Former Youth Corrections Officials: We Want to Help Close Youth Prisons [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
A juvenile detention facility in Alabama. Photo: Rob Carr/ The Nation It’s time to close this nation’s youth prisons. They don’t serve their purpose: keeping our neighborhoods safe and helping young people turn their lives around. They fail to fulfill this core mission despite costing $150,000 per youth per year. In New York State, starting in 2008, we closed 26 juvenile jails. This came after Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, the state Inspector General , and the United States Department of...