Vol. 73/No. 35      September 14, 2009

In a phone interview with the Militant, Bowers described the physical abuse and injuries youths sustain at these centers. Incarcerated on a petty larceny charge, he was released from the Gossett center in December after being forced to spend nearly a year there. “I was put in restraints at least 20 times,” Bowers told the Militant.

For the first week inmates have to walk an arm’s length from a staff member, said Bowers. Because he was more than an arm’s length, “I had restraints put on. My face was burning from them rubbing it in the carpet,” he said.

Bowers’ eight-month sentence was extended three times. “This is not a rehabilitation place. It makes county jails sound much better because in there you know when you’re getting out,” he said. In the detention centers “you don’t know. They’re playing with your head.”

A study initiated nearly two years ago by the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division at four of the 31 juvenile detention facilities in New York found widespread abuse.

“Anything from sneaking an extra cookie to initiating a fistfight may result in a full prone restraint with handcuffs,” the report stated, leading to “an alarming number of serious injuries to youth, including concussions, broken or knocked-out teeth, and spiral fractures.” The latter are caused by severe twisting of a bone in the arm or leg.

The inquiry centered on the Gossett and Lansing residential centers outside Ithaca and the Tryon Residential Center and the Tryon Girls Residential Center near Johnstown, New York. Most of the youths incarcerated in the four prisons are 16 or younger. Many have been placed there by the courts for nonviolent misdemeanors such as turnstile jumping, marijuana possession, or truancy.

A common practice of prison officials is “pin-pushing,” that is, pushing the buttons on their radios to bring in the “response teams.” A 2007 memo to staff at Gossett called for pin pushing “if you ‘think,’ ‘feel,’ or ‘suspect’ that you may have to use physical force” or “if a resident says ‘no’ or demonstrates defiance in any manner.”

In one case a response team was deployed when “a youth refused to stop laughing loudly in the cafeteria after staff warned him several times to stop,” the Justice Department report stated. Also, when a youth was ordered to get up from where he was sitting and stand next to a staff member, which he did, but “reportedly glared at the staff and ‘invaded [their] space.’” Restraints placed on this individual reinjured his collarbone, which had previously been fractured by restraints.

Another punishment technique employed is “hook and trip.” This involves restraining a youth’s arms behind his or her back then tripping their legs so the person falls to the floor face first, resulting in head injuries and broken teeth.

Full prone restraints, in which a person is placed face down on the ground with arms frequently handcuffed behind the back, can restrict breathing. A 15-year-old youth at Tryon Boys died from this restraining method in November 2006. In struggling for air the individual’s movements can be “misconstrued” as “resistance,” leading to increased force being applied to him or her, the report said.

At the Lansing detention center, with capacity for 50 girls, restraints were used 698 times in 2007, an average of 58 per month, resulting in 123 reported injuries.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the detention centers “a government-sponsored nightmare of Dickensian physical and mental abuse.”

A 2006 report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said the state’s juvenile detention centers were “among the most hostile juvenile justice agencies we have ever encountered.”
 
 
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