One in three American children will be arrested by the time they are 23, and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centres that defy everything we know about how to rehabilitate young offenders. In a clear-eyed indictment of the juvenile justice system run amok, Nell Bernstein shows that there is no right way to lock up a child. The act of isolation denies children the thing that is most essential to their growth and rehabilitation: positive relationships with caring adults. Includes first-person accounts of detention experiences from former youth offenders.

Author Biography

Nell Bernstein is a former Soros Justice Media Fellow, a winner of a White House Champion of Change award, and the author of All Alone in the World. Her articles have appeared in Newsday, Salon, Mother Jones, and the Washington Post, among other publications. She lives outside Berkeley, California.