Why We Need to Stop Putting Teenagers Behind Bars

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-we-need-stop-putting-teenagers-behind-bars

When Anjelique Wadlington was first arrested for the possession and sale of drugs, she was only 17. During the two years she spent at Riverhead Correctional Facility, she was locked down for 21 hours a day, crowded into the same dormitory as “adults, the mentally ill and the misbehaved.”

“Being a child and alone was terrifying,” she said. “You had to grow really fast or you would be left behind. The guards are rude and don’t see the mental state the child is in. To them, you are just an inmate.”

The conditions of Wadlington’s imprisonment speak to the profound problems endemic in our juvenile justice system. Teenagers imprisoned for even minor offenses face everything from overcrowded facilities to solitary confinement to an abundance of prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence. But in New York, at least, city and state officials are finally taking action toward reform.

* * * * *

In August, a damning report from the state attorney’s office found that juvenile detainees were subject to “excessive and unnecessary force” by Department of Corrections officers, their supervisors, and other inmates in juvenile detention facilities. Rikers Island, New York City’s main jail complex and one of the most notorious prisons in the country, was singled out as an epicenter of juvenile violence.