NEW YORK — The two-story brick building on a quiet street in Queens doesn’t stand out from the million-dollar homes scattered throughout the neighborhood.

There are no signs on the former Catholic convent, nothing to indicate that inside are five New York City teens who committed felony assault, grand larceny, gun possession or another serious crime. Placed here by a judge’s order, each is spending an average of seven months to learn new life skills and become a productive member of society.

In a classroom on the second floor, the teens hurry to copy details about the battle of Lexington and the British loss in the American Revolution from a whiteboard. They will need to know the facts if they hope to win a high school history version of “Jeopardy” the next day.

“Are you ready for it?” the teacher asks one student. He nods as he stands, then pauses at the door while a staff member checks to make sure nothing leaves the room with him.

Not long ago, these same young people would have spent months locked up in a state youth prison upstate, sleeping in cells alongside hundreds of New York City teens like them.

But in 2012, city officials, citing skyrocketing costs, plummeting youth crime and research on the negative effects of incarceration, decided to upend their juvenile justice system. Legislation dubbed “Close to Home” sent young offenders back to New York City, which took the responsibility for their care and, if necessary, confinement.

The city decided to stop locking up the vast majority of teens who commit crimes. Most remain at home, many with mandated counseling, mentoring or other services to help them address mental health problems, family dysfunction and other issues. Some must have regular contact with case workers and receive other support and oversight.

More serious or habitual offenders, including the five young people in the former convent in South Ozone Park, Queens, will spend about seven months, on average, in one of 29 residential homes run by community organizations in the boroughs of New York City, each serving six to 18 kids.

As of December, the Close to Home residential sites held 107 youths. An additional 24 young people prosecuted for the most serious crimes were in state youth prisons. The rest of the city’s thousands of juvenile offenders had been sent home.

The city’s shift away from incarceration has become a beacon of change for communities across the country, including San Francisco, where public officials and community activists are now questioning the cost and consequences of jailing young people.

In its yearlong investigation, “Vanishing Violence,” The Chronicle has found that youth crime in California has hit historic lows, leaving juvenile halls and camps across the state less than half full, while the cost to incarcerate a single teen has reached more than $500,000 a year in some counties.

Yet, The Chronicle found, many of the young people locked in juvenile hall cells following an arrest or finding of guilt are not the worst offenders. Instead, they have committed minor crimes or have mental illness, have skipped school or smoked pot while on probation. Others are simply waiting for a bed in foster care or a group home.

In the wake of that reporting, San Francisco supervisors voted to shut down the city’s juvenile hall by the end of 2021 and to create community-based alternatives, including a small, secure setting. But many counties remain tied to a punitive model that includes large-scale detention centers.

California’s judges, probation chiefs, elected officials and child advocates acknowledge that the state’s juvenile justice system is in need of further reform, and New York’s results are difficult to ignore.

In a recent count, New York City, which has 8.4 million residents, held just 118 young people in secure and locked settings, including 13 in the most restrictive Close to Home sites and 105 in detention centers not unlike a juvenile hall, which hold teens while they await a judge’s disposition.

By comparison, Fresno County, with roughly 1 million residents, held 183 teens in its maximum-security juvenile hall and commitment facility in a recent count. Contra Costa County, with 1.1 million people, had 81 youths held in cells, according to county officials.

Despite fears that not locking up most juvenile offenders would make the public less safe, youth arrests in New York continued their historic decline after Close to Home began in 2012.

“Everybody understood this was better for kids,” said Gladys Carrion, who oversaw the state’s juvenile justice system during the reform efforts. “We couldn't continue to treat them like animals.”

The Close to Home site in Queens resembles a college dorm, but one with tighter security.

Residents aren’t allowed to leave what program officials call a limited-secure facility. There are alarms and security protocols and locked doors at stairwells with outside access.

The hallways are lined with thick doors that open into the residents’ rooms. Each has a small, frosted glass window, not unlike those used in California’s juvenile halls, but these doors lock from the inside. Staff members have keys, but they typically knock first, waiting for an invitation to enter.

One 17-year-old has decorated his walls with personal photographs and inspirational sayings. His toiletries — soap, shampoo, toothpaste — are lined up neatly on a dresser. A personalized comforter tops the bed.

Another offers a glimpse of life beyond the facility — several pictures on the wall of a baby and a prominently displayed sign, “0% luck. 100% hustle.”

After about seven months here, officials said, most return home, where they receive a range of supervision and support services. During their time inside, they are taught skills to cope with the stress and circumstances they’ll face once they are out.

Group therapy is a regular part of their days, as are sessions on improving behavior, with positive reinforcement a key part of the process. Using the skills they learn, like relaxation techniques or helping others who are struggling, leads to rewards such as Bluetooth speakers for their rooms.

A key lesson is learning to take a minute before reacting, to be less vulnerable to anger and the consequences that come with it, said Melissa Carty, one of two licensed mental health counselors at the site.

“There’s so much anger,” she said. “It’s the easiest emotion to show.”

A judge has determined these teenagers need time away from society, but that doesn’t have to be served in a cell, said Josefina Perez, assistant vice president of Sheltering Arms, which operates five Close to Home long-term placement facilities, including the secure site in South Ozone Park.

“These are kids that have unfortunate circumstances,” she said. “Someone has failed them, someone hasn’t believed in them. We believe in them and they can turn their lives around.”

Amre, now 22, spent seven months in a nonsecure facility in 2012, after a fight with his father and sister-in-law escalated and he threatened one of them.

Had the incident occurred a year earlier, the then-15-year-old likely would have been shipped to a youth prison. Instead, he was among the first to be sent to a Close to Home placement in Queens.

There were restrictions. Amre, whose last name The Chronicle is withholding under its policy of keeping juvenile records private, was under constant supervision and couldn’t freely roam the home. But he visited family on weekends, continued attending his regular high school, left the facility for group outings and sometimes cooked his own breakfast and lunch. During intensive counseling sessions, he worked on mending the frayed relationship with his parents.

“I expected 23-hour lockdown and one hour of rec time; I expected correction officers to be strict, and demanding,” said Amre, who now works as a youth specialist at a Close to Home facility. “But it was like I wasn’t even really locked up.”

The question New York City officials faced nearly eight years ago was simple but profound: Which kids should be locked up?

At the time, despite plunging youth crime rates, New York was holding 600 teens in state-run cells, hundreds of miles from their homes, in conditions widely criticized as costly, ineffective and inhumane. After a 15-year-old Bronx boy died in state custody, the city took back its incarcerated children and set out to overhaul its juvenile justice system.

Officials started with the belief that only those “who committed serious crimes, who were high risk” should be locked up, said Vincent Schiraldi, a Columbia University professor and head of the city’s Probation Department at the time.

“It was hardly a bold proposition,” he added.

But a look at who was being incarcerated revealed a very different reality. Many who were being held were probation violators, sexually exploited girls and habitual but not dangerous delinquents, he said. Developmental disabilities and mental illness were common.

In youth prison, Schiraldi said, they experienced a “day-to-day awfulness,” a “banality of evil.”

Transforming the system wasn’t easy, said Carrion, the former juvenile justice director who later led New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services.

To ensure that young offenders were treated as kids with needs, not criminals, city officials transferred authority for juvenile justice to the Administration for Children’s Services, which also oversees foster care and child welfare. They had just five months to initiate the first phase of Close to Home, contracting with community organizations to open small, nonsecure homes to handle teens who judges said needed intense support outside of a locked facility.

Inside the newsroom The Chronicle strives to attribute all information we report to credible, reliable, identifiable sources. We do not generally identify people who are under the age of 18 and have been accused of crimes, however, to protect their privacy. For this story, The Chronicle followed New York City policies that allowed a reporter to tour detention facilities and speak to juveniles being held there. The policy prohibits the use of the conversations or personal information to protect the juveniles’ privacy. The Chronicle’s detailed policy governing the use of sources is available on sfchronicle.com.

They later opened the limited-secure homes for the more serious offenders who needed to be off the streets while receiving counseling and treatment.

The remaining low- or moderate-risk youths, the majority of the more than 3,000 juveniles arrested in New York City, were diverted from the juvenile justice system entirely or allowed to stay at home with support services.

The city bolstered these services, providing youth crisis shelters for those with unsafe living situations, and offering mentoring, family counseling and frequent contact with case workers. It also adjusted the caseloads of youth probation officers, ensuring more attention could be paid to high-risk youths.

Last year, about 2% of the 3,181 juveniles arrested in New York City were placed in a facility away from their homes, compared with 8% nationally, while 13% of arrests resulted in probation, compared with 19% across the country, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Early on, the transition to the Close to Home reforms was anything but smooth.

There were protests over where group homes were to be located and then a troubling pattern of runaways, with more than 1,000 incidents in which kids went AWOL from the residential facilities in the first year. In one case, three juveniles disabled an alarm, left a facility and raped and robbed a young woman, Carrion said. Another Close to Home resident stabbed someone to death.

After those setbacks, public officials reassessed, she said, closing the most problematic sites, upgrading alarm systems and replicating successful sites. By 2016, the number of runaways had dropped to 136.

The average cost of housing a Close to Home resident is about $560 per day or $204,402 annually for a nonsecure placement, and $737 per day or $268,838 for the more secure setting, city officials said.

By comparison, San Francisco spent about $374,000 annually to hold a child in juvenile hall last year. Alameda County spent $490,000 and Santa Clara County $531,000.

Schiraldi doesn’t think New York was lucky or exceptional in making its reforms work. In April, he and Carrion were among a group of youth correctional officials who began an initiative to help states and local communities follow in New York’s footsteps and shut down punitive youth prison models.

“How are we going to end mass incarceration? We’re going to have to win hard fights. That’s what we did,” Schiraldi said. “We made our miracle, and San Francisco can and other people will too.”

San Francisco is already working on re-creating its system. This month, more than 50 people gathered in a community meeting space in the city’s Excelsior district to talk about the future of juvenile justice.

“How many of you know that legislation passed to shut down juvenile hall?” Krea Gomez asked the crowd. Nearly every hand shot up.

“OK,” the education director with the Young Women’s Freedom Center said, nodding her head. “Well, we’re here to tell you why it’s happening.”

Gomez began to list statistics about the teens who were held in the city’s youth lockup last year. More than half were African American, even though just 8% of city youth are black. Many lived in Bayview or Hunters Point. And probation violations or technical infractions — missing a court date, for example — were a common reason for detention.

“We’re talking about kids getting locked up for not making it to court,” Gomez said. “Young people who need money in a city where the divide between the really rich and really poor is getting wider.”

Gomez is one of 15 people on a supervisor-appointed panel working to overhaul the city’s justice system. They face a major decision: Just what facilities and services will replace the 150-bed juvenile hall, scheduled to close in December 2021.

The detention center, reform advocates say, has historically been a dumping ground for young people in need of mental health care or economic support. Now they have a chance to build something different.

Related Amid historic shifts in juvenile justice, some counties lock up kids for treatment

“I can’t believe we’re sitting here talking about closing the juvenile hall in San Francisco and moving towards a community-based model,” Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice advocacy group and a member of the panel, said at the group’s first meeting last week in City Hall.

“If we do that,” he said, “we’ll establish a national model, and we’ll rewrite the script on juvenile justice for the rest of the country.”

The group is studying New York’s system as well as other cities and states, including Missouri, that use small, home-like facilities for high-risk offenders. Missouri’s system, considered a national model for reform, has yielded lower recidivism rates and better educational outcomes than those in similar states at a relatively low cost to taxpayers, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a nonprofit that works to limit youth incarceration.

At one of the state’s group homes in Springfield, 10 boys live in a dormitory setting, including Treyton, who said the setting is more like “rehab than punishment.” The 16-year-old, whose last name The Chronicle is not using to keep his juvenile records private, said he’s focused on staying sober and building a sense of hope about his future.

“It’s nice to feel like people haven’t given up on you,” said Treyton, who added that he has earned his high school diploma in the program. “I definitely feel they don’t care why I’m in here, they just want me to get better.”

Despite the successes seen in Missouri, New York and other places, some in San Francisco oppose closing juvenile hall. They’re worried that with no alternatives in place, more young people will be sent to out-of-state group homes, and that the envisioned reforms will make communities less safe.

Amos Brown, president of San Francisco’s NAACP chapter, said that the city’s African American community has been excluded from discussions about closing juvenile hall, a claim city officials deny, and that some youths in the city need a secure and controlled facility.

“If we are compassionate, you don’t leave these children to their self-destructive devices, you put them in a setting where they are given intensive care,” Brown said. “If you put them in group homes, if you put them in community-based services, they will run away.”

At another Close to Home residence in New York City, a nonsecure facility in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, a half-dozen boys sit in the common room. As a Christmas tree twinkles nearby, they share New Year’s resolutions they’ve written in journals.

“My New Year’s resolution is to work on my anger,” one says. “It ruins a lot.”

The site, also operated by Sheltering Arms, is in a residential neighborhood around the corner from a shopping district. Chester, the house rabbit, hangs out in a cage on the floor, next to an aquarium tank with the residents’ pet frogs. The smell of ribs, pulled pork and cabbage wafts out of the kitchen.

The teenage boys are dressed in jeans and T-shirts. Their rooms are decorated with personal items and regular bedding, and the shared bathrooms are just like those in a typical home. They do their own laundry and share chores. In a rec room downstairs, they can play video games or watch movies.

An hour before, they’d returned from a school the city created for teens in the Close to Home program. Soon, they would leave for a holiday party where their families would meet them to celebrate.

While the court requires them to be housed here, it’s not like a prison, said one of the teens.

“This is preparing you to go back home,” he said. “The staff is your temporary family. It’s a brotherhood and a temporary home to get your mind right.”

It doesn’t feel like a jail and the staff sees the young people not as criminals but kids, said Fatima Campbell, director of the facility.

“I can see youth that are looking for structure, they’re looking for family stability and they’re looking for guidance,’ said Campbell. “They don’t feel like they’re being institutionalized.”

While it is still too soon to understand the long-term impacts of Close to Home, early indications show promise. Since the reforms began, youth arrests have continued to drop in New York City, falling 52% between 2012 and 2016 — a decline that outpaced the rest of the state, according to a 2019 report by the Columbia University Justice Lab.

Of the 836 young people released from a Close to Home site between 2014 and 2016, fewer than 8% were brought back for violating the terms of their release, including being arrested for new offenses, the researchers found.

Racial disparities, however, have persisted: Every young person placed in a limited-secure facility last year was African American or Latino.

The city signs three-year contracts with local agencies like Sheltering Arms to provide a certain number of rooms and specific services, so the city pays even when beds are empty to ensure the providers can pay their bills. In turn, the agencies can’t refuse to accept any particular youth, something group homes and foster homes in California can do.

Carrion remembers visits to the old state facilities, watching teens walk everywhere with their hands held behind their backs, some with carpet marks on their faces from being restrained. She thinks about all the idle time that was spent locked in cells.

“It just broke your heart,” she said. “It was a bad system that harmed children.”

In recent weeks, the youths at the Long Island City home went ice skating nearby and visited Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, just another group of kids taking field trips in New York City.

“Places like this, they get to learn what they did wrong instead of being locked up ... to learn skills to help cope and prevent them from making the same mistakes,” Campbell said of the Long Island City home. “They start being a normal kid.”

Jill Tucker and Joaquin Palomino are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com, jpalomino@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker, @joaquinpalomino