Understaffed units. Apathetic leadership. Anguished kids locked alone in rooms for hours at a time. For some workers at Industry Residential Center, a youth prison complex near Rochester, a job they thought would offer a way to help troubled kids has turned into a nightmare.
Under state regulations, boys incarcerated at the 130-bed complex are supposed to spend their days in class, participate in vocational programs, and socialize with peers in their housing unit. Instead, they’ve been locked in cells, sometimes for upwards of 23 hours a day, for days or weeks on end, according to a lawsuit filed last month against the state agency that runs the facility. Most of the cells lack bathrooms, leaving the youth to urinate into bottles when they can’t hold it, and some lack air conditioning, staff said. Kids in one building spend summer days sleeping on the floor without clothes.
Crisis is the status quo at Industry, as it has been across much of New York’s youth prison system. For years, pervasive dysfunction has flown under the radar. Staff and advocates for youth hope to change that…