Testimony of Patricia Crispino, District Representative for District 79, delivered before the New York City Council Committee on Children and Youth

On behalf of UFT members and our union president, Michael Mulgrew, we would like to thank the Committee on Children and Youth and Chair Stevens for hosting today’s oversight hearing on the Close to Home program. We appreciate the opportunity to submit testimony on this important issue. 

We are proud to represent the staff of District 79, a group of programs that serves families and young people, including those who are in the Close to Home program, facing enormous challenges. We are committed to ensuring that our educational system offers all our city’s families the opportunity to complete their education in the New York City public school system. 

Close to Home is a juvenile justice reform initiative that was launched in 2012 and is designed to keep justice-involved youth close to their families and communities. We support the program’s goals of allowing families to more easily visit and to participate in young people’s rehabilitation programs, increasing the likelihood of success for youth once they are released. Particularly for families with limited transportation options or with other barriers to traveling to juvenile justice facilities located outside of the city, the program has been an important and welcome shift in policy and practice. 

Over the years, however, we have identified multiple ways in which it must be improved to better serve the needs of our youth and their families. It is imperative that the city and state immediately develop residential and school facilities for the Close to Home program that are specifically tailored to the needs of the young people who participate in it. The Raise the Age legislation’s effect of no longer placing most youth under the age of 18 on Rikers Island was critically important, but it was not accompanied by the resources necessary to ensure appropriate placement for these young people in residences and schools that meet their needs. The current facilities used by the program were originally designed and staffed to support the needs of younger students, and the arbitrary placement of justice-involved youth who are in their late teens and older in the same facilities as middle school and younger students simply because those locations are closest to their homes is not in the best interest of either group. 

This is especially true in cases where participants may initially enter these facilities at age 16 or 17 but end up remaining in these placements until they age out of the program at age 21 or older due to delays in the justice system’s hearing schedule or to other causes. This backlog in the adjudication process is an enormous concern for the staff, students and families who are part of the Close to Home program, and we welcome the Council’s advocacy in ensuring that it is addressed. Again, we don’t recommend that our older youth be placed in Rikers as in the past, but it is therefore crucial that we prioritize creating facilities dedicated to their needs rather than having them temporarily or permanently share residences and learning environments with much younger students. 

In terms of how these recommendations impact the Close to Home program, it may sometimes be necessary to place older youth in facilities that are further away from their homes of origin but that are better designed to meet their needs, and we recommend that these adjustments in placements be made when appropriate rather than distance from home being the primary priority in determining where students are assigned. We also recommend that the city and state invest in updated training and resources for the staff who are assigned to the facilities used by the Close to Home program. The appropriate staff responses to peer-to-peer conflict, academic challenges and other issues that arise in the course of these students’ placements are far different for young people in their late teens and early twenties than for younger students. Both instructional staff and other adults in the buildings need better preparation and support both before and during their assignment to work in these facilities. 

As always, we would welcome the opportunity to arrange visits to these sites for you and your staff to allow you to see these issues in person. We thank you again for holding this hearing, and we offer our ongoing collaboration as you strive to support the students and families served by this program and the staff who work with them.