EP 644 Children of the State: Inside the Juvenile Justice System in America

Few of us can imagine the difficult life circumstances that bring teenage children into a detention facility, which to them is simply another word for a jail.  Jeff Hobbs, an author who immersed himself in different kinds of facilities to capture first hand accounts of the experience from these children describes in vivid, and painful, detail what happens there in his book “Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System.”  While some in society might look at these kids as society’s throwaways, to Hobbs there’s always hope, even if it turns out to be difficult to find redemption in a society that offers few choices and low ceilings once you have been detained in this way.  Circumstances are different, state by state, county by county, in America but given the ongoing brain development research, it seems defeatist not to believe that even these troubled teens cannot rebound from these early interactions with the system. Our guest will introduce you to what he saw as part of his immersive reporting on juvenile justice in three different facilities.

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