Each year, 1.4 million of the nation’s eleven- to 17-year-olds enter the juvenile justice system. Of these boys and girls, some 71,000 are sent to incarceration facilities, where they may remain for several months in seclusion from the outside world.
In Connecticut, decreased reliance on group homes, and the closure of several residential treatment programs, has placed more and more youths in these locked facilities. As a result, the number of incarcerated boys is the highest it has been in ten years. Overcrowding at Journey House, currently the state’s only incarceration facility for girls, has prompted the Department of Children and Families to pursue opening a second girls’ facility.
The proposed multi-million dollar project would open 12 beds to juvenile justice involved girls. And it has left many wondering: Is this the best way to address problems within the state’s incarceration program?
Our panel of guests weigh in on the DCF proposal, and Yale’s Timothy Snyder gives us an update on the political climate in Ukraine.
GUESTS:
- Martha Stone - Executive Director of the Center for Children's Advocacy
- Francine Sherman - Clinical Professor and Director of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School
- Leslie Acoca - Founder of the National Girls Health and Justice Initiative
- Timothy Snyder - Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University
