Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison

by Nell Bernstein

Overview

The nationally acclaimed “engrossing, disturbing, at times heartbreaking” (Van Jones) book that shines a harsh light on the abusive world of juvenile prisons, by the award-winning journalist

“Nell Bernstein’s book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson’s book was for the environmental movement.” —Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC News

When teenagers scuffle during a basketball game, they are typically benched. But when Brian got into it on the court, he and his rival were sprayed in the face at close range with a chemical similar to Mace, denied a shower for twenty-four hours, and then locked in solitary confinement for a month.

One in three American children will be arrested by the time they are twenty-three, and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centers that defy everything we know about what motivates young people to change. In what the San Francisco Chronicle calls “an epic work of investigative journalism that lays bare our nation’s brutal and counterproductive juvenile prisons and is a clarion call to bring our children home,” Nell Bernstein eloquently argues that there is no right way to lock up a child. The very act of isolation denies children the thing that is most essential to their growth and rehabilitation: positive relationships with caring adults.

Bernstein introduces us to youth across the nation who have suffered violence and psychological torture at the hands of the state. She presents these youths all as fully realized people, not victims. As they describe in their own voices their fight to maintain their humanity and protect their individuality in environments that would deny both, these young people offer a hopeful alternative to the doomed effort to reform a system that should only be dismantled. Interwoven with these heartrending stories is reporting on innovative programs that provide effective alternatives to putting children behind bars.

A landmark book, Burning Down the House sparked a national conversation about our inhumane and ineffectual juvenile prisons, and ultimately makes the radical argument that the only path to justice is for state-run detention centers to be abolished completely.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620971314
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	01/05/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	163,463
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	1280L (what's this?)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Prelude: The Time Is at Hand 1

Introduction 5

Part I Teenage Wasteland

1 Inside Juvenile Prison 21

2 Birth of an Abomination: The Juvenile Prison in the Nineteenth Century 38

3 Other People's Children 52

4 The Rise of the Super-Predator and the Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal 71

5 The Fist and the Boot: Physical Abuse in Juvenile Prisons 81

6 An Open Secret: Sexual Abuse Behind Bars 103

7 The Hole: Solitary Confinement of Juveniles 129

8 "Hurt People Hurt People": Trauma and Incarceration 151

9 The Things They Carry: Juvenile Reentry 181

Part II Burning Down the House

10 A New Wave of Reform 201

11 A Better Mousetrap: The Therapeutic Prison 224

12 Only Connect: Rehabilitation Happens in the Context of Relationship 254

13 Connection in Action: Transforming Juvenile Justice 274

14 The Real Recidivism Problem: One Hundred Years of Reform and Relapse at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys 290

15 Against Reform: Beyond the Juvenile Prison 307

Acknowledgments 321

Notes 325

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Burning Down the House:
"Nell Bernstein's new book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson's book was for the environmental movement."
—Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC News

"What adults do to children behind the walls of America's juvenile prisons is criminal. If we want to change the United States' senseless addiction to incarceration, the best possible place to start is transforming how our justice system treats our children. This book shows just how that can be done."
—Piper Kerman

"An unflinching look at America's unbalanced juvenile justice system."
—Ebony

"An excellent piece of advocacy."
—Los Angeles Review of Books

"Passionate, thoughtful, and well-researched—a resounding call to action."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

07/01/2016
Supported by true stories of juvenile offenders, Bernstein makes the case that the system abuses rather than helps. She instead calls for rehabilitative programs such as special foster care placements and intensive family counseling.

Library Journal

02/01/2015
Bernstein outlines the history of juvenile "reform" schools, the rise and fall of the rehabilitative model, and the reality of what happens behind bars to already traumatized teens: further physical, sexual, and mental abuse. The author takes a look at solitary confinement practices, "therapeutic prisons," and juvenile reentry. Using solid teen developmental theory and research, United Nations findings, and trauma-informed care, this title articulately sets forth the argument against the imprisonment of children. A passionate advocate for young people, Bernstein highlights teen voices and experiences throughout the book, adding humanity and insight to the statistics. Burning Down the House brings this issue to national attention. Readers meet influential adults such as Jerome Miller, who closed down the entire system in Massachusetts in the '70s, and Gladys Carrion, Chief Commissioner of New York, who not only closed down 18 state facilities by 2012 and halved the number of incarcerated kids, but also diverted $74 million to support community-based alternatives to incarceration. Teens interested in history, social sciences, and one of the biggest issues facing young adults in the U.S. will find lots to love in this book.—Amy Cheney, Alameda County Library, Juvenile Hall, CA

School Library Journal

2014-04-08
An investigation of the American juvenile justice system, seen as too fundamentally corrosive to be reformed."The story of juvenile justice," writes Bernstein (All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated, 2005), "is often told in terms of pendulum swings between the opposing goals of rehabilitation and punishment." Today, although cash-strapped states have incentive to modify restrictive facilities, the retributive attitudes formed during the tough-on-crime 1980s and '90s are more resistant to change. The author argues that even as rates of violent crime committed by juveniles have fallen, an obsession developed for punitive confinement of what she terms "other people's children," epitomized in the '90s by the debunked "super-predator" theory. She notes that over the past several decades, most states have expanded their juvenile detention systems so that they now resemble adult imprisonment. In addition, such confinement is generally reserved for the poor and minority youngsters, whereas white and suburban kids are usually allowed to "grow out" of their juvenile infractions—"for poor kids of color, getting locked up takes appallingly little." While Bernstein argues the fundamental wrongness of treating children like adult offenders, she is more outraged by the actual conditions that have persisted through sporadic periods of investigation and reform in many state systems. She documents a disturbing litany of violence and endemic sexual abuse, frequently at the hands of guards: "Unprotected, young people learn they are unworthy of protection." The many former prisoners whose experiences Bernstein documents convince her that the system is beyond repair, even though she encounters compassionate administrators who concur that "understanding the nihilism that can afflict traumatized children opens the door to imagining alternatives" beyond incarceration. The author concludes by asserting that despite massive investments, the current system "[does] not recognize these children's fundamental humanity."The combination of muckraking research and absolutism make the book passionate and convincing as advocacy, though conservative readers may be less moved.

Kirkus Reviews