After Deaths of Juvenile Detention Staff Members, Parents Fear for Their Children's Safety
By Abigail Kramer
Word started circulating among families late last week: A well-liked staff member at New York City's Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brooklyn had died from complications related to Covid-19. Then, over the following four days, two more staff members passed away, though it's not yet clear whether coronavirus was the cause. *
Even before hearing the news, parents had been calling for their children to be sent home from New York City's two secure juvenile detention centers, which currently hold 74 adolescents, some as young as 13. Now, families say they are even more afraid for their children's safety.
"The people who work there, they have to travel, they come in and out," says Renee Villamil, whose 17-year-old son was arrested 11 months ago and is still at Crossroads, waiting for a trial.
Villamil works in the billing department of a hospital in the Bronx, where she sees the destruction caused by coronavirus up close. “Every day I go into work, it’s more dire than the day before,” she says. “My worst fear is to get that call: ‘Your son is sick, he’s on a ventilator, he can’t breathe.’”
Over the past month, Covid-19 has torn through the City's juvenile detention system. Altogether, 18 staff members at Crossroads and its sister facility, Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx, have tested positive for the virus, says Darek Robinson, the vice-president for grievances at Social Services Employees Union Local 371, which represents staff at the facilities. Many more staff members are too sick to come to work but have not been tested.
The Crossroads staff member who died last week was a caseworker in her late 50s. She had been on the job for 25 years and was known for her kindness and warmth with young people and their families, Robinson said. Her family confirmed to the union that she had been hospitalized for Covid-19. Of the two staff members who passed away over the weekend—and for whom cause of death has not been confirmed—one was 27 years old and the other was 48, Robinson said." *
Youth in the facilities have gotten sick too. The Administration for Children's Services (ACS), which manages the City’s juvenile detention system, didn't immediately say how many young people in secure detention have tested positive for Covid-19, but on April 3rd, the Daily News reported that number as four. Over the April 4-5 weekend, the agency began what it calls a "consolidation plan," moving all apparently healthy young people into the Crossroads facility so that youth who test positive for coronavirus or show symptoms can be cared for at Horizon. As of Tuesday, there were seven young people at the Horizon facility, but that number may include youth who are not sick but haven’t yet been transferred out of the building.
ACS officials say they are following a plan developed with medical experts, which includes checking temperatures of all residents each day and placing any young person with symptoms under close monitoring by health care professionals.
“The health and safety of the youth and the staff in our secure detention facilities is our number one priority. In coordination with the Department of Health, as well as the health care professionals who work on-site 24/7, we have cleaned and sanitized all surfaces, implemented social distancing strategies, continue to ensure youth have access to medical staff at all times should they feel sick, and continue to issue public health guidance,” wrote Chanel Caraway, an ACS spokesperson, in an emailed statement.
Across the country, however, advocates such as New York’s Raise the Age Coalition, families, and former heads of youth correction departments are calling on detention facilities to send young people home who can be safely cared for in their communities.
“Release, release, release,” said Dr. Homer Venters, the former chief medical officer for New York City's jail system, at a March 31 video press conference organized by juvenile justice advocates. "As a physician having managed outbreaks in places of detention, that’s the number one objective," Venter said.
At the conference, advocates pointed out that youth in the juvenile justice system, most of whom come from very low-income communities with limited access to health care, are more likely than other young people to have underlying medical conditions, including asthma, that can make the coronavirus especially dangerous.
Approximately 20 young people were released from Crossroads and Horizons between March 16th (when Mayor Bill de Blasio gave his stay-at-home order) and April 2nd, according to the Mayor's Office for Criminal Justice. But a spokesperson for the Office did not say how many of those releases were expedited because of concerns about the coronavirus, nor whether any of the youth who were released were those accused of any but the least serious offenses. (Previous reporting by The City indicates that the mayor's efforts to release juvenile detainees only included young people classified as "juvenile delinquents," a category that usually applies to youth facing the least serious charges.)
Two weeks ago, the Legal Aid Society filed a lawsuit against the commissioner of ACS, petitioning for the release of 22 juvenile delinquents detained in various City facilities. Keeping those youth in detention “constitutes deliberate indifference to the risk of serious medical harm,” the petition said.
But the lawsuit applies to a relatively small segment of the young people at Crossroads and Horizon, many of whom are waiting to be tried on more serious charges.
For youth and staff who remain in the City's secure detention facilities, it's impossible to follow or enforce safe social distancing practices, says Robinson, the union representative. "Our staff is coming in and out of the facilities. We're riding the subway or in cabs. We're bringing in the virus."
ACS has not assigned enough cleaning staff to disinfect the facilities, Robinson says. And until the union was able to procure masks and gloves last week, most staff and youth went without them.
"Without testing, there's no way to know how many kids or staff have Covid-19," Robinson says. In an urgently worded letter to ACS on April 2nd, Robinson warned that the Horizon facility "may well turn into a death camp."
Meanwhile, parents say they are frantic for information about their children's wellbeing. The City cancelled family visits at the detention centers in March. The visits were supposed to be replaced with Skype calls, but some parents say they haven't been offered a video call, and other say that the connection is poor. "I had one Skype visit. It was cutting in and out. You could hardly hear him and he could hardly hear you," said Tamara Bowe, whose 17-year-old son has been at Crossroads since October 2019.
"The last time I saw my son was March 16th," Bowe says. "It's awful not to see and touch your child at this time. Every day there's so many deaths. I just want to have him close to home."
Instead, Bowe’s son and other young people who are waiting for trials will likely be incarcerated longer because of the pandemic.
Under the best of circumstances, young people accused of serious offenses often spend months in detention while their cases stutter through the City's family or criminal courts. Since March, both courts have been operating at reduced capacity, with the result that many scheduled hearings have been postponed, says Tyisha Jackson, a program coordinator for Good Shepherd Services who works with families whose children are at Crossroads.
Hearings that were scheduled for March or early April have been pushed back at least until June, Jackson says.
"I have a parent asking me if we can go rally and break down the walls," Jackson says. "They want to know: Can they get their kids? Can they wear ankle bracelets until things calm down? These are their children and they want them home."
In the past decade, New York City has drastically reduced the number of children and adolescents held in secure detention centers and other lockups. The majority of young people who enter the City's juvenile justice system are diverted to community programs; others are placed in group-home settings. But many of the reforms exclude young people accused of more serious offenses, says Felipe Franco, a former deputy commissioner at ACS who oversaw the agency's juvenile justice programs.
Now, Franco says, the City's goal should be to figure out which of those young people can go home—potentially under monitoring through virtual check-ins with a probation officer or an ankle bracelet. "Being detained is a traumatic event on its own," Franco said. "Many of the kids in the juvenile justice system have histories of trauma anyway before they come to us. Now they're isolated, anxious, and also feeling helpless about what is happening to their loved ones."
"These are children and although they have made mistakes, many of them could be safely monitored and supported at home," Franco said.
This story was updated on April 8th to include information from the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.
* The deaths of the second and third Crossroads employees were not due to Covid-19, according to Darek Robinson of SSEU, who spoke to their families after publication of this story. As of April 10, one staff member from the facility had died from the coronavirus.