By Charlotte West, Photo: Alexandra Fields, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, March 8, 2022
Four years ago, a social worker from the Middlesex County Juvenile Detention Center asked English professor Alexandra Fields, of nearby Middlesex College, if she would be able to provide college programming for youth incarcerated at that New Jersey facility. Beyond helping them earn their high school diplomas, it offered nothing more educationally to those graduates.
Because of what had been a short duration of detention – typically, only weeks or months – little thought was given to post-high school programming, Field replied, initially.
But that social worker’s query was prompted by a growing number of teenagers, charged as adults, spending exceedingly more time awaiting sentencing in that New Brunswick detention center. “I have a kid that has been in there for six years,” added Fields, also the Middlesex College Center for Justice-Impacted Students’ academic director.
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