Summary
When they restrain kids. . . [t]hey’d have rug burns all over their bodies. . . . They
hold your arms back and they purposefully push your face in the rug. They have
their knee in your back and your arms all the way back. I’ve been restrained
before so I know.
—Stephanie Q., incarcerated at age 16
There’s only one teacher, but everyone’s in a different place, so it’s not good.
They try to give you a book and tell you to study out of it.
—Alicia K., incarcerated at age 15
I asked to talk to the ombudsman probably every day. They [facilities staff] said,
“OK,” but it never happened. It’s my right to call but they wouldn’t let me talk
to him. Or the other thing they’d say is “Tell me what you’re going to tell him.”
—Felicia H., incarcerated at age 17
There is growing recognition that people incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons often suffer from
abusive treatment and neglect. When those abused are children who have been placed in juvenile
facilities ostensibly for their rehabilitation, public concern is justifiably heightened. Media stories
and public debate about troubled children tend to focus on the delinquent behaviors of and state
responses to boys. However, an increasing proportion of the children being put behind bars are
girls. In New York State, the proportion of girls taken into custody has grown from 14 percent
in 1994 to over 18 percent in 2004.
This report focuses on the two large, prison-like facilities in which girls in New York state are
confined, namely, the Tryon and Lansing facilities, and concludes that, far too often, girls
experience abusive physical restraints and other forms of abuse and neglect, and are denied the
mental health, educational, and other rehabilitative services they need. Because of the facilities’
remote locations, confined girls are isolated from their families and communities.
The New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) is the state agency whose
Department of Rehabilitative Services administers juvenile facilities. Although OCFS is charged
with rehabilitating children over whom it takes custody, it often fails to serve, and even to protect,
confined girls, and this failure continues because there is little or no meaningful oversight of
conditions in OCFS facilities. This last point is critical. Internal monitoring and oversight of the
facility are, to put it charitably, dysfunctional, and independent outside monitoring is all but

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nonexistent. As a result, the conditions in the Tryon and Lansing facilities addressed in this report
are shrouded in secrecy and girls who suffer abuse have little meaningful redress.
Human Rights Watch investigates conditions in juvenile facilities in the United States and
around the world and we have found OCFS to be among the most hostile juvenile justice
agencies we have ever encountered. Despite repeated formal and informal requests over a period
of several months, we were denied access to the facilities themselves. Working through channels
independent of OCFS, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU (HRW/ACLU) made contact with
children, family members, and others with relevant firsthand experiences and knowledge.
Ultimately we were able to speak with only 30 formerly incarcerated girls directly, but what we
found, as detailed below, is serious cause for concern: the state of New York is failing to watch
over OCFS, and OCFS is failing the girls in its custody.
The majority of girls in Tryon and Lansing are fifteen or sixteen years old, although some are as
young as twelve. As with incarcerated persons throughout the U.S., a disproportionate number
of girls confined in New York are African-Americans from families who have lived in poverty
for generations, with parents or other close relatives who themselves have been incarcerated. In
many cases, these girls fall into juvenile facilities through vast holes in the social safety net, after
child welfare institutions and schools have failed them. In the wake of legal reform in 1996, girls
who commit “status offenses” such as disobedience and running away from home are no longer
supposed to be placed in custody, but such offenses—and the related issue of involvement with
child welfare agencies because of parental abuse and neglect—continue to function as gateways
through which particularly vulnerable children are drawn into the juvenile justice system.
Of course, the immediate cause of a girl’s incarceration in the Lansing or Tryon facilities is her
commission of a delinquent act, that is, an act that would be a criminal offense if committed by
an adult. Such acts include assault, occurring in many cases during family or peer altercations,
theft offenses including shoplifting, and other crimes. A judge ordering a girl to be placed in a
specific type of facility signals his or her expectation that the girl will be confined at a particular
level of security and provided with appropriate, specified services. Unfortunately, conditions in
the facilities often are markedly different from what many judges envision. In reality, all girls sent
to Tryon or Lansing are confined in a prison-like physical environment where they may be at risk
of abuse and where promised services are often not delivered.
One of the most troubling abuses is the use of inappropriate and excessive force by facilities
staff against girls. By interviewing formerly incarcerated girls and examining agency documents,
HRW/ACLU have documented the excessive use of a forcible face-down “restraint” procedure
intended for emergencies but in fact used far more often. In a restraint, staff seize a girl from
behind and, in a face-down posture, push her head and entire body to the floor. They then pull

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4

her arms up behind her and hold or handcuff them. We found that the procedure is used against
girls as young as 12 and that it frequently results in facial abrasions and other injuries, and even
broken limbs.
According to human rights standards, physical force may be used against confined children only
as an emergency measure to control a violent or self-destructive child and only when all other
means of control have failed. Physical force is never acceptable as punishment, yet that is exactly
how force sometimes appears to be used at Lansing and Tryon. Many girls told HRW/ACLU
that the face-down restraint procedure at times was used punitively for minor of failings by girls,
including, in the most egregious cases, improperly making their beds or not raising their hands
before speaking.
Girls confined in Tryon and Lansing are also at risk of a range of sexually abusive behaviors.
HRW/ACLU documented three specific cases over the past five years of staff having sexual
intercourse with girls. Sexual abuse short of intercourse also occurs in the facilities, ranging from
verbal innuendo, to observation of girls in states of undress by male staff, to unwanted touching.
Girls also report that staff make publicly humiliating comments revealing girls’ past sexual history,
or experience of abuse, or a medical condition such as infection with a sexually transmitted disease.
Lesbians as well as girls who do not conform to staff stereotypes of girlish behavior are sometimes
harassed by staff and other girls.
Girls incarcerated at the Tryon and Lansing facilities are also subjected to security measures
beyond what appears to be strictly necessary and in some cases contrary to OCFS’s own official
categorizations. The facilities examined in this report are designated by OCFS as “secure” (one
part of Tryon, referred to as Tryon Secure), “limited secure” (Lansing), and “non-secure”
(another part of Tryon, referred to as Tryon Girls). According to OCFS, girls sent to the “nonsecure” portion of Tryon “do not require the more restrictive setting of a limited secure facility.”
Yet both the “secure” and “non-secure” portions of Tryon consist of barracks-like units
surrounded by layers of razor wire. Girls’ activities are tightly controlled and their interaction
with each other is limited. In fact, there is little discernible difference between Tryon’s “secure”
and “non-secure” units.
Throughout Tryon and Lansing, all girls are bound in some combination of handcuffs, legshackles, and leather restraint belts any time they leave the facility. Girls are also subject to
frequent strip-searches in which they must undress in front of a staff person and submit to a
thorough visual inspection including their genitals. All correctional systems must take
appropriate precautions to maintain security and to ensure that weapons, drugs, or other
contraband are not smuggled by transported prisoners. Nevertheless, these measures should be
reasonable, proportionate, and objectively justified. The measures taken by OCFS are hard to

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SEPTEMBER 2006

justify as legitimate or reasonable security measures for children, many of whom have been
found by judges to require a “non-secure” environment.
Tryon and Lansing provide haphazard and insufficient educational and vocational opportunities
for girls. When a girl is ordered to a juvenile facility, she is discharged from her public school
and the facility becomes responsible for ensuring one of her most basic and important rights—
the right to an education. Classes held at Lansing and Tryon combine girls of varying educational
levels and needs, and are insufficiently staffed with qualified teachers. Girls are therefore either
intellectually understimulated or overwhelmed, and girls complain that the facilities’ main aim
seems to be preparing them to take the General Equivalency Diploma exam, rather than helping
them achieve a high school diploma. Both OCFS and the schools themselves fail to ensure that
girls leaving facilities are properly placed back in public schools. The lack of reentry assistance
provided to girls and poor coordination between facilities and schools likely contributes to the
troubling fact that two-thirds of high school aged boys and girls leaving juvenile facilities do not
re-enter regular public high schools.
When vocational training is available at all, that offered to girls is limited to stereotypically female
pursuits such as culinary arts, cosmetology, and clerical skills. By contrast, comparable boys’
facilities offer a range of vocational classes providing marketable skills and nationally recognized
certifications. These educational failings can amount to a crippling future disadvantage for
incarcerated girls, exacerbating the pattern of intergenerational educational and economic
marginalization suffered by many of the girls and their families.
In New York in 2004, of the children screened by OCFS for special needs when taken into
custody, 48 percent had physical health needs, 52 percent had mental health needs, and 77
percent had substance abuse problems. Sixty-nine percent of screened children had multiple
special needs. OCFS documents and the statements of administrators reveal that staff are aware
of and concerned about the health needs of incarcerated girls. Serious failings remain
nevertheless, especially where mental health services are concerned. Many incarcerated girls
physically harm themselves and even attempt suicide, to which facilities’ staff frequently respond
with punishment in addition to treatment. Mental health counseling by professionally trained
staff is largely inadequate, and much “counseling” is instead provided by ordinary line staff
without credentials or training in psychotherapeutic treatment.
Judges, attorneys, family members, and friends of incarcerated girls have little chance of learning
exactly how girls in OCFS facilities are treated, not least because Tryon and Lansing are located
hundreds of miles away from New York City, the place most incarcerated girls call home, and
because girls’ access to means of communication is strictly limited. Girls are cut off from the
outside world in other ways too. Once a girl is placed in an OCFS facility, she loses the state-

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6

funded lawyer who represented her in court, unless an appeal or other post-adjudication legal
proceeding is underway.
Girls incarcerated in New York’s juvenile system who wish to seek redress for infringements on
their rights have few options. In most cases, the only place to which they can turn is the same
facility and at times the very same staff members responsible for the wrongs about which they
are complaining. Girls’ primary means of drawing attention to problems they experience within a
facility is the filing of written grievances. All of the girls HRW/ACLU interviewed said they
found the grievance process frustrating and ineffective, most commonly because their grievances
were ignored. Thus hidden from public scrutiny and without an effective mechanism for seeking
redress, girls in Tryon and Lansing continue to endure harmful treatment and neglect.
One important reason that the abusive treatment and other problems described in this report
continue is the absence of genuinely independent oversight of the Tryon and Lansing juvenile
facilities. Combined with the facilities’ isolated rural location and restrictions on incarcerated
children’s contact with the outside world, the facilities operate in an informational vacuum.
Inadequate funding for existing monitors, such as the facilities ombudsman, as well as OCFS’s
failure to maintain a functioning Independent Review Board as required by law, are partly to
blame. The ombudsman’s office is also weak because it is part of OCFS, answerable to and
physically located within OCFS headquarters. New York’s Child Protective Services (CPS) is
likewise a sub-part of OCFS and its existence is not known to many incarcerated girls. Another
established monitor, New York’s Office of the Inspector General, does not provide the
necessary oversight because OCFS represents only a small piece of its broad mandate, and
because it conducts no regular monitoring visits to OCFS’s locked facilities. Although judges,
legislators, and other state officials have the power under state law to visit the facilities at will,
this power is rarely if ever invoked. In response to efforts by outside investigators to gather
information on how OCFS runs its juvenile facilities, the agency’s leadership has proven itself
secretive and adverse to scrutiny, effectively leaving the public in the dark. Within this
institutional scheme, children are left to fend for themselves.
The “key recommendations” below highlight immediate steps we believe OCFS and other state
authorities must take to stop some of the most egregious abuses documented in this report. We
then provide detailed recommendations for the state and local authorities with responsibilities
affecting the conditions under which girls are incarcerated in New York State. Change is
essential since girls’ near total isolation from outside eyes and ears allows abuses to continue
undetected and without remedy.

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Recommendations
Key Recommendations
A number of problems in New York’s girls’ juvenile facilities urgently require correction. To end
its dangerous overuse and misuse of the forcible face-down restraint technique, OCFS must
bring its internal policies into compliance with domestic and international law by revising them
to permit the physical restraint of children only as an option of last resort in genuine
emergencies. OCFS must take immediate and vigorous measures to implement this narrower
policy through thorough re-training of all facilities administrators and staff. Facilities employees
who use excessive force should be punished. In addition, OCFS should make it a priority to
develop safer techniques of emergency control.
The absence of meaningful oversight of OCFS facilities must also be addressed. At a minimum,
OCFS should ensure that the Ombudsman’s office is sufficiently well staffed to carry out its
legally mandated functions, constitute a functioning Independent Review Board (IRB) staffed as
required by state regulations, and open its doors to outside monitors.
Those with immediate authority over New York’s juvenile justice system, the Governor and
OCFS Commissioner, should be held accountable for seeing that these reforms are implemented
and for ensuring that conditions for all children confined in New York meet international,
national, and state standards of safety, health, and dignity. To date, they have failed to do so.
We believe that the foregoing immediate changes are necessary to mitigate the most dangerous
conditions in OCFS facilities. More fundamental institutional changes—requiring action by the
New York State Legislature in addition to the Governor and OCFS Commissioner—need to be
made, however, for significant improvements in girls’ and boys’ conditions of confinement to
occur. First, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU urge passage of Assembly Bill 6334/Senate
Bill 6877, creating an independent state Office of the Child Advocate to oversee all juvenile
justice and foster care facilities. While internal oversight in the form of a functioning and fully
staffed ombudsman’s office and IRB may help remedy some of the most urgent abuses, external,
independent monitoring is crucial to ensure the fair and humane treatment of New York’s most
vulnerable children. Second, as an overarching goal, the Governor, OCFS, and the State
Legislature should work diligently toward a system in which few if any children are held in
prison-like environments but instead receive the help they need in their homes and communities.

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Detailed Recommendations
To the Governor of New York and the Commissioner of the Office of
Children and Family Services (OCFS)
System-wide Structural Reform
•

Reduce the use of large, remote, prison-like facilities to the greatest extent possible,
realizing that rehabilitation and community safety are in almost all cases best served by
more humane, effective, and economical home- or community-based care programs.

o Expand the ability of juvenile courts to keep children in their homes and to
shorten periods of incarceration by vastly expanding the existing “Evidencebased Community Initiative” (EbCI).
o Phase out prison-like facilities in favor of small, home-like, post-adjudication
facilities located close to children’s communities and employing a rehabilitative
philosophy.
•

So long as juvenile facilities continue to operate, review all policies and procedures to
ensure that each genuinely contributes to the goal of rehabilitation.

•

Ensure that policies and practices affecting girls serve their needs and do not reflect
outdated stereotypes. At the very least, girls should always receive care, protection,
assistance, treatment, education, and training on par with what is given to boys.

Elimination of Dangerous and Excessively Punitive Practices
•

Immediately bring OCFS use of force policy into compliance with national and
international standards regarding the use of force against children by replacing the
existing broad grounds for use of physical restraints with the widely accepted standard of
permitting force only when a child poses an imminent threat of injury to self or others
and all other means of control have been exhausted. Train all facilities staff as to these
standards and punish staff who use excessive force against children.

•

Collect and make publicly available cumulative statistical data on the use of restraints in
each OCFS facility.

•

Diligently explore alternative means of emergency intervention.

•

Discontinue the use of mechanical restraints on children except when strictly necessary
and as a last resort.

•

Never use physical, mechanical, or medical restraints as means of punishment.

•

Ensure that conditions in “non-secure” facilities are meaningfully less restrictive and
prison-like than those in secure facilities. Discontinue the practices of strip-searching
children except when absolutely necessary for reasons of safety and security.

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SEPTEMBER 2006

•

Improve staff recruitment, screening, training, and supervision with the goal of curtailing
violence and degrading treatment of all kinds and promoting the formation of nurturing,
non-exploitative relationships between staff and girls in which the girls’ needs and safety
are paramount.

Elimination of Sexual Abuse against Confined Girls
•

Strictly enforce policies prohibiting sexual contact, harassment, or abuse of children.

•

Strictly limit the use of male staff in girls’ living quarters.

•

Upon receiving an allegation of sexual misconduct, immediately suspend the implicated
staff member pending investigation. Conduct thorough internal investigations of all
complaints of abuse, refer all such complaints to Child Protective Services and the New
York State Inspector General, and impose appropriate punishment on staff members
found guilty of misconduct.

Girls’ Physical and Mental Health
•

Ensure staffing by an appropriate number of mental health professionals to provide
mental health services to confined girls, and ensure that everyone providing counseling
has sufficient qualifications.

•

Ensure that procedures are in place to provide prompt and consistent access to physical
and mental health care to all confined children, and ensure that nonmedical staff do not
interfere with access to care.

•

Respond to self-cutting and other forms of self-harm, which signal psychological needs,
with appropriate mental health services. Stop punishing girls for acts of self-harm.

•

Strictly implement policies prohibiting the disclosure of confidential personal, medical,
and other information by staff to anyone not authorized to receive such information.
Impose discipline on staff members who violate children’s right to privacy.

•

Offer quality productive and recreational activities throughout the day, including on
weekends, to drastically reduce the degree of isolation and idleness experienced by
confined children. Girls should not be left idle or left in their rooms for extended
periods, which is currently a significant problem especially on weekends.

Nondiscrimination
•

Adopt and enforce explicit policies prohibiting discrimination against lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) children, and children who do not conform to
gender stereotypes. Include such policies in all policy and training manuals. Report and

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10

record incidents of discrimination based on sexual orientation or any other basis, such as
race or religion, by staff or girls.

•

Provide high quality training to all OCFS staff and administrators in how to relate to
LGBT and gender non-conforming children with sensitivity and support.

Education and Social Development
•

Increase the number of teaching staff in each facility and ensure that each teacher is
property trained and qualified as a means of providing all incarcerated children,
especially those with special educational needs, with quality schooling meeting their
individual needs. OCFS educational programs should also strive for continuity of
education, facilitating children’s reentry into public schools at the same grade level they
would have occupied had they remained in public school.

•

Consistently provide vocational training of a quality and variety meeting the needs of
girls when they leave facilities and enter the work force. At a minimum, provide girls
with vocational opportunities on a par with that offered to boys. Conduct research to
determine the career fields most likely to offer stable, lucrative employment for girls
following their release.

•

Consistently provide adequate writing materials and a full stock of art supplies to permit
incarcerated girls modes of self-expression. Respect the privacy of girls’ journals and
other possessions.

•

Foster peer support through social activity among girls. Ensure that any restrictions on
peer interaction are reasonable and are designed and enforced with an eye toward
rehabilitation, especially at Tryon Reception Center, where social isolation is the most
severe.

Access to Families
•

Improve family members’ access to facilities in remote locations by creating shuttle-bus
services, transportation reimbursement, or other means.

•

Increase opportunities for children to maintain contact with family members, such as
increasing visiting hours and permitting children more frequent and longer telephone
calls home.

Reentry
•

For each incarcerated child, regardless of age, establish a comprehensive reentry plan
created with the child’s participation and tailored to her individual needs and abilities.
Where possible, work with the child’s family to facilitate positive family reunification.

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SEPTEMBER 2006

•

As to each child who is under 21 and has not earned a high school diploma or GED at
the time of her release, make all necessary arrangements to reenroll her in school prior to
her release.

•

At reentry, provide each child who cannot return to her family with a foster placement
or another form of transitional housing.

Ensuring Appropriate Staffing
•

Immediately fill youth aide, youth counselor, and educational vacancies to ameliorate the
severe, chronic shortage of staff.

•

Increase staff levels so that each employee has a manageable workload, can attend
mandated trainings, and need not regularly work overtime.

•

Provide counseling, mentoring, and other training mechanisms for line staff and
administrators to help them better respond to the demands and stresses of the uniquely
difficult environment within facilities.

•

Review required qualifications and credentials for line staff and counselors working
directly with children. If higher qualifications are called for, revise salary levels to attract
better qualified staff.

Transparency and Accountability
•

Comply with existing state regulations providing for a reasonably independent and
functional ombudsman’s office. The ombudsman’s office should be physically located
outside of OCFS headquarters, and should to the greatest extent possible be
independent from OCFS administratively and substantively. The ombudsman’s office
should be allocated sufficient funding and staff to perform its functions in a meaningful
way, including making frequent in-person visits to each facility.

•

Ensure unimpeded access between the ombudsman and incarcerated children via
telephone and post. To this end, prominently display information regarding the
ombudsman’s office in each unit of every facility, including information on children’s
right to contact the ombudsman and contact information for the ombudsman’s office.
Consider establishing a hotline and/or a locked box in which children may deposit
messages forwarded directly to the ombudsman.

•

Reestablish the statutorily mandated Independent Review Board, comply with legal
requirements as to the number and qualifications of its members, and ensure that it
meets regularly, inspects OCFS facilities, and carries out all of its enumerated functions.

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12

•

Ensure compliance with international standards calling for regular inspections and other
means of control of facilities by independent monitors. Such monitoring should be
frequent, regular, unannounced, and unrestricted.

•

Ensure that the grievance system operates so that each and every filed grievance is
responded to promptly, fairly, and in sufficient detail.

•

Establish systematic data gathering for key indicators of children’s welfare and facilities’
performance, including data regarding the history, placement, and post-release success of
children referred to OCFS. This data should be gender-, race-, and ethnicitydisaggregated. In particular, collect and disseminate comparative data on the recidivism
rates of children remanded to OCFS facilities and those participating in the Evidencebased Community Initiative (EbCI).

•

Make all non-confidential data collected by OCFS freely available to the public as a
measure of accountability and to counteract the invisibility of girls in the system.

•

Conduct and publish a comprehensive annual survey of all incarcerated girls to discover
problem areas and shortcomings in facilities.

To the New York State Legislature
Action on Pending Bills
•

Adopt Bill A.6334/S.6877, creating an independent Office of the Child Advocate to
oversee all juvenile justice and foster care facilities. The Child Advocate would have
capacity beyond that of the ombudsman and complete independence from OCFS,
allowing impartial, comprehensive review and analysis of OCFS’s performance. Ensure
sufficient allocation of funds permitting the Office to function effectively.

•

Adopt Bill A.6502, also known as the SAFETY (Safe, Fair and Equal Treatment for
Youth) Act, prohibiting discrimination and harassment in OCFS facilities based on
sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity, as well as race, national origin, ethnicity,
religion and disability, and requiring OCFS to train staff to respond appropriately to
incidents of discrimination and harassment.

•

Adopt Bill A.6597/S.4423, also known as the Safe Harbor for Exploited Children Act,
creating community based programs for prostitution-involved children who are currently
incarcerated. In addition, adopt legislation recognizing that children’s legal inability to
consent to sex should preclude the arrest of commercially sexually exploited children for
prostitution.

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Other Action
•

Encourage each assembly member to conduct unannounced visits to OCFS facilities
whenever possible, particularly those in remote locations, as authorized by section 519 of
the Executive Law.

To the New York Courts
•

Refer children to prison-like OCFS facilities only as a measure of last resort, when there
are no alternatives consistent with the child’s well-being.

•

As to children referred to OCFS, order whenever possible the provision of services
through the “Evidence-based Community Initiative” (EbCI) or other home- or
community-based programs as an alternative to incarceration.

•

Issue a detailed order assuring proper individualized treatment and services for each
adjudicated child. Ensure that OCFS fully complies with all provisions in court orders
and consistently provides high-quality services to referred children.

Other Action
•

Encourage each judge and eligible court officer to conduct unannounced visits to OCFS
facilities whenever possible, particularly those in remote locations, as authorized by
section 519 of the Executive Law.

To Family Court Prosecutors, Mental Health Services Officers, and
Probation Officers
•

Recommend confinement of children in prison-like OCFS facilities only as a measure of
last resort, when there are no alternatives consistent with the child’s well-being.

•

As to those children referred to OCFS, recommend whenever possible the provision of
services through the “Evidence-based Community Initiative” (EbCI) or other home- or
community-based programs as an alternative to incarceration.

•

In all cases, ensure that judges are presented with information concerning effective
community-based options they can consider in lieu of incarceration.

To the New York State Office of Mental Health
•

Dramatically increase the number of qualified mental health care staff available at OCFS
facilities, both for youth and staff. Ensure the existence of programs for girls addressing
physical and sexual abuse and other victimization.

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14

•

Regularly review the quality of mental health care provided in juvenile facilities. Pay
particular attention to the quality and quantity of individual and group therapy provided
and the appropriateness of prescribed medication.

To the New York State Department of Education
•

Regularly monitor OCFS educational facilities to assure compliance with all federal and
state educational standards.

•

Implement a memorandum of understanding and a cooperative relationship with OCFS
to assure automatic transfer of credits from OCFS schools to New York public schools.
This should include developing syllabi for classes offered in OCFS and making any other
recommendations necessary to bring the two educational systems into harmony.

To the New York State Civil Service Employees Association and Public
Employees Federation, the unions representing OCFS facilities staff
•

Support the immediate abandonment of OCFS’s current overbroad use of force policy,
which causes needless injury to confined children as well as staff, in favor of a far
narrower policy permitting the use of force only as a last resort in genuine crises.

•

Help transform OCFS facilities into humane working environments for staff as well as
safe living environments for girls by supporting key reforms such as ample staffing and
improved staff hiring, training, and supervision.

•

Support broad-based reforms such as movement toward less prison-like facilities and
procedures, in-depth monitoring of facilities conditions by internal and external
observers, and legislative reforms making OCFS facilities safer, fairer, and more humane.

To the United States Department of Justice, Special Litigation Section
•

Investigate the conditions of confinement of girls in New York commitment facilities.
An investigation is particularly warranted in this case not only because of the nature of
the complaints HRW/ACLU has received but also because OCFS currently lacks its
own adequate investigatory mechanisms and impedes full investigation by outside
monitors.

To the United States State Department
•

Extend an invitation to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against
Women to investigate the conditions of confinement of girls in New York commitment
facilities.

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To the United States Congress
To Both Houses
•

Amend the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to enforce the equitable
treatment of boys and girls, and ensure that gender-specific services are provided to girls.
Require states to gather and provide recidivism rates and other data demonstrating the
success of their treatment, educational, and other programming.

To the Senate
•

Consent to ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

To the President of the United States
•

Ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child once the Senate has given its advice
and consent.

To the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women
•

Investigate the conditions of confinement of girls in New York’s juvenile facilities,
whether alone or in conjunction with other United Nations children’s rights and
women’s rights experts

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