By the time I was 24 I had spent 10 years in and out of juvenile justice programs and prisons in Iowa. Four of those years were spent languishing in solitary confinement cells and one year in Iowa’s own Supermax unit.
From my own experience, I know what works and what fails miserably when working with juveniles. As a practical approach, we need to teach an evidence-based, proven methodology and shape the future juvenile justice workforce.
We also need to change our policies on how we treat juvenile offenders, and those policies need to be consistent across the United States. We need to create a culture of trauma-informed care. You see, kids rarely act out without some underlying cause. They are very often the victims of abuse or have experienced other traumas.
[For more of this story, written by Jeff Wallace, go to http://jjie.org/an-insiders-pr...stice-system/196964/]
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