Classrooms serve as cells at NYC’s troubled juvenile detention centers

Classrooms in the city’s juvenile detention centers are being used as cells nearly every day while staff struggle to curb a spike in violent attacks, employees say.

Violence between detainees is so prevalent that employees say they have no choice but to lock the kids in classrooms with a staffer – often into the early morning, where they sometimes sleep on chairs lined in a row. Nine current and former staffers, educators and former detainees who spoke to Gothamist all described the same practice.

The repurposing of classrooms to maintain security, which was confirmed by an Administration of Children’s Services spokesperson, is one of many factors fueling educational failures in juvenile detention, the sources said.

“If there’s a situation, maybe a fight or issue, [classrooms] are used sometimes to separate the residents,” said Antonio Staten, a former Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center employee.

Gothamist obtained a photo of a young detainee at one of the city’s detention centers, who was hunched over in a school chair with a sheet over his head.

A staffer at one of the detention centers described kids being confined to classrooms as a security measure every day “from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m. with at most a sheet and a box of cards if they are lucky enough.”

The staffer, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said he was once assigned to sit in a classroom with a kid who was separated from other detainees to avoid an attack from 3 p.m. to midnight without a meal or bathroom break.

“I began to feel as if I was locked up, as well,” the staffer said.

Roughly 200 New Yorkers between the ages of 12 and 21 are jailed at two juvenile facilities, run by ACS, while they await sentencing: Crossroads in Brownsville, Brooklyn and Horizon Juvenile Detention Center in the South Bronx. In total, there are roughly 20…