After years of oversight, the court-appointed federal monitor for Horizon Juvenile Center said its work at the Bronx youth jail is “complete” in a report issued Friday.
The monitoring, required as part of a major civil rights lawsuit settlement known as Nunez in 2015, had initially applied to the Department of Correction to address abuses by officers on Rikers Island. The Bronx facility, a dorm-like detention center which houses teens detained pre-trial, fell into the monitor’s purview in 2018 when 16- and 17-year-olds moved there from Rikers along with DOC officers after the state passed its “Raise the Age” law a year earlier.
The monitoring was supposed to end when DOC gave up its control of Horizon as its officers departed in 2020, when the last young detainees transferred from Rikers left. The city Administration for Children’s Services was then left in charge, and entered into a voluntary agreement in 2021 to continue the federal oversight.
Recent city and state audits based on investigations through 2023 found that ACS has struggled with staffing and operating the center as more young people faced criminal charges and the center’s population ballooned.
But the report Friday, based on observations between last July and June this year, noted several areas of improvement despite the growing population: Assaults among teens and toward staff have decreased since ACS took over in 2021 despite a slight uptick over the last year, while staffing — “which was initially at a crisis level” — also experienced a “significant increase” compared to the same period a year earlier.
The child welfare agency has also made “substantial recoveries of dangerous contrabands” through a newly developed Special Operations Unit within the ACS police force, even though “a significant volume of contrabands continues to be detected”, the report noted.
“The reality of a correctional facility that houses impulsive young people with deep histories of trauma and violence is that staff and youth will unfortunately always be at some risk of harm. The fundamental question…is whether ACS has taken reasonable steps to eliminate an unreasonable risk of harm,” the monitoring team, led by monitor Steve Martin, wrote. “ACS has demonstrated its internal capacity to identify and address its problems and challenges without the need for external oversight.”
The report, moreover, noted that ACS has “made essential improvements to practices” beyond what was required under the settlement, which were “equally important for protecting youth from harm.”
Martin has recommended all parties to the Nunez settlement file an agreement with a Southern District of New York judge by Dec. 7, stating that monitor oversight “shall not apply… going forward”, in accordance with the terms laid out in a court order this January.
But the Legal Aid Society, which represents the plaintiffs in the settlement, declined to say whether it will agree — and noted continued concerns.
“The court monitor’s most recent report in Nunez v. City of New York does not address the extreme conditions our clients are experiencing in secure juvenile detention due to severe overcrowding — including the deprivation of education and other programming, the lack of designated sleeping spaces, and unhygienic conditions,” spokesperson Redmond Haskins said in a statement Tuesday. “NYC must immediately take steps to address these intolerable conditions and ensure the safety, dignity, and well-being of our clients in these facilities.”
Meanwhile, ACS commissioner Jess Dannhauser said in a statement that he is “extremely pleased that in recognition of the efforts and outcomes we have achieved, [the monitoring team] have informed the Court that their monitoring assistance is no longer needed.”
A Crowded Lock-Up
The population at Horizon has grown steadily — and at times exceeded capacity — in the last few years, in part due to a combination of “trends in youth offending,” slow court processing times and increased gang prosecutions that have brought in an influx of youth, according to the report.
While the facility is meant to hold 123 detainees, ACS has obtained and extended waivers from the state since 2023 to accommodate up to 154 teens as recently as the monitor’s visit this July, when 33 young people slept on portable bunks in classrooms and dayrooms. (The facility houses 131 detainees as of Wednesday, according to the state Office of Children and Family Services.)
“ACS reported that the sheer number of youth in the facility, the fact that many of them have preexisting, serious conflicts with their peers from the community, and the facility’s challenging physical plant all contributed to slight increases in violence during the current monitoring period,” which spanned from last July and June this year, the report read.
The number of assaults among youths has increased to 0.73 incidents per day per detainee from 0.52 a year earlier, though it has overall decreased by 34% since ACS took over in 2021.
To address overcrowding and “the increased risk of violence,” ACS has begun construction of a $340 million expansion in July that will include 48 beds and new recreational spaces, according to the report.
The Horizon Juvenile facility in The Bronx, Nov. 11, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
That buildout won’t be complete until 2029, however. ACS said it is currently building “additional temporary housing” at its other youth detention facility in Brownsville, Brooklyn, “to house youth on a shorter timeline than the housing planned at Horizon,” according to agency spokesperson Marisa Kaufman.
Absenteeism among staff also continues to be a challenge, leading workers who do report for duty to mandatory overtime shifts multiple times a week, according to the monitor. Some have shown signs of burnout and fatigue, and “a number of incidents were exacerbated by staff whose frustration and/or antagonistic demeanor led to their mistreatment of youth, and in some cases, led to their employment being terminated.”
Haskin noted Legal Aid has continued to “receive reports of serious injuries to our clients and egregious staff misconduct” at Horizon.
The monitor, meanwhile, noted that ACS has reformed its incident review system, which “demonstrated a consistent, internal ability and willingness to identify a range of poor practice and misconduct related to the use of physical intervention.”
If federal monitoring ends, oversight of ACS’s youth detention facility including Horizon will default to the state Office of Children and Family Services.
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