How do you feel about juvenile detention centers?

I support them. I don’t want a 12 year old in jail with a 22 year old. My hope is juvenile detention is very focused on rehabilitation and education, rather than punishment. I also think jailing children should be done as a very last resort, or in cases where the child might be an immediate threat to society, or a repeat offender.

I wish they weren’t necessary but sadly, they are. I wrote a couple of feature articles about detention centres and interviewed a number of the staff who worked there. My impression was that they genuinely cared about the kids and the kids were getting a better education, with a very low teacher to student ratio and access to computer equipment than they would outside the detention centre. They had opportunities to gain skills that could also lead to employment. In a lot of cases, the young people were experiencing stability and boundaries they’d never had from their own families. The downside was that after they had served their time, the support services to keep them studying and out of trouble weren’t available. They returned to the environment they were in before they committed the crime that took them into detention and quite often reoffended. Also, some of the kids were in there for very severe crimes. There was no way they were coming out and once they reached a certain age; they were destined to be transferred to an adult prison.

If juvenile detention centers were staffed by professional and not underpaid guards, and if “inmates” were housed in single occupancy rooms where they could be protected from others incarcerated there, then I would be more in support of them. Unfortunately, neither is true. The “justice system” is criminal. Neither children nor adults are rehabilitated in these institutions. Often their antisocial skills are honed there and they return to the community they came from as better criminals.

For cases such as this, the teen shouldn’t be in with adult convicts, yet he should not be out on the street, as it seems he cannot keep his dangerous impulses in check, for whatever reason. Drinking, drugging, poor upbringing, environment of other teens who think stabbing people is ok, combination of the above, who knows.

http://archive.lohud.com/article/20080603/NEWS02/806030351/3rd-teen-charged-Peekskill-stabbing

I support them for juvenile offenders. But in my State, they place kids in there who are taken from their parents and there are no relatives or foster parents available—and they get treated just like the offenders. I found this out when I was applying for a job in a juvenile detention center. I thought it was awful. These kids did nothing wrong, yet they are in prison. They are just being warehoused. Their life is hard enough as it is and then they get that.

I feel conflicted.

Necessary evil.

By the way, I worked in a juvenile detention facility in the 80’s that was nothing like what you describe. Modern, cinder-block building where the kids were no more than 2 to a room and the rooms basically opening onto a lounge area that also contained the glass box counselor’s room. There was another large room that served as cafeteria/classroom. I don’t recall there even being an intercom system, much less an alarm. Capacity might have been 30? It was in a small town and the cost was spread over 3 rural counties.

Of course, this went the way of ‘militarism of the police force’ and it became more cost effective to send the rural malcontents to be housed with the inner-city hoodlums where they could get a real education. At the time, if St. Louis had a kid they couldn’t control, they would send him to us. Now if we have a kid without immediate family, we send her to them.

Reap what you sow.

I worked at a behavioral (psych) hospital that had a school in it. It was actually part of the public school system. Children who were out of control or had some mental
illness troubles lived at our facility and went to school there. Basically, like a one room school house. The kids were locked into the facility like all the inpatient units. I assume some of them had done something illegal and that might have helped get them there.

I keep hearing things about the for-profit prison systems extending to juvenile detention centers, which is what actually prompted this question at all. I was already more in line with the way @Bill1939 thinks, because children need psychologists and behavioral therapists more than being locked up and treated like adult criminals (who I also believe need more actual rehabilitation), but I feel even more strongly opposed to them now that I know kids have been and can basically be sold to private institutions so someone can make money off of them. I’m also not at all okay with the fact that most American juvenile detentions centers look almost identical to adult prisons.

The very, very specifics of what prompted this was Judge Ciavarella.

The detention center I visited had only two single beds. They were stark but they were clean, uncrowded and from what I could see safe. The door was locked at night. The rest of the place had the feel of a school. With classrooms. I’m sure they could be locked down when required. The only adults were the staff. I’m in Australia, so I don’t know how things here compare to the US or UK.

There is one near my apartment. And that is just one of many here. It actually has more security than the county jail in Eugene. There are a lot of beds in there. And the cops need to fill those beds so the fellow cops working there have a job to go to.

Wow, @johnpowell.

You win.