Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It by Terry A. Kupers

Author:Terry A. Kupers [Kupers, Terry A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Forensic Psychology, Social Science, Penology
ISBN: 9780520292239
Google: QvQpDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0520292235
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2017-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

BUDGET CUTS FOR THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

The juvenile justice system has not always placed juveniles in cages and housed them in solitary confinement. In the mid-twentieth century and as late as the 1970s it included a collection of robust educational and rehabilitative programs aimed at bumping errant juveniles out of the criminal justice system altogether.

Richard McGee, the visionary director of programs for the California Department of Corrections from the 1940s through the 1970s, set up the California Youth Authority (CYA) to foster education and job training. Under McGee’s command, staff had to be advocates for educating the youths.14 There was rigorous schooling in the CYA, and every youth was required to have a job. There were vocational training programs, camps where the wards of the CYA worked in forestry or farming or fought fires, and there were very creative work-release and parole programs designed to incrementally increase the youths’ freedoms and job responsibilities as they progressed from institutional confinement to work outside the institution, then parole in the community, and then independence. McGee retired in the midseventies because he saw trends evolving that he could not support, including massive crowding and relative budget cuts for the programs he had established.15

By 1999, a class action lawsuit, Farrell v. Harper, had to be brought against the California Department of Corrections and the CYA by the Prison Law Office and Disability Rights Groups. The complaint in Farrell included allegations that youth in detention were denied the educational and rehabilitative opportunities that were required by extant laws. In addition, because of crowded facilities and budget shortfalls, youth detention facilities had become out-of-control and very violent places. Staff were using excessive force, especially on the large proportion of the youth suffering from serious mental illness. Many of the youths were subjected to cell extractions and beatings. Too many were placed in small single-occupant cages when they were released to the yard, an experience that was humiliating to them. And a large proportion of the youths either were on long-term lockdown status because the facilities were out of control or were consigned to segregation as punishment for their actions. Sexual predation and abuse were rampant. Medical and mental health care was grossly deficient, and there was widespread dysfunction. In 2003, a consent decree was signed in Farrell v. Harper requiring the California Department of Corrections and the CYA (subsequently renamed the Division of Juvenile Justice) to provide wards with adequate and effective care, treatment, and rehabilitation services, including better education, improved medical and mental health care, and centrally, greatly reduced use of force and isolation.

In the state of New York, juveniles are automatically tried as adults at age sixteen. Many are incarcerated at Rikers Island and then, if convicted, are sent to adult prisons. The US Department of Justice declared in 2015 that juveniles at Rikers Island were being abused, were not adequately protected from harm, and were placed far too often and for far too long in punitive segregation.16 With ever louder calls to improve

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.