Custody and Control: A Former Inmate's Account of Abuse in Juvenile Justice

Juanita Crawford

The report "Custody and Control" documents the excessive use of a face-down "restraint" procedure, incidents of sexual abuse, and inadequate educational and mental health services at New York's highest security juvenile prisons for girls. Learn more >>

"Custody and Control"reports that "delinquent" young girls from backgrounds of intergenerational poverty, many of whom have survived abuse and trauma, are locked up and again abused and neglected, this time at the hands of the state.

Juanita Crawford, 19, spent a year and a half at Lansing Residential Center.

Download the entire program (25:29 minutes) or listen by chapter topics below:

Part 1: Routine strip searches are humiliating and traumatizing for the girls at Lansing Residential Center. 

Part 2: Room searches at Lansing are excessive, disruptive, and disturbing for girls who often witness the facility staff destroy their personal belongings while searching for "contraband". 

Part 3: Facility staff use excessive force and a brutal restraint procedure when restraining girls and the grievance process for reporting such incidences is ineffective. 

Part 4: If there is a disruption in the classroom the girls are sent back to their rooms and left without proper schooling or coursework for the remainder of the day. 

Part 5: For many girls it is difficult to transition back into the public education system after they leave OCFS facilities. 

Part 6: OCFS administrative deficiencies effectively bar girls from receiving a high school diploma after they leave OCFS and leave many girls feeling hopelessness about the future.