“Dear Juvenile Injustice” – Richard Ross on the State of America’s Youth Detention Facilities and Juvenile Justice Policies

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A day before holding a lecture at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Richard Ross visited his friend, Ronald F., in Miami. “It was his birthday,” Ross said. “He’s 18 this past week, and they switched him over to an adult facility.”

Ross said that prior to his incarceration, he was a special education student in the sixth grade. He said that for 30 years, his mother was a crack addict. “Before he got brought in on these charges, four and a half years ago, she tried to kill him, quite literally stab him to death,” Ross stated.

Award Winning “Juvenile-in-Justice” Photographer to Speak on Art and the Incarceration of Young People

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Tuesday, Juvenile-in-Justice: Photographs by Richard Ross will premiere at Kennesaw State University (KSU), with a public lecture by the 2012 recipient of the National Magazine Award for News and Documentary Photography scheduled at 5 p.m. in the Prillaman Hall auditorium. For five years, Ross visited more than 350 detention centers, treatment facilities, juvenile courtrooms and maximum-security lock-down shelters, documenting the daily lives of America’s incarcerated young people. Ross’s work, organized by the Nevada Museum of Art and sponsored by the Wilhelm Hoppe Family Trust, was recently featured in Harper’s Magazine, in addition to making appearances on Wired.com and Picture Dept., a site operated by the photo editors at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Earlier this year, ProPublica listed “Juvenile-in-Justice” as one of the year’s five best investigative reports on prisons. And the American Society of Magazine Editors (AMSE) and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism praised Ross’ photo essay, calling it the best news and documentary photography of 2012.