Author Nell Bernstein ("All Alone in the World," "Burning Down The House") proposes the end of the juvenile prison while on a panel at the American Justice Summit on Nov. 10 in New York:
"Technically there's no such thing as a juvenile prison. We have training schools, we have boys' academies, we have guidance centers. You won't see a sign that says, 'Juvenile Prison,' but when I started to go inside the locked facilities where we keep our children, I saw razor wire, I saw sally ports [fortified entrances], I saw cells, I saw guards, I saw pepper spray. These are prisons. And they're prisons for kids. I don't think there's any reason for them to exist. And that's not just my visceral reaction although it did start with visiting friends and having that visceral reaction. It's something that only deepened as I got into the research."