Imagine you are feeling sick and your doctor hands you this hand-scrawled prescription: LEECH THERAPY. If you are like me, you may run out of the doctor’s office screaming. At the very least, you probably seek out another doctor to prescribe a less invasive, more modern treatment, like, say — antibiotics.
Why don’t we think of youth prisons the way we think of leeches?
The youth prison model emerged at a time when bloodletting was still a common medical treatment. In the 1800s, a few states established “training schools” — large, remote, prisonlike institutions meant to treat wayward youth.
[For more of this story, written by Mishi Faruqee, go to http://jjie.org/why-youth-pris...like-leeches/196178/]
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