New York’s nine juvenile lockups are monitored 24-7 by video surveillance systems. Staff, youth, contractors and volunteers undergo background checks and receive annual training on the prevention, detection and appropriate response to sexual abuse and harassment. Multiple external authorities investigate claims of sexual assault, and routine audits are conducted each year, in accordance with a national mandate to end rape in prisons.
But this year, a youth support specialist and a psychologist have appeared in court on charges of sexually abusing teenagers housed in New York residential facilities who they were being paid to care for. In April, a psychologist working at the Brookwood Secure Center in the town of Claverack was arrested on 65 counts of alleged sexual assault and rape. She has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and faces civil litigation over similar allegations, which she has also denied. She is set to appear in criminal court in late August.
In December, a youth support specialist at Long Island’s Brentwood Residential Facility for girls pleaded guilty to the second-degree rape of a 15-year-old girl.
Human rights advocates have long sought better protection from sexual assault for the nation’s incarcerated population. And in 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, known as PREA, which applied to all prisons, jails and juvenile facilities.
Final standards did not become effective until 2012, with mandated audits beginning the following year. Since then, juvenile facilities have been required to have written policies “mandating zero tolerance toward all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment and outlining the agency’s approach to preventing, detecting, and responding to such conduct.”
Annual reports on sexual abuse in facilities overseen by New York’s Office of Children and Family Services show that overall, the state facilities meet or exceed the dozens of federal monitoring standards. They require, in part: proper backgrounding of staff, prevention strategies, robust reporting processes, data collection, discipline of perpetrators and screening for risks of sexual victimization.
New York’s residential facilities housed 635 youth ages 12 to 21 last year in nine facilities.
In 2021, there were 22 reports of youth-on-youth or staff-on-youth sexual misconduct or harassment, five of which were determined to be “substantiated.” The most recent numbers available, from 2022, show one youth-on-youth “non-consensual sex act,” which was found credible, two staff sexual misconduct allegations that were not substantiated and 25 total reports of sexual harassment.
In the Office of Children and Family Services’ most recent report, the state pledges to continue to uphold the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act: “New York State will continue to provide education and treatment to youth placed within our facilities as well as staff, contractors and volunteers working in our facilities, to emphasize and prevent sexual abuse and sexual harassment as well as all aspects of PREA.”
To understand more fully why devastating assaults can occur even when federal standards appear to be met, The Imprint spoke with Eileen Ahlin, an associate professor of criminal justice in the School of Public Affairs at Penn State Harrisburg. Ahlin earned her PhD in criminology from the University of Maryland, College Park and she has spent more than 20 years in the field, focusing on risks and protective factors associated with violence within communities and in custody settings.
Her research has examined sexual assault in juvenile facilities, which, despite heightened national attention, continues to occur. In a recent interview, Ahlin discussed her research and the limited reach of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act.
“The zero-tolerance policy is admirable,” she said, “but it’s not achievable.”
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Our news outlet covers incarcerated youth, who are often shuttered away in far-flung facilities. The state’s obligation is to keep them safely housed. In general, based on your research, what have you been able to determine about safety from sexual violence within juvenile detention centers?
The research shows that there have been improvements. The prevalence rates have been decreasing since PREA was implemented in 2003. Standards came into effect in 2012, And these data collections sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics have shown a steady decrease in prevalence.
I think it’s doing something. Hopefully, it’s working in the way they intended it to work and not just fewer people reporting — that there is a true change in the incidence of sexual assault.
“This environment is ripe for sexual assault. It’s a closed environment. There’s limited capacity for sufficient supervision — even if you had cameras everywhere, even if you had people working together in teams as counterbalances to supervise each other.”
— Eileen Ahlin, associate professor of criminal justice at Penn State Harrisburg
Your study published in The Prison Journal in 2020 examined the sexual assault of youth behind bars, which you found has not been adequately researched in the past. To begin with, what led you to want to pursue this topic and what were your most surprising findings?
Youth sexual assault in custody has not been studied as much as adults within jails and prisons. I wanted to understand whether there were differences in risk and protective factors that have been identified for adults, because we know a lot more in the research realm about adult sexual assault in those facilities.
The most surprising findings were differences in risk and protective factors between adults and juveniles. The article that you referenced looked at males and females and some of those risk factors were different there as well. With youth, there are differences by gender.
You focused on the type of perpetrator in your study. Why was that important?
It was interesting to look at juvenile facilities because not only are you holding youth accountable for their behavior, but you’re also putting them in a facility with adults — and they’re of a younger age. So, there’s an even greater layer of potential for coercion.
This situation where they’re taken away from whatever home they know and where they may have been taught to believe that the state is in their best interest and these people are here to help them — they might look to them as people to trust.
Were there different victimization patterns among youth of different genders?
In that study among females, youth were more likely to be perpetrators of sexual violence, whereas males were more likely to have staff perpetrators. Their victimizations were perpetrated by staff members.
So who was perpetrating the victimization was the primary difference, which was interesting — that staff were more likely to be the perpetrators of male sexual assault, compared to females.
You state in your study that the findings “underscore the need for continued efforts to protect youth against forced sexual victimization perpetrated by other youth and staff.” Why did you call this a “Catch-22?”
The “Catch-22” I believe is apparent within this attempt to focus on youth-on-youth victimizations but also staff as perpetrators. We want to increase staff supervision because that’s one of the PREA mandates. But without proper training and proper supervision of the supervisors, then are we thereby increasing more potential for staff-on-youth sexual assault? So, we have to not only increase supervision over youth, but they need to be trained appropriately.
We have to think about what that means to increase supervision, increase guardianship over youth, but do that in a way where we’re not going to increase risk.
What do you feel is relevant for further study on this topic, and what efforts could be taken, right now, by state and local authorities to better protect incarcerated youth from sexual violence?
One of the reasons I wanted to look into it is there’s not a lot of funding for the criminal justice system in general to implement programs and practices. There’s even less to conduct research of those practices. More money goes towards law enforcement than the correction side of things. It’s not often a very favorable attitude to invest more in corrections — particularly research.
It’s really hard to get data on this particular population because they are youth and detained. We want to protect our youth. We want to protect people who are incarcerated because they’re at higher risk of being manipulated or coerced within research. So there’s not a lot of data to understand what’s happening. When I analyzed the data, I needed to go to the University of Michigan where it was housed in a basement. Even though it’s de-identified, we want to ensure that none of this sensitive information gets released. But that limits how much we can say.
Now that we know there might be some differences in risk and protective factors for juveniles, particularly between males and females, we need to talk with individuals, with staff, we need to understand how PREA is being implemented and how it’s perceived by the youth and the staff. We’re just scratching the surface.
Your study notes: “It has been more than 15 years since the passage of PREA, and we still know very little about youths’ risk of sexual assault in custody and how these characteristics of victims and perpetrators influence inmate safety.” Why do you think this has been such a neglected topic?
I think that gets back to the need for research and rightfully so. This is a very protected population. I serve on institutional review boards that govern studies and their focus on keeping human subjects’ protections upheld. It’s a very sensitive population and this is a very sensitive topic.
It’s a difficult population to get in touch with from a researcher’s perspective. I think we’re getting there, and it’s starting to become necessary. But, there’s still some ways to go.
Under the law, facilities must conduct audits for compliance with PREA at least once in every three-year cycle since 2013. The auditor will review policies and eventually go on-site to the facility to look around and interview a sample of residents and staff. From what you know of this audit system, has it been effective?
I don’t know if there is data on its effectiveness. There’s more information about the audits being done and if states are in compliance. Effectiveness needs to be operationalized. We need to define that. What does it mean to be effective? Looking at the Bureau of Justice data and the prevalence of sexual assault, they might say it’s been effective, but can we link that? Correlation doesn’t always mean causation.
Since they started collecting information, the prevalence rate has gone down in youth facilities, but we don’t know if it’s caused by PREA without additional research.
In New York, there have been two recent cases of facility staff arrested for sexual abuse of youth under their care. Yet according to the biannual audits required under PREA, the state has been compliant since 2014 with its standards, including staff background checks, video surveillance and limiting cross-gendered searches. Is it truly possible to prevent sexual violence in these settings? In other words, is eliminating rape in prison an achievable goal?
I think the zero-tolerance policy is admirable, but it’s not achievable. My viewpoint of criminal justice is that there’s always going to be crime.
This environment is ripe for sexual assault. It’s a closed environment. There’s limited capacity for sufficient supervision — even if you had cameras everywhere, even if you had people working together in teams as counterbalances to supervise each other. It’s where youth are there often as a last resort to try to help them. Many come from difficult backgrounds.
I don’t think it’s possible to have a zero-tolerance facility with zero incidences, ever. It’s just something that happens within this type of facility. Do we want to mitigate it and lessen the prevalence as much as possible? Yes. Do these efforts go in that direction? I believe they do. I think a zero-sum game is beyond a grasp for this type of facility.
Why, personally, is this an important topic to research? What do you hope comes of your work?
I take a very ecological perspective in my work, meaning that a variety of things are important for addressing whether someone is at risk for a behavior happening — whether it’s committing a crime, being a victim, or protecting them from the risk of perpetration. For me, it’s important to look at a variety of perspectives: the person, the situation they find themselves in, the facility, who they’re with, their peers, what opportunities they’re afforded.
What’s important to me is to protect us and protect people who are going through the system. We need corrections. We need to help folks address issues in their lives — but we shouldn’t make them worse when they come out.
