It's a crime to privatize state youth facilities

It's a crime to privatize state youth facilities.
Stop the privatization of state youth facilities. Stop the layoff of state employees.

Effective treatment for troubled youths requires a commitment to consistency and quality services — services best provided by the state. Yet New York is laying off 120 state employees dedicated to serving our troubled youth.

These layoffs are the first step in a plan to fully privatize all youth facilities, a plan that has repeatedly failed in other states, including Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and Louisiana. Problems include:
• physical and sexual abuse of children,
• escapes,
• use of tear gas and pepper spray,
• the beating of a guard, and
• failure to provide mental health treatment and education.

The state is seeking to privatize services and lay off employees based on the hope that the number of youths placed in custody of state-run youth centers will be reduced as the youths are referred to community-based supervision programs.

But because so many of them have committed violent crimes, they are not eligible for those programs.

So far this year, the state has been able to place only 1 percent of the more than 1,000 juveniles projected to participate in community-based supervision.

Privatizing youth centers is also going to cost the state more money, not save it.

According to a report from the Yale University Economic Growth Center*, “the short-run savings offered by for-profit facilities are certainly reversed in the long-run, due to increased recidivism rates.”

Tell the Division of Budget to stop the layoffs and privatization at state youth facilities so that troubled youths will get the treatment they need, and not suffer from abuses of privately operated youth facilities.

Call 1-877-255-9417 and tell your legislator it’s criminal to privatize state youth facilities. Tell them to cut state waste, not state workers.

Download PDF print ad

(requires Adobe Reader)

View more PEF Public Relations ad campaigns