A Guest Opinion Piece
Troubled children too often graduating to adult prisons
By J. Richard Cohen
President, Southern Poverty Law Center
The United States may be faltering as an economic powerhouse, but we’re still No. 1 in one important category: locking people up. With one out of every 100 adults behind bars, we’re ahead of China, Rwanda, Cuba and every other country. Our prisoner population has nearly tripled over the past two decades.
This catastrophe calls for a serious national dialogue about our criminal justice policies — an examination that should begin with how we’re treating troubled children.
Just as a minor league baseball team prepares athletes for the majors, our juvenile justice system — aided by mind-boggling, zero-tolerance policies in schools — is doing a bang-up job of feeding new inmates into adult prisons.