At the JDAI (Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative) conference in Phoenix last month, about 1,000 people from around the country heard Annie E. Casey FoundationPresident (and former juvenile corrections administrator) Patrick McCarthy repeat his recent call for America to close its youth prisons.
Let’s be clear: Having the president of the largest youth-serving foundation in the country make this statement, and offer to help any states willing to heed his call to action, is monumental. It’s a call to end a model of youth confinement that has existed in this country for a century.
It could serve as a dramatic change for adult and youth corrections systems that together result in the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate and the largest prison systems in the world.
Thinking about McCarthy’s call to action, I reflect on my own experiences with youth prisons. I spent much of my career as an attorney either trying to keep youth out of such facilities (as a public defender representing youth in Baltimore’s juvenile court) or bringing litigation challenging abusive and unconstitutional conditions of confinement and advocating for policies that would result in fewer youth being locked up (as a staff attorney with the Youth Law Center).
[For more of this story, written by Marc Schindler, go to http://jjie.org/should-we-clos...e-right-time/144549/]
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