It sounds like what happens to adults behind bars, but these are the conditions now facing many of the 44,000 youth incarcerated across the country. In the age of COVID-19, juvenile detention—required by federal and state laws to rehabilitate, not to punish—has become more like grown-up prison than in decades, according to interviews with incarcerated teens, their lawyers and family members, and corrections officers and staff in more than a dozen states.
To slow the virus’s spread, youth lockups nationwide have shut down school programs. Solitary confinement and other forms of isolation, which in recent years had largely been eradicated in juvenile jails, have resurged in an effort to socially distance, according to lawsuits in five states, interviews with staff and statements from youth. In most facilities, with family visits canceled and only “essential” employees—typically just guards—on the job, teens are increasingly alone.
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In reaction, youth in Louisiana organized a mass escape. Others there and nationally are expressing pent-up frustration by getting into brawls and fights, which have been put down by SWAT teams and officers newly outfitted with pepper spray.
Some advocates are questioning whether any juvenile justice agency, as long as social distancing lasts, can live up to its mission of providing learning, growth and hope. “Does anyone believe that rehabilitation can occur in a locked facility during a pandemic?” said Nate Balis, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at The Annie E. Casey Foundation, a philanthropic organization. And if not, he said, “What are we actually doing still holding children in facilities?”
Several local juvenile detention agencies and judges across the U.S. have taken steps to reduce the number of confined children in the past month. But only 10 states have done so at the state level, at least according to public announcements. And only two governors—in Michigan and Colorado—have issued executive orders to begin larger-scale releases of youth from jails where COVID-19 is spreading, according to a report released Tuesday by the Youth First Initiative, an advocacy group.
To be sure, juvenile detention agencies hard-hit by coronavirus outbreaks, in New York City, Virginia, Louisiana and elsewhere, have few short-term options for slowing the spread without slowing rehabilitation in the process. And if they were to release more kids, it might be hard to provide rehabilitative services in the community, too, given shelter orders.
In lieu of school, many jails are handing out worksheets for kids to fill out alone, while some with internet access are providing students with tablets and video lessons.
In Milwaukee, corrections officers have stepped in for teachers, playing pre-made video lessons on a screen. “We’re trying to replicate what the educators do in terms of going deeper, connecting with the students, asking questions—it was a challenge at first,” said Kenneth Biami, a supervisor of juvenile corrections officers there whose usual responsibilities include running the control center, intake and visits.
At the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Richmond, Virginia, there was once a quilting class and volunteers who taught Russian literature. Now teens are sitting alone, stewing on how the virus is threatening their family members and the teachers who had cared about them, parents say. One mother whose son recently wrote her a suicidal letter said that he has reverted to his pre-arrest negative mindset.
After nearly a month without being able to speak to her child, she finally reached him in late April. “The call cut off before I could even say I love you,” she said.
Roughly 70 percent of youth behind bars in the U.S. are held on nonviolent offenses, according to The Sentencing Project. Many are jailed pre-trial and haven’t been convicted of a crime. With courts closed, they must wait even longer, in even more psychologically damaging conditions, to argue for their freedom.
Source: Solitary, Brawls, No Teachers: Coronavirus Makes Juvenile Jails Look Like Adult Prisons
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