“Civil Liberties for Children:” NYCLU Sues NY State Over Detention of Children
The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) on this day filed suit against the state of New York seeking relief for the 3,600 boys under the age of 16 and girls under the age of 18 currently in prolonged detention for being “incorrigible, ungovernable, or habitually disobedient.”
NYCLU Executive Director Ira Glasser declared it was the beginning of a “systematic” campaign to “establish civil liberties for children.”
The juveniles in question were referred by New York state family courts. Note the age discrimination between boys and girls under the law. The suit charged that the state training institutions or temporary facilities where they were held were “nothing but children’s prisons.” The standards in the law for detaining the juveniles were “hopelessly vague,” the suit charged. None of those detained had committed a crime.
The suit was jointly filed by the NYCLU Children’s Rights Project, the Legal Aid Society, and the ACLU Foundation. The suit asserted that “children are people within the meaning of our Constitution.”
The most outrageous detention of children occurred on the southern border of the U.S. under the administration of President Donald Trump, where thousands of children were separated from their families who were attempting to migrate to the U.S. The problem continued and even escalated in the first months of President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021.
Learn more about children’s rights at the ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/human-rights/childrens-rights
Read the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child —In Child Friendly Language.
Visit the Children’s Rights Defense Fund web site here
Read the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Children’s Edition) here
Visit the New York Civil Liberties Union web site