Solitary Confinement Should Not Be For Juveniles

Dana Liebelson has a searing piece up about the effects of solitary confinement on juveniles.  Most of it is hard to read but there is hope (largely thanks to Eric Holder and the Department of Justice):

Under President Obama, the Civil Rights Division has put considerable energy into making the criminal-justice system less punitive and more rehabilitative. “Solitary confinement can be dangerous, and a serious impediment to the ability of juveniles to succeed once released,” then-Attorney General Eric Holder proclaimed in May, a week before the department announced a sweeping settlement in the Ohio case. Now, isolation can’t be used in the state’s juvenile facilities to punish youth with mental-health problems. (The ban will eventually extend to all of the kids.) If someone commits a violent act, he or she must be kept apart from others for two to four hours, but never more than a day.

The Justice Department has also gone after juvenile prison abuses in California, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, and Tennessee.

“Like” us on Facebook 

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.