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Bloomberg's Bid to Take Over Juvenile Justice System Gains Steam

By DNAinfo Staff on January 27, 2011 8:45am

By Jill Colvin

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

CITY HALL — Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to seize control of the state’s troubled juvenile justice system was met with resounding support from youth advocates and City Council members at a council hearing Wednesday.

Bloomberg is calling on Albany lawmakers to cede control of the system to local authorities, arguing the city can do a significantly better job for less.

Under the current system, the city spends millions to send kids to far-away facilities, many of which are located upstate and which critics say are half-empty and poorly run.

Under the mayor’s plan, the city would increase its use of community-based juvenile programs, which provide counseling and other social services closer to home.

The programs costs, on average, about $17,000 per child per year — significantly cheaper than the nearly $300,000 the state spends to house a child in a limited-security prison, the mayor has said.

Bloomberg's plan has earned strong support among youth advocates and elected officials.

Many members of the city council support the plan, according to a spokesman for City Councilwoman Sara González, chair of the Juvenile Justice Committee, which organized the hearing.

Jennifer March-Joly, executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children, a child advocacy organization present at the meeting, also said she supports Bloomberg's plan. She added that the current system is failing at every level.

"At $17,000 a year, you can provide far greater outcomes for youth," March-Joly said, adding that Albany should reinvest the money it spends on its own youth programs into the city's proposed alternatives.

"Why not try a New York City model?" she asked.

But some critics to Bloomberg's proposal have raised concerns that the mayor will not do enough to include advocates in the decision-making about new programs and facilities.

"There is no apparent mechanism for ongoing community engagement in the process," Gabrielle Prisco, director of the Correctional Association of New York's Juvenile Justice Project, told City Limits. "Why should we believe that if the mayor gets control of the Juvenile Justice system, he's going to be responsive to the community?" she asked.

Prisco's concerns echo the concerns of parents who have blasted Bloomberg's failure to include parents in the city's public schools since winning mayoral control over the Education Department in 2002.

Either way, supporters point to the previous resistance to reform in Albany, and say that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has yet to declare his support for Bloomger's proposal publicly.

In his State of the State address earlier this month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for a complete overhaul of the system, sharply criticizing the youth treatment facilities for "bilking the tax payers" to protect jobs.

Cuomo vowed to close underutilized facilities and reign in spending, but stopped short of saying he supported ceding control over the programs to Bloomberg.