Transcript
Peace Through Youth Justice Reform
HOST: Today on Peace Talks Radio, a closer look at the growing movement to rethink youth incarceration and what a more restorative approach to justice might look like.
Clip1
Nothing changes minds and hearts like proximity. So I think when these young people go out and tell their stories and people are able to realize this is not a monster.
This is a child who's not that different from my own. That can be useful in breaking through that hostility or indifference, and it's a task that young people have taken on.
Clip 2
You can't take broken hurting kids and throw them into a system that isn't actually designed to heal them or make them better.
HOST: We talk about youth prison reform today on Peace Talks Radio.
This is Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. Whether it's the search for Inner Peace, harmony in our closest relationships or understanding in our workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and beyond, we explore it here on Peace Talks Radio. From personal moments to global movements we consider what it takes to build a more peaceful world.
I am Jessica Ticktin. What you're about to hear is one person's story, but it reflects a much larger conversation happening across the United States. Thousands of people are serving long prison sentences for crimes committed when they were still teenagers.
In recent years, courts, lawmakers and advocates have begun reconsidering whether the justice system should respond differently when the person who caused harm was still a child. Recognizing what science tells us about adolescent development and the capacity for change. For many people working in youth justice reform, the conversation isn't only about punishment, it's also about accountability, healing, and the possibility of transformation.
When serious harm occurs, communities still face the difficult work of responding in ways that protect public safety, while also asking deeper questions about responsibility, repair, and what justice can look like over time. These questions are also at the heart of peace building, how we respond to harm, how people take responsibility for their actions, and whether systems can create space for restoration and growth.
In the second half of our program, we'll explore these questions with journalist and author Nell Bernstein, who has spent years reporting on youth incarceration and the movement to rethink how the justice system treats young people. First, let's hear Jamie Silvonek’s story. Jamie's a writer and activist who purports on incarceration for the prison journalism project and advocates against the practice of placing youth in adult prisons.
At 14 years old, Jamie was charged as an adult in connection with the murder of her mother, committed by her then 20-year-old boyfriend. Jamie was sentenced to 35 years in an adult prison in Pennsylvania, a state that continues to try children as adults. Danielle spoke with Jamie through a prison phone line, a process that required extensive coordination and permissions because of prison rules limiting call length.
Their conversation was interrupted and reconnected several times. The audio you'll hear was recorded on Jamie's end rather than in our studio. So the sound quality is not what you might expect, but we felt it was important to bring you Jamie's voice and story directly. We won't recount the details of Jamie Silva's crime here.
Our focus isn't the sensational aspects of what happened, but what followed her growth, education, and healing after being charged as an adult at just 13 years old, just after Christmas, Danielle Price connected with Jamie at the State Correctional Institution in Muncy, where she's currently incarcerated.
(Automated Prison recording) Hello, this is a prepaid collect call from Jamie s. An incarcerated individual at SCI ey, this call is not private. It'll be recorded and may be monitored. If you believe this should be a private call, please hang up and follow facility instructions to register this number as a private number. To accept charges and consent to this recorded call, press one.
To refuse charges, press, thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now.
Jamie:
Hi Danielle.
Danielle: Hi Jamie. Thanks for calling. Yeah. I'm gonna ask you about your Christmas. So I wanna know about your potluck, what you made, what karaoke song you sang.
Jamie: Yeah. This year for our potluck, um, I made, I made bean dip, which it's really quick, it's easy.
Um, it's one of my favorite things. It's like, um, you make it with like free fried beans, cheese. Different seasonings and then you can eat it with Doritos.
Danielle: Awesome.
Jamie: I brought that, one of my friends made a giant gingerbread house.
Danielle: Oh, nice.
Jamie: It was like the most elaborate gingerbread house I've ever seen. Like especially in prison.
Danielle: That's incredible.
Jamie: Yeah, it was. I was really impressed by that. We all did karaoke together too. One of my friends and I, we did, we did a bunch of Taylor Swift songs. It was fun.
Danielle: Are you a Swifty?
Jamie: I don't know if I'd say I'm a swifty. I do like her. I her a number of moments that I really like.
Danielle: Yeah. All right.
Thanks for being on the show today, Jamie.
Jamie: Absolutely.
Danielle: Jamie, in 2015, just weeks after you turned 14, you were sentenced to 35 years to life in an adult prison. What did you even make of that sentence at that young age? How did you process it or prepare yourself?
Jamie: That's a good question. At the time. I wasn't equipped to understand the sentence and what it meant, and I don't think I am, even today, I don't think anyone really is.
Danille: Right. Right.
Jamie: But, um, at the time, you know, I've been in county jail for a year and I kind of reached a point where it was important to me to begin to take responsibility for what happened in my role in it. And, you know, when I was presented with this opportunity, it's something I wanted to take. And at the time I kind of thought I was making the right decision.
Um. It, it's something that I thought I understood, but I didn't at all. And um, you know, it was as the, you know, as the next couple of years went on, that's when I, I began to really understand what it meant to be serving three, five years to life in prison, you know? And especially as I got to know other women who were serving similar sentences or even sentences of life without parole, you know, that's when I started, started to really realize the gravity of it.
Right. So it took a few years before that kind of sink in. Definitely. And I mean, obviously I knew the sentence, the sentence I was serving from the very beginning, but. Something like that takes some time to really begin to understand and process.
Jamie: Right. Um, I'm pulling some, some parts from the story you wrote about your experience for the prison journalism project and Pittsburgh's public source.
You wrote that you were in isolation in your cell, which essentially meant solitary confinement. Can you explain what the setup was?
Jamie: So it's in, like, some people would say it's like solitary confinement, but like to me it, it wasn't. It wasn't actual solitary confinement, but in some ways it amounted to that.
So I was, um, you know, once I came to Muncy and Muncy like other adult prisons that house children, they normally have like youthful offender programs or units to isolate children from the adult population because, um, by federal law, children in adult prisons are not permitted. To be around adults. It's by sight and sound segregation.
So, you know, I was in this unit from the time I was, well, I came to Bunton when I was 15. Until I was 18 and there were a few, there were always normally a few other people in the unit. Um, there were, my section of it was for people under the age of 18 and that, but then there was a program for people between the ages of 18 and 21.
So I was permitted to be around them for about an hour a day. But that hour was always supervised by a correctional officer and I was taken to school. So even though. I was around people in, in different settings. I wasn't allowed to interact with 'em, and the entire experience was extremely depersonalizing.
It kind of makes you into like a watcher or an observer, you know, you can't really interact with anyone and it's, it was incredibly harmful.
Danielle: So you, you would be in a room with other people and you, you couldn't speak with them?
Jamie: No. Other than if, like, for, if I were, were in school, for instance, I could only speak to them if it was explicitly about something related to school or a project we were working on. But I mean, if you can imagine education in prison isn't exact, doesn't really consist of a lot of like group or special projects. Right? It's mostly independent work. So that never happened frequently.
Danielle: And were you able to like have any normal conversations with kids your age?
Were you able to make friends at all or find any support in each other?
Jamie: To a degree, yes. But. It, it, it was still limited, you know? Um, because it, I couldn't just be myself around them. I couldn't have like, unrestricted conversations with 'em because, you know, I, and I, I didn't feel comfortable. It's because, you know, I was constantly supervised by a professional officer and so they didn't feel entirely comfortable either.
Right. And can you explain like, why is it that you, that you weren't allowed to, to speak with the adults in school? Yeah. Well it, it's kind of tricky because like, it all really comes down to like federal law, like, well, prea, a Prison Rape Elimination Act legislation that like stipulates that, you know, minors have to be separated by adults by sight and sound.
However, that's difficult to actually enforce in certain prisons. Like there are prisons that are specifically geared adult prisons that specifically house young people, right? That's different and that's easier to do. But in prisons like where, you know, you do have a population of kids, but you know it's very small and the prison's not completely equipped, you know, to completely isolate or segregate them, that's when things get a little muddled, you know? Right. A lot of it like depends on who's enforcing what. Exactly.
Danielle: Okay, and so under the, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, this is supposed to be for the protection of minors, right?
Jamie: Yeah. That's the entire, well, the Prison Rape Elimination Act is, is, is designed to like, protect everyone in prison from rape or sexual harassment period.
But it also includes parts, you know, geared towards minors as well. So the whole purpose of the act is to protect, you know, vulnerable people in prison, especially minors. But I feel like, like anything else, you know, it can be weaponized in really harmful ways.
Danielle: You're listening to Peace Talks Radio.
Joining us today is Jamie Silvonek, a writer and activist who is currently incarcerated in Pennsylvania. Jamie, I wanna ask you now about the impacts of this experience. You've written about the potential deadly consequences of incarcerating kids in adult prisons, and a lot of research counters the idea that jail time makes either youth or society at large any safer.
Some studies even show kids who have been in adult facilities are more likely to die young than non incarcerated peers. And I'm quoting your article now, while my peers were going to prom, I was learning how to survive in a maximum security facility. Most of the time I was confined to a cell by myself struggling with thoughts of suicide.
Can you talk about what some of those impacts were on you from this experience?
Jamie: Uh, well, where to begin really? I mean, I. For one, I mean, I, I was, before entering prison, I struggled with severe mental health issues, low self-esteem, the trauma of an abusive relationship. There were a lot of compounding issues that when I came, when I, and it's an extremely traumatic and horrific event happened, and I came to prison and there wasn't, as the years went on, I ended up finding people who were interested in helping me and you know, that changed things for me.
You know, at least my first few years were, were terrible. I felt I was struggling with severe crippling guilt and self-loathing. I didn't see a purpose in, in continuing to live, knowing how I harmed my family and community. Um, I didn't see a way forward, you know, especially when like my daily life was so restricted and so isolated.
It was difficult for me to imagine what the next years of my life were going to look like. I felt completely hopeless. Completely. I, I felt I hated myself. I hated my life. I didn't see a point in continuing it. Yeah.
Danielle: You were talking about, um, your conviction, which stemmed from your involvement in the killing of your mother by your abusive ex-boyfriend who was 20 at the time, and you were 13.
Did you receive any mental health or therapeutic services to help you handle the trauma you'd experienced at the beginning?
Jamie: So what made a difference for me was there was a psychologist here at Muncy, he's since retired. Um, his name was Howard, and he was a really remarkable human being in many ways.
And, you know, for one, he genuinely cared about people, helping people, helping women in prison, and, um. You know, when I was about six, I think, I believe I was about like 16. Um, I started seeing him and he was unique in that he offered us individual therapy session, something he wasn't required to do. Um, and since he's retired, no one else has stepped up to fill that void either.
But Howard met with me twice a week for, you know, 50 minute sessions, you know, until after I turned 18. And, you know, he. He was there for me. He cared about me. Um, he was, even though I was a complete mess in every way, somehow he was able to see goodness and and potential in me, and he cared because he was the first person I was really able to begin to process these things with.
Yeah.
Danielle: And, and you said that that was something that he, he did of his own choice. It wasn't required services.
Jamie: So psychologists are only required to do, like, there's like a mental, there's like a mental health facility code, right? Um, ranging from a, which is absolutely no history of mental health issues to D which is severe mental health issues.
And, um, psychologists are required to do a lot of paperwork, meet with people on their caseload who are on the mental health roster, so who are either like a level C or D, um, you know, they're required to do a lot of bureaucratic functions and do like check-ins with. People on their caseload every 30 days, but there is no actual individual therapy.
And sadly, I mean, and I believe that it's not that most of them don't care or wouldn't want to, but you know, there's hundreds of people on their caseload. Right, right. There isn't really enough time for them to, to do that. But Howard, you know, was determined to do it regardless.
Danielle: Wow. Yeah. Um, and you, you had written that before you started seeing Howard, that your mental health had really deteriorated and you were put under psychiatric observation where you had no reading materials, no mail, no phone calls, no tv, and not even clothing that you were forced to wear a smock.
Um, and you said that you, you started self-harming, developed an eating disorder and attempted suicide multiple times. And, and you were just 15 at that time, right.
Jamie: Yeah. I mean, uh, this started, I mean, a lot of that started while I was still in the county jail at like 14. Okay. And it continued even up, up until I was 15, 16.
Danielle: Okay. And so during those years, you, you didn't really have therapeutic support, is that right?
Jamie: No, not, not like Howard, no. Yeah.
Danielle: Okay. Um, Jamie, how common do you think your story is among other incarcerated youth? Do, do you know if other kids were going through the same sorts of things that you were?
Jamie: I believe that it's not only common, like it's the norm, right?
Especially because most, if not all kids who are. Who are systems impacted, right. And entered jail. You know, whether it's a youth jail or an adult prison, you know, they're already broken in a lot of ways. Mm-hmm. They're struggling with mental health issues, with severe trauma. There's things that have happened to them, and that's something that people need to keep in mind.
Right. Because no harms occur in a vacuum. You know, it's like the cliche, hurt people hurt people. Well, you can't take. Broken hurting kids and throw them into a system that isn't actually designed to re, to heal them or make them better. Right. And expect that things go well. Yeah.
Danielle: Yeah. I get you, Jamie, are you're 24 now or 25?
Jamie: Yes. Almost 25. Almost 25.
Danielle: So from the outside at least, you seem to be doing really well. Now. You're a published writer and activist. You train dogs to be service animals through a program at your facility. You're taking college classes, you tutor and you're into fitness and guitar. What got you to the point that you're at now?
Jamie: What saved me and, and what it continues to sustain me has been. The pe, my, the unconditional love of my family and the love and support of my friends and community, right? And it's kind of having people who were able to see goodness in me, even when I wasn't able to identify in myself, even when I was at my worst moment.
That is what made all of the difference in the world. You know, to be clear, I still struggle with the same things I struggled 10 years ago. Right? Yeah. I still struggle with guilt. I still struggle with regret and shame and self-loathing, all of these things, right? But the difference is I have people, I'm surrounded by people who care about me, who believe in me and who know me, and all of it has kind of, you know, helped me develop my belief that.
Healing is a, is a relational concept, right? People get better by being in community with other people, by having these positive bonds and these tethers and angers, you know, that's what fosters healing. That's what fosters accountability.
Danielle: Hmm. So, so for you it's, it's relationships and community support.
Jamie: Yes. 100%. Yeah. And it is interesting too, I, I have to point out that like, you know, prisons by design, disrupt connection. Exactly. So, you know, even though it's been my connection to people that have helped me, you know, it, all of that has occurred in spite of incarceration.
Danielle: I, I believe it. I mean, just the logistics just to do this call.
I, I completely believe it. Yeah. Yeah. Just thinking about how you have to go through this all the time, do you think there is anything about prison itself and the services offered that did help you to heal and get to the point you're at today?
Jamie: Oh, absolutely. There have been a number of programs that I've participated in and services that have been offered.
You know, that I've benefited from in prison in very tangible ways. Yeah. Um, there have been so many therapeutic groups that I've participated in over the years that have helped me. Um, main, I mean, I think the biggest one that has helped me has been, um, there's a program in Muncy it's called The House of Hope Program, and it's a six month, you know, intensive inpatient program for survivors of, um, domestic abuse or sexual assault and, you know, being in this, in this program, right. I was, I think I was in it for like eight months. Actually. It helps me tremendously. So it's not that, I mean, I'm grateful that there are a lot of programs offered in Muncy and, and other prisons as well, but it, that's not, it's not enough.
Does that make sense?
Danielle: Yeah, it definitely makes sense. Yeah. A lot of states have ended the practice of charging minors as adults, though Pennsylvania hasn't as of 2025. Why do you think it should?
Jamie: I'm, I'm hoping, and I, I really hope with all of me that Pennsylvania will eventually follow. And obviously I care deeply about it because of my own personal experiences, knowing how it's affected myself and my family, and getting to know other, so many other people who have entered prison as children and what it's done to them.
But also above all else, I feel like it's morally wrong. Right. You know, and I feel this way about a number of, I, I mean, I may feel this way about incarceration in general, right? Mm-hmm. But there's, it's a, it's a common practice. It's, it's the status quo. Yeah. And you know, it's something that needs to be challenged.
I don't believe any human being should be reduced to the worst decisions they've made in their lives. Everyone can be more than that. There needs to be accountability. There needs to be responsibility, and there needs to be positive change. But I'm skeptical that prisons are able to foster accountability or change, you know?
And especially with children, their brains are still developing, you know? Mm-hmm. All of this is well supported by science and you know, and even just not even looking at it from. A scientific standpoint, what person wants to be viewed for who they were when they were a child for the rest of their lives has made some really terrible decisions when they were young.
You know, thankfully most people don't make, you know, decisions that were as devastating as mine, but you can't judge the trajectory of someone's life based on what they did when they were a young person.
Danielle: Uh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I can think back and I, I certainly wouldn't wanna be judged on the decisions I made at that age either.
So I think that's a really valid point. What do you think should happen instead? Do you have thoughts about what better alternatives are to support youth, um, that are in similar situations that you were in?
Jamie: So it's kind of, it's difficult, you know, because when I think about this, I obviously feel very strongly about the fact that I don't think that young people should be caged period.
Right? Yeah. And I am cautious too about these conversations because, you know, if we do away with like the practice of, you know, housing children in adult prisons, they're charging 'em as adults. It's kind of difficult too, because, you know, we don't wanna recreate the same conditions that we're trying to end.
Right. So I'm, I'm cautious about talking about that really. Um, other than stating like how I feel about it. Yeah. To me, what, even though the practice needs to be ended, what we need to be focused on is how we can support young kids who are struggling, how we can put different safeness in place, offer kids different tools and education, and hopefully prevent kids from making decisions like I did when I was young.
Right, right. You know, prisons and any prisons of any kind, they're reactionary, right? Mm-hmm. They happen in response to something, but they're, they don't actually fix the underlying social problems that result in kids coming to prison in the first place, and that's what we need to be focused on, is how we can prevent tragedies like this from happening again.
Danielle: Some people listening to this might think, this is a really tough story, but it doesn't have much to do with me because I don't know anybody in prison. Do you think this is an issue all Americans should care about and why?
Jamie: Well, ab, well, first of all, I am, I understand people thinking that because had this not happened to me, I probably wouldn't have cared much about incarceration either, you know, and I know plenty.
There have plenty of people in my life who probably wouldn't have been interested in it or cared. Other than, you know, through me Yeah. And getting to know me and my story, but incarceration affects every single person in, in America, you know, we live in Carceral society. Um, you know, everyone, even if there's not someone that they know directly in their family or that they love who's been affected by incarceration, you know, only by asking around will they find someone who's been affected in some ways, you know, it's in, it's, the person is ubiquitous, you know, it's, it's everywhere.
You know, in our society, and it does penetrate almost every aspect of our lives. So even if you're not personally directly affected, it still does affect you.
Danielle: Yeah. Do you think about what you want your next chapter to look like? Because you're, you're likely to be released while you're still relatively young.
Right? Do, do you think about that yet?
Jamie: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I don't know how likely that will be. I mean, commutation, I mean it, the only relief that I'm eligible for is through commutation, which is an extraordinarily rare process. Okay. You know, I try to be optimistic about it, but it's important for me to be realistic.
But at the same time, if I were to be released while I'm still fairly young, you know, I want my life to be spent. With the people that I love, with my family, with my friends, with my community, you know, I think about continuing to write, being active as a writer and an act as an activist. You know, talking about these things, trying to get people interested and trying to make people care.
Danielle: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you're doing it already to such an incredible degree, so I'm, I'm quite confident you're gonna continue and just do more. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you wanna add?
Jamie: Um, I think something I would just like to say is that, um, we live in a society that encourages people to think in terms of like solely good and solely bad people.
Right? Like, to think it binary and I think that people, well, we're encouraged to kind of view people who are different from us as other or somehow lesser or. Or innately bad. And I would encourage everyone if they're interested in this, to take the time to actually get to know people, try to understand them, try to understand their stories.
It is not the same thing as making excuses, but people change. People grow and you know, I think people need to make an effort to do that.
Danielle: Jamie, I, I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Danielle.
HOST: That was Jamie Silvonek, a writer and activist, currently incarcerated in Pennsylvania. You can find links to Jamie's writing at our website, peace Talks radio.com. Today Jamie continues to write about her experiences from inside prison, contributing essays and commentary through the prison journalism project, and speaking out about the practice of incarcerating children in adult prisons.
Her story is one of many that have helped fuel a growing national conversation about how the justice system treats young people. Research on adolescent development has shown that the parts of the brain responsible for judgment, impulse control, and long-term decision making are still developing well into a person's twenties.
Over the last two decades, that understanding along with the work of advocates, families, and formerly incarcerated youth has helped drive significant reforms. Youth prisons have closed across the country and the number of incarcerated young people has dropped dramatically. But in many states, including Pennsylvania, children can still be charged and sentenced as adults.
After the break, journalist Nell Bernstein explains how a grassroots movement helped dismantle youth prisons across the country and why the push for youth justice reform is still unfolding today. That's coming up. Stay tuned. For Danielle Preiss and Co-founders Paul Ingles and Suzanne Kryder. I'm Jessica Ticktin.
Thanks so much for listening and for supporting Peace Talks Radio.
Peace Talks Radio is a nonprofit media project devoted to exploring peacemaking dialogue and nonviolent responses to conflict. If you value programs like this one, stories that look for understanding rather than division, you can support our work@peacetalksradio.com.
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HOST: You are listening to Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and nonviolent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin today with Danielle Priess. Over the last two decades, youth prisons have been shuttered in state after state leading to a 75% drop in the number of incarcerated kids across the country.
Even today, many states still allow children to be prosecuted in adult court. In Pennsylvania, certain charges can automatically send teenagers as young as 15 into the adult system. The long movement to rethink these policies and to dismantle youth prisons altogether is the focus of journalists Nell Bernstein's work.
Nell Bernstein is the author of, in Our Future We Are Free. The Dismantling of the Youth Prison. Bernstein says, the movement to close youth prisons asks a deeper question, what if real safety comes not from punishment, but from helping young people repair harm and build a future beyond it?
Danielle Preiss: Nell Bernstein, first off, I wonder if you can help set the scene for exactly what we're talking about when we talk about the youth prison system. How does it differ from the adult system?
Nell Bernstein: Yeah, I'm glad you asked. I use the word youth prison because that's what these places are. That's not what they're called. They're called Juvenile Halls Academies, boys schools, camps.
But having visited a number of them, uh, and I'm talking about large state run youth prisons, largely they, they really just don't differ from adult prisons. They have the same, you know, sort of walls with razor wire, the same cell blocks with tiny rooms with just a single metal toilet or overpacked, dormitories, the same guards, although technically.
Another euphemism, they're called counselors, not guards, but although the language is kind of flowery and rehabilitative, once you go inside these places. You understand And if you're a young person kept in them, you absolutely understand that you are in a prison.
Danielle: In your 2014 book Burning Down the House, you wrote about the possibility of what has now become reality with the shuttering of more than two thirds of the youth prisons across the United States.
Um, around the year 2000 when youth incarceration was at an all time high. That was kind of unimaginable. What has changed.
Nell: There's sort of two things happening at once. The first is that youth crime has dropped precipitously by about 75% since 2000 and, and that also was something that no one expected.
The late 1990s and early two thousands were the super predator era when. Supposedly reputable demographers and social scientists were promising an imminent wave of violent youth crime like we had never seen before. Interestingly, by the time that language went mainstream, youth crime had already begun what has turned out to be a 30 year drop.
So there's that. But the other thing that has happened over the past 25 years is. A widespread movement that has included currently and informally incarcerated young people. Their parents, movement lawyers, advocates, a few Renegade Renegade system administrators working to close these places down from the inside.
So essentially, I think what we've had is a virtuous cycle.
Danielle: And just taking us back to the beginning a bit, how and when did the, the youth prison system come about in the first place? Could you give a bit of that history?
Nell: Sure. Uh, it emerged in the 19th century. The first of what we now consider to be the Youth Prisons was called and talk about euphemisms, the House of Refuge.
It was on the Lower East Side in New York City. Uh, and. Prison, including the youth prison, has always been a highly racialized endeavor. In those days, the population that was being essentially scooped up off the street and put into these places and put to work were. Immigrants Irish German immigrants and the rhetoric around them and their families, it, it's just the same rhetoric of irredeemable youth from families that don't teach them any values who need to be taken into the custody of the state to protect the rest of us.
Uh, you know, and the reason. That the target population was immigrant youth rather than black youth, was that black youth weren't considered children at all. So they were more likely to just go directly to adult jail.
Danielle: And you, you wrote about the 1990s, um, in California when the, the California Youth Authority represented the largest network of youth prisons in the United States.
Abuse, neglect, and isolation were so frequently reported. It almost seemed like the cruelty was the point. Can you tell us a bit about the California Youth Authority and what it reflected about the country's mindset?
Nell: Yeah. Let me tell you about the California Youth Authority, um, through the voices of some young people who were kept there because these places are, are very much hidden from view.
But in the late 1990s, a group of young men who were being held on. Disciplinary units inside Youth Authority prisons. So basically they were in Dungeons, inside Dungeons with around the clock, solitary confinement, no contact with the outside world, no family visits, little to nothing in the way of school.
Somehow these kids, even in the belly of the beast, organized a letter writing campaign and they sent. A series of letters describing their reality to a civil rights attorney named Sue Burrell. And because Sue was a librarian before she was an attorney, she kept them. And when I was reporting this book, she shared her archive with me.
And the letters were stunning in two ways. One was the conditions they described. I knew about this stuff from reporting burning down the house, but seeing them describe. In shaky letters because they were writing with smuggled pencil stubs or sometimes a shard of lead being hauled from their cells by guards in paramilitary garb.
Stripped naked, handcuffed, or hog tied and then pepper sprayed or beaten while they were restrained Again, I'd heard about these things, but there was something about seeing their letters that just just brought the horrors to life in a really visceral way. They also described something I didn't know about, which even as I describe it to you, I just can't believe guards would duct tape their cells so that there was no ventilation, and then throw.
A chemical grenade in, you know, and that was so shocking to me that I, that I felt I had to fact check it. And I found the warden at the time, not only justifying it, but celebrating it. She described it to a reporter as a creative solution. And I'm, I'm talking about these kids because it's not just that they were describing what was going on.
They were organizing many of their letters used the pronoun, we, we need some outside help. We need our rights respected. There was one young man who even while he was trapped in this blinding chemical fog, had managed to write down not only the name, but the serial number of the, of the grenade that was thrown into his cell, so that as he wrote to Sue, they can't say I made it up.
Another kid had managed to enclose some pages from the Ward's Rights Handbook and numbered his concerns to correspond with each provision that was being violated. Another kid did the same thing with the United States Constitution. So to me that was really the beginning of the movement. These kids held in horrific conditions, but nevertheless resisting and organizing under those conditions.
It's amazing to be able to organize at that level and to be able to get messages out despite the incredible restraints against them. It is, and you know, it is important to remember. That they were also children. Right.
Danielle: When you mentioned the the grenade example, I was thinking how unbelievable that would be, even if it wasn't children, and then to remember that we're talking about children here really does drive it home.
You also, and many of the activists you talk with were initially interested in reforming the system, but ultimately came around to the view that reform isn't possible and the institutions need to be shut down. What changed for you?
Nell: I'm trying to remember if I ever had a lot of hope in reform. It is possible to build a better prison.
You know, you can make the cells look more like rooms, you can make the food edible. You can make phone calls available. You can try to train the guards to do better, but the bottom line is that even in a quote unquote nice institution, you've taken a child, pulled them out of their home, their neighborhood, their community, their school, and isolated them.
That's so fundamentally counter to what young people need developmentally, that even if it were possible to reform these places. It would still be a profoundly damaging and sort of counterintuitive intervention. Like where did we get this idea that when somebody breaks the law of all the possible responses, the best one is to forcibly remove their physical selves and put them in a locked building That's not intuitive.
Hmm. We don't usually question it, but it's kind of baked in. The other reason that I've given up on the idea of reform is that I've been covering this for more than two decades now, and I just can't tell you the number of reform efforts that I've seen. You know, here in California, we actually succeeded in closing down our entire state run youth prison system.
This happened during the pandemic. We passed a flowery piece of legislation saying that we were gonna replace them with therapeutic home-like culturally sensitive, blah blah, blah institutions. But we never laid the groundwork actually to do that. So what has happened instead is that young people have just been moved from large state run youth prisons to smaller county run juvenile detention facilities, which are arguably worse.
And you look at a place like Los Angeles, which has the largest number of incarcerated kids in the state. Every single juvenile hall in Los Angeles, since the closure of our state system has been declared by the state to be unfit for human habitation, but they're still full of kids. Kids are dying of overdoses.
Guards were recently indicted for their roles in so-called gladiator fights that they were staging between the kids. There's not enough staff, so the kids are not let out of their rooms. In one institution, even to go to the bathroom, they're giving them bottles to pee in. And I've just seen so many conditions, lawsuits, so many pieces of reform legislation, so many promises unfulfilled that I've just come to conclude that when you create a situation where adults have essentially unlimited power over captive children.
It. It's just not gonna work out.
Danielle: Do you feel that these trends hold for adult prisons as well? Do you, do you believe in prison abolition for adults, or is this specific to youth?
Nell: So I don't call myself an abolitionist, actually. I think I would call myself an almost abolitionist, a term that a lot of people in the book used is incremental abolition.
Because unfortunately, when you get deep into this work, you do meet the kid who poses a real danger. And in trying to think through my position on this, I was talking to a friend the other day and what she said really resonated is. Sometimes a kid needs to be sat down for a minute. Sometimes a kid does need to be taken off the street, but they never need to be isolated.
So I do wanna say that at at the adult level, what's interesting is we haven't seen the kind of progress that we have at the youth level, but we have seen a 25, 30% decline in adult incarceration. And there is an argument. That decline is driven by the decline in youth incarceration. So as we've radically dialed back youth incarceration, we've sort of slowed the pipeline into adult incarceration.
It's hard to me, for me to make a distinction. Really between the two. What we do to children is worse because we're doing it to children, but incarceration as we currently practice it is a destructive intervention that again, and there's an evidence base for this, does little to nothing to advance public safety, and certainly at the youth level actually runs counter to public safe.
And actually, one of my great hopes for the book was that an account of all the people and. Actors and factors that had to converge to close two thirds of the nation's prison, that that account would be useful to those working to dial back or abolish adult incarceration as well.
Danielle: You're listening to Peace Talks Radio. Joining us today is Nell Bernstein, journalist and author of the book. In our Future we are Free the dismantling of the Youth Prison. Nell Bernstein, can you tell me the story behind the title of your book?
Nell: Yeah, I'm glad you asked, because those aren't my words. Those words come from a group of young people in Richmond, Virginia, working with a great organization called Rise, and another wonderful organization called Performing Statistics.
Which brings multimedia artists together with young people to envision a world without youth prisons. So they created block long murals. Some of them were as high as a skyscraper. They're interactive. So if you walk by them with your phone, you can hear voices. They're, they're very beautiful, and one of them had the phrase, in our future, we are free with beautiful language around, you know, I smell home-cooked food.
I hear the birds singing. I see families spending time together. So that language actually comes from them. And the reason I used it is that what really resonated with me, just as with those letters from lockdown I described, is the youth use of the pronoun we, because the young people who created this, these billboards and art installations, most of them had not been incarcerated, but they felt a solidarity with other young people again.
Other black and brown people of their generation, and they were envisioning a future where they all could be free together, and that felt very powerful to me.
Danielle: I wanna talk a bit more about the, the youth activism. Can you talk a bit, uh, about the activism in 2000, around California's Proposition 21?
Nell: Yeah, I'd love to talk about that to your question.
Danielle: Yeah, I was just gonna give the background to Prop 21, but maybe if you'd like to give that No, please.
Yeah, so for background, prop 21 allowed prosecutors to have youth tried in adult courts for some serious crimes with a result of more youth ending up in adult prisons. Prop 21 ultimately passed, but the fight against it set up the infrastructure for youth activism, and I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about that.
Nell: Yeah, that was remarkable because I was running this youth newspaper in downtown San Francisco during those years, and this large and diverse coalition of young people took a look at Prop 21 and decided that their futures were at stake, and they just flooded the streets with this energy that was angry and political, but also sort of exuberant.
I don't wanna say celebratory, but a lot of the rallies had hip hop performers at them. There was dancing, there was music, but there was also with the help of adult mentors, some real political sophistication to what young people were doing in the Know. On Prop 21 Campaign, for example, they identified the corporate sponsors behind the ballot measure.
I think it was Chevron and Pacific Gas and Elect, and they flooded their offices. The Hilton Hotel chain was another sponsor. I remember young people flooded the lobby of San Francisco's very elegant downtown Hilton, and started chanting a modified version of the Sugar Hill Gang's. Rapper's delight. Mm, hotel Motel.
I, this isn't gonna sound like hip hop. Pardon me? Hotel, motel, and the Hilton. If you start a war on youth, you ain't gonna win. And then I love this part. One of the youth leaders explained to whoever came to intervene. We're here to speak to your manager. And, and that was, that was somewhat effective. A couple of the sponsors pulled their financial support after that.
They went to Board of Supervisors meetings. They went to Board of State and Community Corrections meetings. They did not prevail. The Bay Area voted down. Prop 21. Prop 21 passed. But the young people had learned so much about organizing that their next effort, which was an effort to stop Alameda County from building what they called a super jail, what would've been the largest per capita youth jail in the country.
They were successful using many of the same tactics. But I think one of the most remarkable things that they did, it was gonna be cited in a town called Dublin, which was a mostly white suburb, which as they pointed out, would've been too far for families to visit. So these organizers went and met with mostly white homeowners associations and essentially said, you don't wanna in your backyard, we don't wanna be in your backyard.
Let's work together, and they did prevail in that battle. That's such an amazing strategy of reaching out to those white homeowners and unlikely ally.
Danielle: But that's what I wanted to ask you about next. You, you wrote that activists and parents found unlikely allies in correction staff. I was wondering if you could explain that a bit more. How and why were some of them allies in this fight?
Nell: So I profile three remarkable leaders in the book, Vinny Sheraldi in Washington dc Gladys Caron in New York State, and Candace Jones in Illinois. And I do wanna say, on the one hand, they were not typical. They went into these jobs with. Either an advocacy background or an advocate's spirit.
So they committed to running these systems with the express intent of running them into the ground, but they also showed tremendous political sophistication. I think, you know, I think the most important thing they did, certainly not, the only thing they did was pierce the veil of invisibility that protects these institutions.
I've come to believe that prisons depend on invisibility in order to function. There's a reason we put them in the middle of nowhere. Gates and bars and walls that keep some people inside them also function to keep the rest of us out. It's very difficult as a reporter to gain access. Family visits are hard, and even when families do get inside, they can't get past these tightly controlled visiting areas.
So finding out what's happening on these units can be nearly impossible. So let me talk about Gladys Catone, who closed, I think 23 state youth prisons during her tenure in New York. More than half of that state's institutions when she was first hired, a child named Daryl Thompson had just been killed in one of her facilities.
Uh, the place had been on lockdown for several days, which means they don't go outside. He had been told that that day they would get to go out onto the yard, and I think he had some developmental delays and he was very excited and he kept chanting, I'm gonna get my wreck, I'm gonna get my wreck. Guards told him to be quiet.
He did not, and they killed him. They, they took him down in a bathroom and essentially suffocated him to death. So the normal response to something like this would be circling the wagons, making excuses, covering it up. Gladys did the exact opposite. She launched a year long investigation, not only into that institution, but all of her institutions.
She hired a brilliant publicist named Eddie Borges, and they, they launched a publicity campaign against their own institutions, and I think all three of them did the same thing. They, they used their positions of power to do a lot of things, but one of them was to make sure the public knew exactly what was going on inside their institutions.
Danielle: Did Gladys in that case and the others have blowback? What did they have repercussions from this?
Nell: Yeah, of course. Vinny Sheraldi, who, who closed Oak Hill in Washington DC was an early adapter. He was kind of the first of them, and he faced a lot of blowback. A Washington Post columnist named Colbert King wrote a column trashing him, I think every Saturday for a year, you know, and the thing that that would happen with VI Vinny, I remember him telling me that every time there was an act of violence among young people in dc whether it was the perpetrator or the victim king and others blamed his reform efforts. Even in some cases when the young people involved had no connection to his department, were not, and had not been incarcerated. So sure, of course there was blowback. I, I think each of them learned from the other, and over time the climate became more receptive to this.
And another thing that I think benefited subsequent inside actors like Gladys and Candace is. This sort of virtuous cycle. So youth crime was dropping and that made it easier to close these institutions. I've not found one instance of a youth prison being closed when it was full. The process in every instance has been to gradually empty them and as you empty them, the per capita cost to incarcerate a single youth rises.
I think in New York, it hit a million dollars per kid, and then Gladys could make a fiscal argument.
Danielle: Why should taxpayers be spending a million dollars to keep five kids and 50 staff members in an empty institution? Are we seeing any impact already on resourcing from the closure of youth prisons?
Nell: I don't wanna give you a blanket no. Mm-hmm. There's a, uh, there's this notion of justice reinvestment, which is a very powerful idea. It. It's as simple as. When you close an institution, you should take those resources and invest them in the communities that have essentially been stripped mined by mass incarceration, and several states have passed laws committing to do that, but actually getting that money spent has proved challenging.
When money is reinvested into communities, which it is, in some places it's better than nothing, but often it's funneled through probation departments. So we have this situation where even things like sports and recreation and mental health are being administered by probation to communities that, as Vinnie Aldi, who went on to be the head of probation in New York City, told me, and these communities hate us for good reason.
Gladys Cardon, who continues to be an advocate, has also objected to this saying. What we've created is an intermediary measure, but really what we have is a separate system for poor kids of color. On the Upper East Side, kids go to the Y, they have parks, they have decent schools, they have all kinds of recreational opportunities.
So genuine reinvestment, I think remains an aspiration.
Danielle: You're listening to Peace Talks Radio. Joining us today is Nell Bernstein, journalist and author of the book. In Our Future, we are Free the Dismantling of the Youth Prison. Now what about people who. Feel that incarceration isn't really an issue for them and for their lives.
So despite the fact that around half of Americans have had a loved one in jail or in prison, a lot of people might feel like, this isn't really my issue. Why should everyone care about this?
Nell: Hmm. I'm thinking about that. You know, the, the easy answer is if you care about justice, if you care about children, you care about this, but can't tell people what to care about.
One of the most powerful pieces of research that I came upon when I was reporting and burning down the house was a large study based on anonymous interviews with adults across the country. And it turned out that more than 90% had done something illegal when they were adolescents. And I think I would ask your listeners to think back to their adolescents, and I haven't met very many people who can't identify something more than half had done something that could have gotten them locked up.
So, you know, if you're a parent, I think you should understand. That the mass incarceration of youth is a risk for all adolescents. Uh, I said that I think prison depends on invisibility to function. The other thing that it depends on is dehumanization. We wouldn't be able to do the things that we do to children inside locked buildings.
If we saw those largely black and brown children as fully human, I mean, the super predator stuff was the apotheosis of that. But it remains true to this day, and I think one of the most powerful things that the young, personally impacted activists have done. They shouldn't have had to do it, but again and again, they have just asserted their own humanity.
Nothing changes minds and hearts like proximity. So I think when these young people go out and tell their stories and people are able to realize this is not a monster, this is a child who's not that different from my own. That can be useful in breaking through that hostility or indifference, and it's a task that young people have taken on.
Danielle: Well, and I'll be honest with you, I ask you that question because it's a question that I got when I, when I wanted to delve into these issues, you know? But does the general public really care? And why should they, and. To me, it seems like there's also a pretty clear public safety argument to be made. You spoke about when youth are incarcerated, there's a higher likelihood of them, um, breaking the law in the future.
And it seems to me like we would have a safer public if there was lower incarceration, particularly of kids.
Nell: Yeah, and you know, the problem is yes, the research shows that youth incarceration makes us less safe, but I don't think the public. Spaces their opinions or feelings on research. And that's particularly true when it comes to crime and punishment.
And the problem that we have is that if you wanna get elected to political office, a really effective maneuver is first to scare people and then to say, but I can protect you. Sure. So, so our policy is driven by anecdote. And exception much more than it is by reality and by research, and that's a real problem.
Danielle: All right. I have one last question for you, and you've, you've basically already answered this through previous questions, but uh, I wanna ask it one more time Anyway. The prison system is such an entrenched part of American society and it seems almost impervious to public influence. Your book tells a story of individuals, parents, youth activists, incarcerated youth themselves managing to come together and influence people who hold the power as decision makers.
What bigger lessons can we take from this about the power of activism?
Nell: Yeah, I think that's a really germane question right now. When I started working on the book, it was 2020, and I thought, I'm interested in this story. People involved in this movement. Will be interested. Maybe those also involved in the larger movement around.
Mass incarceration will be interested. The book came out in 2025, which is a very different moment. It's one in which, you know, I think a lot of Americans are struggling with the question of what does it mean to resist an authoritarian state? What can I do when it feels so huge and so all consuming. So the story I've told is one in which that's not a hypothetical fear.
These kids, these parents were living under the boot of an authoritarian state that controlled all of their actions, and yet they resisted, and yet they persisted. And here we find ourselves 25 years later with that institution, I would say, brought to its knees. So if, if there's a takeaway, it's that we're not hopeless, we're not powerless, there's not much any of us can do as individuals, but there's a lot we can do together, even in the face of an authoritarian system.
HOST: That was Nell Bernstein journalist and author of several books about incarceration and the juvenile justice system. You can find links to her work, including her latest book@peacetalksradio.com. Nola Daves Moses is our executive director, Ali Adelman, composed and performs our theme music for Daniel Preiss and co-founders Paul Ingles and Suzanne Kryder.
I'm Jessica Ticktin. Thanks so much for listening and for supporting Peace Radio.
