A Curious Eye

If you are a young man from a poor neighborhood in New York City, though, like Trevor, the odds of moving on to a healthy and productive adulthood are stacked against you, particularly if you are black or Latino. Mayor Michael Bloomberg acknowledged as much in a recent speech to members of a church in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a community where 40 percent of children are born into poverty. These children are twice as likely as white children to drop out of school and end up out of work. The murder rates among young men of color in New York City compared to young white men - 36 times higher for black men and 12 times higher for Latinos - are tragic. In fact, 90 percent of all people murdered in the city are black or Latino, and 96 percent of shooting suspects are black and Latino.

The plight of young men in the city is exacerbated by a juvenile justice system that simply does not work. Seventy percent of youths who are incarcerated in upstate New York facilities, where the majority of the city’s juvenile offenders are sent, are rearrested within 24 months of release and thus face abysmal chances of rehabilitation.

Engaging the local community is vital to the rehabilitation process. For young offenders, receiving supportive services in their home communities, where they can remain connected to families and local institutions, offers the most reliable path for ensuring that they do not grow up to become lifelong criminals. For most children convicted of minor infractions, effective services can be provided while they live at home, avoiding the costs and negative impact of institutionalization. Yet for the past few decades we have failed troubled youth—the vast majority of them black and Latino (84 percent of all admissions in 2009) - by shipping them to juvenile detention facilities hundreds of miles away from home, often for minor infractions.

Cutting these children off from their communities threatens their often fragile family relationships. Worse, young people don’t learn to become responsible adults at these facilities—on the contrary, they are often neglected and face abuse. And despite how ineffective and unsafe these facilities are, the city and state spend millions of dollars a year to keep them running. Compared to the alternative, the waste is astonishing. Holding a youth offender in a secure facility costs around $260,000 a year; alternative, community-based treatment programs can cost about $20,000 per child per year, and have better results.

Keep reading at TheAtlanticCities.com