shackling

Perhaps the ninth time will be the charm for lawmakers who want to ban the routine shackling of juvenile defendants in Minnesota courtrooms. Every year since 2013, legislation to do so has fallen short.

For the past nine months, advocates have been mounting a campaign to improve the living conditions of youth incarcerated in California’s juvenile halls, camps and ranches. Changes up for approval include requirements that correctional staff respect the gender identity of youth, and that incarcerated youth are granted visits from their children.

In California, young people increasingly are being treated as adults by the justice system. I was one of them. When I was 14, my friends and I got into a fight with a man in my hometown of Watsonville, California.