NEW YORK IS LOCKING KIDS IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT FOR MONTHS, CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT SAYS
KIDS AS YOUNG AS 12 SENT TO SOLITARY 'FOR EXTENDED PERIODS WITH NO RECOURSE TO SECURE THEIR RELEASE'
Inside a cell at one of New York’s prisons for kids. Photo credit: unknown, via court records.
MALONE, NEW YORK Jan. 9, 2025 Last updated: 6:21PM
Advocates for kids jailed in New York's youth prisons filed a class-action lawsuit on Thursday alleging the state routinely locks juveniles as young as 12 in solitary confinement "for weeks and sometimes months on end."
The kid prisons do this not just "for alleged misbehavior," the detailed, 42-page lawsuit alleges, but also due to New York's "failure to have sufficient staff to manage the facilities." Kids are locked in solitary "as a way of operating its facilities with dangerously low staffing levels."
The lawsuit alleges some of the cells the children are caged in do not have running water or toilets, forcing kids "to defecate and urinate in buckets and bottles in their cells."
READ THE LAWSUIT BELOW
New York has five prisons for children as young as 12 and young adults as old as 21. There were 307 of them in “secure placement” as of September 2025, according to the Legal Aid Society, which filed the lawsuit with attorneys from white-shoe law firm Jenner & Block in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The state euphemistically calls its youth prisons "secure placement facilities." Brookwood in Columbia County; Goshen in Orange County; MacCormick in Tompkins County; Harriet Tubman in Cayuga County; and, in Monroe County, Industry.
A cell inside a maximum-security prison for kids called the Harlem Valley Secure Center. It closed in 2004. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
All of them are operated by a state agency called the Division of Juvenile Justice and Opportunities for Youth, a bureau within the state's Office of Children and Family Services—known as "OCFS." Both agencies and their leaders, Norman Hall and DaMia Harris-Madden respectively, are named as defendants. The plaintiffs are four children jailed in the prisons.
One of them, Marcus F. , a Black, 18-year-old from the Bronx, has been in OCFS custody since 2024. Before that, he was in the juvenile equivalent of pre-trial detention for 11 months in New York City. There he showed a “remarkable level of respect and cooperation towards the facility’s staff members” and earned two dozen certificates verfiying his successful completion of rehabilitative programs.
Since his transfer to OCFS facilities, Marcus F. has been locked in solitary several times and deemed by staff “problematic,” the lawsuit alleges.
Another plaintiff, Garratt M., was also born-and-raised in New York City. The 16-year-old is diagnosed with three mental illnesses, according to the suit. He’s been in solitary “for at least half of his time in OCFS custody.”
Garrat M. is currently confined at the Industry Residential Center outside Rochester. There, when “insufficient staff are available to supervise a full unit,” administrators give staff “discretion to lock in all youth and then permit small groups of residents out of their cells simultaneously for brief periods of time to shower or make phone calls,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit was first reported by Chris Gelardi at New York Focus.
While New York banned "the use of solitary confinement on youth and young adults in adult facilities when it enacted the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act in 2021," the state "continues to impose this dangerous practice on youth in its care," according to the suit.
The Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act is more frequently known by its initials: the HALT Act. HALT doesn’t apply to youth jails.
While locking kids in solitary allegedly violates the state's "own regulations and policies," they do it anyway under the guide of "misleading, innocuous names" such as "group confinement, special programs, room confinement, or modified programming."
While confined, the kids are allegedly deprived of "social contact, education, programming, communal recreation, reliable access to water, and reliable access to toilets."
All this is "unlawful, inhumane and can result in serious, lasting harm to the youth.” It violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the lawsuit.
The lawyers cited as evidence to support their claims a whistleblower letter Wayne Spence sent to state lawmakers last June. Spence is president of the union that represents workers at New York's child prisons.
"I am writing to raise the alarm regarding an escalating staffing, safety, and service delivery crisis," Spence, president of the New York State Public Employees Federation AFL-CIO, wrote. "What we are witnessing is disturbingly reminiscent of the staffing collapse at DOCCS that culminated in the 'wildcat strike.'"
In February, guards at New York's state prisons for adults launched an illegal, 22-day long strike over working conditions and the HALT Act. They alleged the Act's 15-day limit on solitary unleashed chaos inside the state's prisons and made their jobs unreasonably dangerous. It became the longest strike by prison workers in American history.
Visitors passes left behind at a maximum-security prison for kids called the Harlem Valley Secure Center after it closed in 2004. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
The strike ended only when Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed the National Guard, fired about 2,000 strikers and ordered the remainder to return to work or be fired too.
Spence, the PEF president, gave lawmakers an example of the problem in his letter. The union, he wrote, "has received repeated and deeply troubling reports from members" at the Industry Residential Center outside Rochester.
"They describe chronic understaffing, unsafe conditions, and retaliatory management practices that have not only endangered staff but have also decimated essential youth programming," Spence's warming letter said.
"In October 2023 alone, multiple assaults on staff led to serious injuries and surgeries," the letter revealed. "PEF conducted health and safety walkthroughs and submitted concrete recommendations—nearly all of which remain unaddressed."
Finally, the suit says Spence's complaint was just one of "numerous and significant complaints" the state received about its youth prisons "from youth, advocates ... and even legislators."
"Despite this notice, OCFS continues its routine use of solitary confinement," the suit says.
The legal filing does not seek money damages. It does ask the court to declare OCFS's solitary confinement practices violate the Constitution and the American with Disabilities Act. And it asks the court to issue an injunction ending "the ongoing violations."
Jennifer Whitson, Director of Public Information for OCFS, told The Free Lance News in an emailed statement “OCFS does not endorse or condone the use of isolation for punishment.”
“We have clear protocols that are designed to ensure the safety of youth, and staff, while incorporating trauma-informed and mental health–responsive practices,” the agency’s spokesperson said. “We will continue to work diligently to ensure the safety and well-being of all those under care of our facilities.”
“We are aware of the lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society, which challenges certain juvenile justice protocols,” the statement added. “The complaint will be thoroughly examined and we will respond through the appropriate legal process.”
New York’s youth prisons have been so-called “gladiator schools” to one degree or another for a long time, as this 2010 report from Jennifer Gonnerman documents, The Lost Boys of Tyron.
Tyron was where Mike Tyson first learned to box. It was closed in 2010, after the US Department of Justice threatened to take over all of New York’s prisons for kids because of widespread, systemic abuse.
For tips or corrections, The Free Lance can be reached at jasonbnicholas@gmail.com or, if you prefer, thefreelancenews@proton.me.