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Podcast: Commonwealth Club of California Podcast
Episode: Nell Bernstein and Chesa Boudin on the Fight to Close Youth Prisons
Description: Over the past 20 years, one state after another has shuttered its youth prisons and stopped trying kids as adults, slashing the number of incarcerated children by a stunning 75 percent. How did this change come about? In the sequel to her 2014 award-winning bookĀ Burning Down the House, journalist Nell Bernstein dissects the forces that converged to move us from what she calls a moral panic about ājuvenile superpredatorsā to a time in which the youth prison is rapidly fading from view.Ā
In Our Future We Are FreeĀ begins and ends with the imprisoned youth who took a leading role in...