NY FOCUS: Watchdog Calls on State to Address Youth Prison Crisis, Citing New York Focus Reporting

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here .

A federally mandated child welfare oversight body has called on the Office of Children and Family Services to curtail facilities’ use of isolation and increase transparency.

By Chris Gelardi , New York Focus

A citizen oversight panel is pressuring the state to improve conditions in its youth prisons in response to New York Focus reporting on a yearslong crisis in the facilities.

Earlier this year, a federal lawsuit alleged that facilities operated by the state Office of Children and Family Services, or OCFS, have been keeping incarcerated youth locked in bathroomless cells, often for upwards of 23 hours a day for days or weeks at a time. Separately, New York Focus documented the severe staffing shortage that has left the youth prisons on frequent lockdown; one facility outside Rochester has regularly operated with only a tenth of the staff it’s supposed to have available to supervise youth.

Last week, the co-chairs of the Western New York Citizen Review Panel for Child Protective Services, one of the state’s three federally mandated volunteer child welfare oversight bodies, sent a letter to OCFS’s commissioner expressing alarm at the condition of the state’s youth prisons.

“Children in state custody [are] deteriorating psychologically under the care of the very agency entrusted with their rehabilitation and safety,” they wrote.

The panel leaders asked OCFS to commission an “independent clinical review” of the 11 state-run youth facilities’ isolation practices, and to establish policies that bar staff from locking kids in their cells except in the “narrowest possible circumstances.”

The panel heads also recommended that OCFS — which also oversees the state’s foster care, adoption, and child protective services systems — boost transparency and outside oversight. (The two state agencies with direct oversight power rarely investigate OCFS facilities.) They asked the agency to publish quarterly facility staffing data and allow members of the review panel and other advocates to conduct unannounced monitoring visits to the youth prisons.

“It shouldn’t take workers leaking to the media for things to become known and get fixed,” said Todd Sage, co-chair of the citizen review panel and signatory to the letter. The conditions in the facilities, which hold adolescents aged 12–21 who are convicted of serious crimes, represent one of many failings in New York’s child welfare system, he said.

“These are kids that have failed to get their needs met in one system that are just being graduated onto an even more restrictive system that is yet failing to meet their needs,” Sage said.

In a statement, OCFS said its “highest priority is the safety and well-being of all young people in the juvenile justice system. OCFS prohibits the use of isolation as a form of punishment and continues to work with juvenile justice facilities … to promote a healthy environment for young people to grow, engage with their peers, and complete their education.”

In a February letter, the state Office of the Comptroller noted that OCFS was attempting to address its staffing crisis by hosting job fairs and lowering education requirements for direct care staff.

On Tuesday, citizen review panel members followed up on the letter in a pre-scheduled private meeting with OCFS Commissioner DaMia Harris-Madden about the panels’ recommendations for improving the state’s child protective services system. It was the first face-to-face meeting panel members have had with an OCFS leader in recent memory, according to John Treahy, western New York panel co-chair and the other letter signatory.

Treahy described Harris-Madden, who has been OCFS commissioner since 2024, as eager to address the agency’s myriad problems.

“I’ve worked with eight or nine different OCFS commissioners during my career,” he said. “I think she legitimately wants to make positive changes.” But that’s a tall task, he said: “OCFS trying to make changes is like trying to change the Titanic’s direction in a bathtub.”

Treahy said Harris-Madden was reluctant to discuss youth prisons, given the ongoing lawsuit over conditions in the facilities.

That lawsuit and New York Focus’s investigation have “put a bright spotlight on some very, very serious deficiencies in their system,” Treahy said.

Update: April 20, 2026 — This article has been updated with a statement from OCFS sent after publication.