Shut Down Youth Prisons

Via Racewire:

Tell the State Commission on Juvenile Justice: Shut It Down!

On September 25th, the State Commission on Juvenile Justice — the agency in charge of setting the direction for the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) — will consider following the Little Hoover recommendation and closing the DJJ. The Commissioners need to know there is public support for this plan.

Please take a moment to tell your story or describe why you support shutting down the DJJ

This is definitely extremely important – and prison justice is definitely related to education justice.

For more information on the criminalization of youth – and especially its relation to how (the lack of) access to free education and learning tools is used to continue to keep historically oppressed people behind bars and dependent on the prison system – check out the HBO documentary Juvies. (I used this movie to introduce teenagers at North Star: Self-Directed Learning in Hadley, MA about the prison system and youth to great success. I’ll be blogging about this shortly.)

More info: The Real Cost of Prisons Project. Get Involved: National List of Books to Prisoners Programs