Conditions of Confinement Juveniles face interferes with normal child development, traumatize youth, exacerbate physical and emotional disabilities and cause serious life-long health problems.

• Strip searches likewise are traumatic, degrading, and humiliating. Children, especially those who have experienced sexual abuse, can be re-traumatized by strip searches and often feel violated or sexually abused by these searches.
• Children housed in an adult jail or prison are up to 9 times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities. Many children prosecuted as adults suffer from untreated mental illness. Unlike adults with mental illness, children have very limited experience managing their disabilities, anxieties, fear, and trauma.
• Some states strictly prohibit placing children in adult jails or prisons, but a majority still allow children to be incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, where they are at the highest risk of being sexually assaulted.
• 1.8 percent of 16- and 17- year-olds imprisoned with adults report being sexually abused by other inmates. Of these cases, 75 percent report having been victimized repeatedly by staff

Using federal and state legislative or executive branch advocacy can help correct this issue. Filing class action lawsuits against things like beating, pepper spraying, and chaining them to tables can help ensure that juveniles aren’t being harmed in their facility.

Below are 4 practical ways to reform these harsh conditions and provide a safer environment for juveniles incarcerated.

1. Eliminating strip searches, solitary confinement, and use of excessive force against juveniles is a good start to reform the harsh conditions juveniles face in incarceration. These experiences can bring up past trauma and also offer the perfect opportunity to assault the juvenile.
2. Bringing change to facility practices, restricting youth placement with mental health conditions, and significantly limiting the permitted periods of isolation for juveniles can work towards guaranteeing a safer environment. Mental health is a big issue amongst juveniles incarcerated, so the best solution is to recognize that and actually offer help to that person by establishing youth solitary education, rehabilitative programs, health services, and meaningful time outside of cells.
3. Juvenile offenders who commit serious violent crimes may need incarceration with intense supervision, but there are too many youth offenders who’ve committed nonviolent crimes and are still being placed in prisons with harsh treatment. Alternatives like rehabilitation through their community and home is a safer and more effective way to correct behavior and work off the offense.
4. Ways for people outside the criminal justice system to show support for the reform of cruel treatment can do things like organize events to speak at to educate those of the problem at hand, sign and start petitions in their area, and organize peaceful protests to spread awareness. 

Challenge the unjust, unconstitutional abuse of juveniles in the criminal justice system.

Learn more here.