This Monday, January 5 at 6:30pm, Prison Pipeline on KBOO Community Radio features an in-depth interview with journalist and author Nell Bernstein, whose reporting has helped transform the national conversation about youth incarceration. Over the past twenty years, the United States has witnessed a dramatic and once-unthinkable shift: state after state has shuttered youth prisons and ended the practice of trying children as adults, reducing the number of incarcerated young people by an astonishing 75 percent.
How did this happen? In her new book, In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison, Bernstein traces the path from the moral panic of the 1990s—when politicians warned of “juvenile superpredators”—to a moment when youth prisons are rapidly disappearing. She examines the coalition of forces that made this transformation possible, including incarcerated youth, parents, activists, journalists, litigators, researchers, and even prison officials who worked from the inside to close their own institutions.
Beginning and ending with the voices of imprisoned young people who led their own liberation, Bernstein exposes the racist brutality at the heart of youth prisons while highlighting community-based approaches to safety, accountability, and healing that do not rely on cages. Her work offers a rare and deeply needed “good news” story—one that shows how organized resistance can dismantle even the most entrenched systems of punishment.
Tune in to Prison Pipeline on Monday, January 5 at 6:30pm on KBOO Community Radio for a powerful conversation about abolition, youth freedom, and what it takes to overcome our addiction to incarceration—while keeping communities safe and children free.