In 2012, the U.S. Attorney General appointed a national task force on children exposed to violence that concluded, “Nowhere is the impact of incarceration on vulnerable children more obvious than when it involves solitary confinement.” This statement still holds true and solitary confinement bears an even heavier impact on incarcerated youth today.
Why? Because the use of solitary confinement has been practiced under a variety of assumed names (room restriction, room confinement, isolation, extended time away, etc.), and used as a major intervention tool in so many facilities, that it has become an art. Like an assembly line, newly hired staff are seemingly on-the-job trained by veteran staff in the art of using solitary confinement and how to justify its use.
Historically, separating youth in crisis for short periods of time were interventions used to allow the youth and staff space to work together to ease the youth’s angst within that moment, and capture opportunities to practice newly learned coping skills. So how did we stray so far from using partnerships between youth and staff as the go-to interventions in de-escalating youth in crisis to leaving a youth alone, in a dreary, lonely and isolated space for extended periods of time.
[For more on this story by DeShane Reed, go to https://jjie.org/2018/06/14/so...-simply-doesnt-work/]
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