Dr. Alice Green, the late executive director of the Center for Law and Justice, spoke to protestors from the group Challenge Incarceration and other organizations demanding prison justice during a rally at the state Capitol on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, in Albany, N.Y. (Photo by Hans Pennink / AP Photo)
This story is being co-published with The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice.
In January 2019, Daniel McCoy, Albany County’s elected executive, made a bold announcement in his state of the county address.
“I believe more needs to be done to divert youth from entering the juvenile legal system in the first instance,” McCoy said.
He pledged to create a road map, modeled after efforts in Washington state’s King County, to move toward “zero youth detention.” McCoy announced the formation of a task force to be headed by longtime local civil rights champion Alice Green, founder of the Albany-based Center for Law and Justice.
Three years later, the group issued a 133-page report providing a path for McCoy’s vision. Green passed away suddenly in August at age 84, possibly from cardiac problems, The Albany Times Union reported.
But the charismatic leader and her successor and the county now differ on whether local government is taking the task force recommendations seriously. Before her death, Green had expressed frustration with what she perceived as lack of action on the pending proposals.
In its April 2022 report, the task force made 24 recommendations. Those included big-ticket items — like launching a drop-in center where young people could connect to social workers and mentors — and smaller-scale policies like better county collection of youth-related legal, health and human services data.
Other suggestions included conducting a racial equity impact assessment on all county juvenile justice policies, banning the arrest and prosecution of those younger than 16, and offering services to more youth and families caught up in the juvenile legal system. The document didn’t define “detention” or distinguish between youth lockups — in which youth are confined before a trial — and youth correctional centers, which confine those deemed responsible for unlawful behavior.
“We spent three years studying this whole situation and issued our report two years ago,” Green told The Imprint in July. “But the county still won’t deal with it. They simply say, ‘we’re working on it.’”
Ta-Sean Murdock, who has led the Center for Law and Justice since Green’s death, confirmed that she felt little had resulted from the once-heralded roadmap. “She would always say, ‘Listen, it’s not my report. It’s the county’s report. We just want them to do something with the recommendations,’” said Murdock.
Murdock pointed to evidence that the county may in fact be moving in the opposite direction from that intended. According to state figures, admissions of county youth to state detention centers grew from 127 in 2019 to 134 in 2023.
The county executive rejected the contention that local government has ignored the work of the task force. Zero youth detention “has long been a goal and is something that Albany County remains deeply committed to,” he stated in an email.
McCoy added that the county has implemented most of the recommendations — including training staff who work with justice-involved youth on the effects of trauma, developing a community campaign against youth violence, and creating a youth advisory committee on juvenile justice.
The remaining issues, like starting the drop-in center, launching a multi-service center that would connect youth to services and activities, and conducting a cost-benefit analysis of youth incarceration versus programs and services, require funding from state government and local donors that has not been sought, he said.
McCoy also noted the rise in youth detention. But he said that resulted from a violent crime increase that coincided with the pandemic, economic shutdown and social isolation — a trend mirrored nationally. State data show the number of youth arrested in the county more than doubled between 2019 and 2023, reflecting a corresponding rise in arrests statewide.
Some juvenile reform efforts around the country flounder
Initiatives to move youth in the juvenile justice system out of lockups and into more therapeutic treatment programs can be found across the country — efforts that focus on the root causes of youth crime rather than simply a form of punishment. In Hawaii, Vermont, Maine and California’s Santa Clara County, “zero detention” efforts have focused exclusively on girls and young women.
In Washington state’s King County — the inspiration for Albany County’s effort — the initiative began in 2016 amid protests against construction of a new youth prison in Seattle. Local leaders passed resolutions calling for the city and county to move toward zeroing out the number of youth in detention and a strategic plan laid out policies to get there.
The resulting 2018 strategy called for an array of measures, including services for high-needs youth and families, alternatives to formal arrest, and better access to behavioral health services.
The King County council took up the road map’s recommendations, issuing four reports on implementation. Taking the place of detention would be a system that, after an arrest, would send youth home to their families with county support and services. Youth who couldn’t be sent home because of safety concerns would go to a receiving center and network of residential facilities while their cases were pending.
But as in Albany County, juvenile justice advocates remain frustrated amid a rising number of youth crimes. Construction of the youth prison went ahead in 2020, and after promising to convert it to other uses by 2025, the county executive reversed course and announced it won’t close until at least 2028.
One youth justice advocate expressed frustration. “It’s a very reactive response. It’s ‘We’ve got to show our community that we’re doing something,’ rather than fully investing in alternatives,” Nneka Payne, executive director of the local nonprofit Choose 180 said in an interview. “You say one thing — and then your actions say something else.”
‘We remain committed to the goal’
Criticism of Albany County’s alleged lack of action broke open at a memorial service for Green in September.
“Dan McCoy commissioned her in a team over two years ago, and they came back with a report and some next steps to go with this so that in Albany, here in the capital region, we just slow youth detention down or impede it all together,” said Thomas ‘Arocks’ Porter of the New York City-based advocacy group How Our Lives Link Together at the service, according to local TV coverage of the event. “But he’s not moving on it.”
McCoy insisted nothing about his 2019 promise has changed. “We remain committed to the goal of zero youth detention, but we need to be smart, we need to be strategic, and we can’t put public safety at risk while we do it,” he said.
Last year the county posted a response to the task force recommendations on its website, to report its progress. It lists the creation of more services and activities for youth found responsible for breaking the law, more family visits for those in confinement, and other steps. McCoy also pointed to nine new initiatives pending in the “very near future.”
The county fulfills or partially fulfills 14 of the task force’s 24 recommendations. For example, the county said that staff already get a 5-week training on the effects of trauma.
For another four recommendations, it’s not clear that the county’s response addresses the item. For example, in response to the report’s call for the county to do a “racial equity impact assessment,” the county said its agencies are required to incorporate equity into their missions and operations.
And the county didn’t address, rejected, or didn’t respond to another six items, all of them higher-cost, such as one calling for creation of a county position to take charge of overseeing zero-detention initiatives.
Murdock, the Albany justice center’s leader, said he did not want to cast blame or criticize county leaders. He just wants to see progress on the goal of moving young people out of detention and into the most rehabilitative settings.
Last year the center held four town hall meetings in local libraries to speak to the community about the task force’s 2022 report, and another four or five will take place in 2025. “I’m well aware, and Dr. Green was well aware, that a lot of these things are going to cost money,” Murdock said. “The stance we take is: Let’s start off by proactively publicizing this report so that the community is aware of what the recommendations were — and then we’ll tackle the challenges of getting there.”