Will Youth Prisons Be Found Only in History Books?

At least two-thirds of youth prisons and jails have been shut down. This is an enormous, dramatic, positive development in an era when most people imagine that the closest thing to good news out there is a stretch of 8 hours without any social media posts from Trump.

By David Swanson

Nell Bernstein’s new book is called In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison. It tells us that in the United States in 2000 the number of young people held inside locked buildings was 108,800 and in 2022 it was 27,600. At least two-thirds of youth prisons and jails have been shut down. This is an enormous, dramatic, positive development in an era when most people imagine that the closest thing to good news out there is a stretch of 8 hours without any social media posts from Trump.

Bernstein also tells us that even now the United States still has the highest rate of youth incarceration on the planet. This fact helps to convey some sense of how extremely out of sync with the rest of the world the United States was in 2000. As with militarism, gun distribution, environmental destruction, adult incarceration, and various other ills for which it’s hard to fit the United States on the same graph with the other 96% of humanity, the madness of sticking young people in cages was not “inevitable” or “natural” or a public “service.” Unlike those other maladies, this one has been dramatically reduced. What remains of it is still horrific, still full of sadistic cruelty, still imposed with a huge racial bias, and still part of a larger problem that sees armed police in schools, children routinely arrested, and huge numbers placed on house arrest with ankle bracelets or otherwise supervised by those who view them as enemies rather than as precious friends and loved ones.

Even in that context, what we have in the 75% reduction in the caging of children is a story of successful work toward the abolition of an accepted norm heavily marketed to us less than a generation back as absolutely critical to our physical safety. The story of how this has been done, regardless of whether or not it continues, could be of great service to those working for the abolition of police, prisons, borders, wars, and other evils.

Bernstein’s account includes a number of lessons.

One is that youth incarceration depended on secrecy and lies. Sadistic torture was carried out with impunity. Once the tide could be turned in the direction of an alternative approach to children, there were powerful videos and shameless testimony available, waiting to shock people open to being shocked.

Another is that, not just all-out “tough-on-crime” cruelty, but also all variety of “reforms,” had to be given a chance, and far more than a chance, before many were ready to declare that caging kids needed ending, not mending.

Another is that advances made in one corner of the United States were of great value in pursuing the same advances in other parts of the United States — much greater value than similar and even more dramatic, not to mention earlier, advances in the rest of the world.

The first-person stories of young people — and their families — victimized by youth incarceration were one of the most powerful tools. The courage of those speaking out at risk of retaliation was critical. Bringing the general culture to respect young people as worthy of contributing to the policy debate necessarily meant getting better policies directed at young people.

Also critical was bringing on-board academics and foundations that could provide research, data, and respectability to the obvious.

Virtuous cycles had to be set in motion. Alternative services and sentencings could create empty beds in prisons. Empty beds in prisons could raise the financial cost of keeping the other beds filled. So could requiring that children be treated in compliance with laws rather than simply warehoused and abused. “Fiscally responsible” politicians shifting money to proven solutions could empty out even more beds. And so on.

It had to be an inside-job. As Trumpies demolish the Department of Education or the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Health and Human Services from the top down, opponents of youth incarceration had to get themselves hired to run youth incarceration programs in various cities and states, in some cases dismantling one and moving on to another as serial abolishers.

Luck and trends outside of the control of those doing the good work mattered. National trends in crime rate and other factors not easily and quickly manipulated mattered. Still, some influence was possible. Ceasing to treat minor behaviors as crimes lowered the crime rate which lowered media crime hysteria which allowed more intelligent policies.

Undoing the old system was a struggle not just against belief in it but also against the simple inertia of it, including especially the jobs question — the jobs of the so-called guards or “corrections” officers. Finding people better jobs will be a necessary element of all change until we get a jobs guarantee and/or other stronger social programs. A side benefit of undoing a system that conditions people to engage in fascistic cruelty is a society with fewer such people in it.

As progress is made, more people become more able to imagine further progress. To get to the unimaginable in 20 years, you have to get to the extreme limits of the imaginable at least a few separate times.

There are many hurdles and steps backward and phony steps forward. There are people bypassed by reforms that don’t grandfather them in. There are relatively successful reforms that stall further progress. And then there is the society at large. To succeed in one area, other areas need to do well too. Families need to do well economically. We need good schools. We need fewer guns. We need to reduce incarceration not only for nonviolent crimes but also for violent ones — including by taking known steps to reduce violent crime. But we need to not stop at preventing crime by treating everyone as a potential criminal. We need to get to a point of treating everyone as a wonderful benefit to the world.

If you’d like to discuss Nell Bernstein’s book with Nell Bernstein, join us online here.

If you’d like more states to end the practice of sentencing young people to life in prison without parole, go here.