community and lead restorative processes when there is conflict between gangs. These “Violence Interrupters” are employed to work in their own local communities, where they have often been involved in the gang of that area but have made positive life choices and are now in a position to share what they have learned. I was told there have been some issues with some Violence Interrupters' level of ongoing connection with the gang. The mentors spend time in youth detention and youth residential facilities, as well as in the community. The primary goal is that when a young person is in the community there is someone they can trust and go to when they need support. There is also an anti-gun violence employment program, which pays some young people to act as leaders in their communities, encouraging their peers to engage in the many pro-social activities provided by the city for young people after school and on weekends.

The most interesting thing I have learned when speaking to people about gang issues is that the issue isn’t the gang, it is the use of violence. Young people join gangs to fulfil their basic human needs; often this is belonging, acceptance and a feeling of community. There is no way to encourage a young person to leave a gang without fulfilling these needs another way. The work needs to focus on helping young people understand and deal with their emotions (when often the only emotion they can access is anger) and how to stop using violence to meet their needs. The question I am left with is, “How can we as a system give them a sense of community that can compete with what they are getting out of their current gang community?”

Close to Home

I was driven around by an Executive Director in the Close to Home Program and was shown through three of their facilities: Belmont Academy (school), 128 Street (non-secure placement) and Ozone Park (limited secure placement). Close to home was created in 2012 to bring young people closer to their home communities, there are now 31 settings provided by 7 not-for-profit organisations – 26 non-secure and 5 limited secure. The state government develops policies and standards and approves all program and practice documentation. They also monitor services through regular day and night site visits and reporting. After care is provided by the residential staff, which creates continuity for young people after they are back in the community. I really liked this element because the relationships built with youth detention staff can be meaningful and support a young person’s reintegration into community.

Belmont Academy, Brooklyn

Belmont Academy is a school for young people in New York’s Close to Home non-secure placements as well as non-secure detention facilities. Young people come to the school with centre staff, who stay at the school while the young people attend classes, then they go back to their residential setting after school. The place looked like a regular school, except for a few detention-like features, such as the additional security staff and strict movements in a straight line from classroom to classroom. I had a chance to speak to a young man who was working with a tutor. He had a lot of great questions about Australia and his tutor said they could research more about Australia after I left. When I finished talking to him, I was told the young man had been in an incident that morning and they were happy to see his emotional state was positive when I visited. The level of care for young people in this setting was evident, as well as good relationships between staff and kids. The director of the school said their philosophy is, “You can get everything you want and everything you need in life, we’re here to help you get them the right way”.

The Belmont Academy has done a lot of proactive community outreach, changing community perception of their school over recent years. I was told in the past the community was so outraged at the school being used for young offenders that there was violence used by the community towards the building and its residents. There are days when the community is invited in for art exhibitions and other events, days when previous students can bring their families to meet staff, lots of volunteering by the young people where the community can see them giving back, and open forums for discussion. Staff from the school have events in the community like paint and sip nights with parents, in order to create a connection outside of the setting. Young people who come to the school from non-secure placements are taken on field trips and work trials on a regular basis, to prepare them for reintegration home. The day I visited they were planning to take a group to a Broadway show.

The Missouri Model was trialled here but there were challenges implementing it within a school setting, such as a lack of breakout spaces, and the conflicting scheduling priorities between lengthy group processes and a strict school timetable.

128 Street Non-Secure Placement, Queens

Driving past this house, it is hard to identify it contains young people who have broken the law. It looks like any other house on the street. While this is a non-secure setting, I was interested in the security element because this is still a place young people are expected to stay. I saw alarms on all windows, which would sound if opened. The front door and all doors are locked at all times. There are no CCTV cameras in bedrooms or bathrooms, but hallways have cameras. Young people sleep in bedrooms with their doors open. Staff sit in hallways where they can see the doors and they physically check on each young person every 15 minutes at a minimum. Young people and staff are together at all times.

Each service provider needs to articulate their model of care to the New York City oversight body. This facility has chosen to use the Missouri Model, which was evident to me as I walked around, I could see familiar language on the walls and the levels system posted in the group treatment room. Everyone has standard-issue clothes for when they are in the home, they wear school uniforms to school and are allowed to wear their own clothes when on outings or family visits. Three young people were living here when I visited and the minimum staffing is two, but ideally three staff at any time.

Young people who are in a gang when they come into this house are asked to leave their gang identity at the door. This can happen when you have one young person who identifies as a Blood and another who identifies as a Crip. They are expected to treat each other as individuals, move through the therapeutic program and leave their gang issues out of it. The house manager told me “We tell the young people we’re here to do what we need to do (work through the therapeutic program) so that later we can do what we want to do (be free, achieve our goals)”.

Young people in this setting go on day trips, they go out for school or work and can go for weekends at home with family, all of these are individualised to the young person and dependent on how well they are engaging in the program.

Ozone Park Limited Secure Placement, Queens

On the outside, this setting looked like a low-set brick office building on a residential street and inside it was similar to how an older youth detention centre in Australia might be fitted out. Their model does not include any day leave so the young people are educated on-site in classrooms. They have access to a gym, rec room and outdoor basketball court. Out the back there was a high ‘non-climbable’ fence. The model used is a combination of behaviour intervention and therapeutic processes. For young people to move up a ‘belt’ (like karate belts) and earn more rewards, they need to be incident-free and also complete and show understanding about a therapeutic process such as mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness or emotional regulation skills.

There was a distinct increase in the security in this setting compared to the non-secure placement, with a metal detector, control room, heavy locked doors and minimal personal belongings in bedrooms.

Final thoughts

At my meeting yesterday, the Executive Director in charge of programs in New York City asked me, “Using what you’ve learned so far, what do you want to do when you get home?”. This is a huge question and one I wasn’t expecting, but my response was – “Give me four to eight young people in a home-like setting, with some security and call it a youth detention centre. Include only young people who have been sentenced by the court, who are ready to start reintegrating to their communities. Let me work with a group of skilled youth detention staff who want to trial a different approach, to develop a therapeutic model of care that includes group work, mentoring and opportunities for young people to try out their new skills in the community before they are released.”

Today is my last day in New York and I will miss it. I fly to London tomorrow, where a lived for a year in my 20s. I am very interested to see how the English and Scottish approaches differ from those in the USA. I have a feeling the English system might mirror our Australian one more closely, but that will be the topic of my next blog...