New York Alternative Facility Emphasizes Rehabilitation For Raise the Age Candidates [jjie.org]

NEW YORK — At Crossroads Juvenile Detention Center in Brooklyn, barbed wire and tall unclimbable fences enclose the housing building, basketball courts and outdoor areas, like in every jail or prison. Detention hardware and security cameras are all over the place, like in every jail or prison.

Yet, says the facility director, Louis L. Watts, Crossroads is anything but a jail or a prison.

“When parents come, they see the outside and they tell me, ‘Oh my god, my son is in jail,’ but when they come inside and see, they say, ‘Wow, I could sleep here!’ They see that here their kids are taken care of,” Watts said.

[For more on this story by Marco Poggio, go to https://jjie.org/2018/08/28/ne...-the-age-candidates/]