A Books Not Bars demonstration pushes for closing the N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility, among the last three youth prisons to close in California. Photo provided by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
By Nell Bernstein, The Imprint, April 25, 2023
Long before the “school-to-prison pipeline” was a well-worn phrase and even law-and-order Republicans had traded “tough on crime” for “smart on crime,” a tireless group of parents trekked, over and over, to the California state Capitol.
Their goal was as personal as it was quixotic: to shut down the California Youth Authority. At its height decades ago, the network of youth prisons held more than 10,000 young people, in conditions so inhumane that over one 18-month stretch in 2004, 56 teens attempted suicide.
Even when the parents’ pleas were met with indifference inside the halls of the Legislature, they rallied on — hoisting poster boardswith childhood photos of their sons and daughters.
“Books not bars!” they chanted, even when no one seemed to be listening.
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