It’s Time to Quit Putting Kids in Adult Prison

Written by Liz Ryan, President and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice. This post first appeared on Change.org’s Criminal Justice Blog (7/16/10).

Five years ago this week, 17-year-old David Burgos took his life at Manson Youth Institute, one of Connecticut’s adult prisons for younger offenders. David had been detained on a simple probation violation.

The Connecticut General Assembly immediately responded with legislation to end the practice of automatically prosecuting all 16- and 17-year-olds in adult criminal court and to ban the placement of most of these youth in adult facilities.

In 2006, David Burgos’ mother, Diana Gonzalez, testified before the Connecticut about the danger of treating youth like adults. As she stated, “I know first-hand the consequences…Whose child is next? It could be my neighbor’s child, it could be your neighbor’s child, it could be your child. Put yourselves in these shoes. What decision would you make for your child? How would you want your child treated?”

Juvenile Justice Reform: A Law Congress Needs to Pass

This post first appeared on Beacon Broadside (6/25/10).  David Chura, a writer and educator, worked with at-risk youth for many years and shares the voices of young people that he met as a teacher in a New York prison in his new book I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup.  We highly recommend David’s excellent blog, Kids in the System, and are so grateful to him for letting CfJJ share his post below about the need for Congress to quickly re-authorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act:

When you go to jail you feel like everybody’s in your business but nobody cares. You get cuffed, shoved into the back of a squad car. The police blotter broadcasts to the world what you did. You get booked, fingerprinted, photographed, everything about you fed into “The Man’s” hungry computer. You’re watched—by correctional officers, wardens, nurses, other inmates; even the kitchen workers warily scope you out. Bars instead of doors.

At least that is how you feel if you’re a kid doing time in an adult county prison like the teenagers I taught for ten years.