Kids jailed for Cash on 20/20

20/20 aired a special on Friday night about the Judges who jailed young people in exchange for money from a private detention facility.  The show can be viewed here.  This show, and an article that appeared in the New York Times this week, highlight young people’s voices and experiences about this controversy.  They offer a starkly different perspective than we are used to in the public forum about young people charged with crimes, one which suggests that there should limits set on the way that we punish young people who violate norms.

Resource

The following is testimony from the Children’s Rights Alliance for England and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children opposing proposed changes to the rules on restraint in Secure Training Centres for young people in England.  The proposed changes would grant staff members a wider berth in using restraints against young people.  This testimony is a provocative indictment against the use of restraint against young people, and includes young people’s testimony about the dangers of restraint.

The Use of Restraint in Secure Training Centres

Important Op-ed

December 8, 2007
The New York Times

Editorial: Harsh Treatment for Youthful Offenders

The Justice Department has the authority to sue juvenile detention systems
that allow detainees to be abused or that fail to provide safe conditions. The
department, which has invoked this authority many times in the past, should
take a hard look at Texas’s notoriously troubled juvenile justice system.

The Texas Youth Commission attracted the national spotlight earlier this year,
when allegations of brutality, neglect and sexual abuse by detention center
staff members made headlines. The state cleaned house and passed an ambitious
reform package.

In a worrying sign that the right lessons have not been learned, the
commission’s new leadership is proposing a rule change so it can make more
frequent use of pepper spray against unruly detainees. Juvenile justice
experts, the federal courts and the Justice Department have all condemned
excessive use of pepper spray.

Pepper spray is a caustic substance that produces burning and respiratory
distress and can also cause nerve damage. In addition to being inhumane, the
policy is counterproductive. It undermines institutional discipline, further
angering and alienating young detainees.

The agency claims that the new policy is necessary to help understaffed
institutions maintain control. It also insists that the spray will be
judiciously used. In a lawsuit filed earlier this year, however, Texas child
welfare advocates charged that the system was using pepper spray excessively,
including on mentally ill detainees who were supposed to be exempted. Among
the cases cited in court documents was that of a mentally ill 15-year-old who
was said to have been sprayed three times while attempting to harm himself.

These accounts are reminiscent of the heart-wrenching cases in Los Angeles
County, Calif., where authorities were called to account for pepper-spraying
pregnant girls, suicidal youth and detainees whom doctors had ordered exempted
because of respiratory problems. Faced with the threat of a federal lawsuit,
Los Angeles County reformed its disciplinary practices. According to a recent
analysis by the Washington-based Center for Children’s Law and Policy, the
county achieved its improvements by retraining its staff, improving mental
health services and embracing less violent systems of crisis management.

Texas needs to follow the same course. If it will not, the Justice Department
should ensure that it does.