OUR DOCUMENTARY
Our documentary is called "Justice for Imprisoned Youth". In it, we interview Burt Perlas, a former juvenile delinquent who is now a construction worker, and George Mota, a former prison convict that now works at CJCJ full-time. Both share some of their life story and what life was like in prison and in the juvenile system. Burt went from group home to juvenile hall and back again as a teenager, while George was arrested at 19, meaning he went straight to adult court. Each of us also have a part where we talk about a certain aspect of this problem.
FACTS
Facts and statistics about who gets arrested and for what.
-In the US 68% of juvenile criminal offenders living in a residential detention facility are racial minorities
-40% of juvenile commitments and detention are violations of the law that are not threats to public safety, such as drug possession, low level property offenses (vandalism, shoplifting)
-Since 1995, the rate of youth incarceration in the US has dropped by 41%
African american youth are nearly five times as likely to be incarcerated as their white peers. Latino and American Indian youth are between two and three times as likely.
-20% of youth in system identify as LGBT and/or non gender conforming, which is three times more than in the general population. this means that they have had a rougher past to end up in the system, and they are also at least seven times more likely to be assaulted by their peers than a cisgender and gender-conforming, heterosexual inmate.
-In 2010, only 1 of 4 youth were locked up for a violent crime (homicide, aggravated assault, robbery or sexual assault).
WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE'RE DOING:
We are four students at Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley, in Berkeley, CA. World Savvy is an organization that works to find
sustainable solutions to global issues. Our issue is the mistreatment of incarcerated youths, something that touches us deeply because of our age proximity to these juveniles. To help the issue, you can visit any of the links above, and educate yourself. You can even donate!
A brief explanation of these links:
The Art of Yoga: this is a project that helps at-risk girls prepare for a more positive future. Some of these girls have been incarcerated already, mostly because they ran away from an abusive environment and committed survival crimes to get by. They offer healthy options to substance abuse, violence and self-harm, including yoga.
Center on Juvenile Criminal Justice (CJCJ): An organization whose main goal is to reduce our society's dependency on incarceration to protect public safety. We interviewed two people who had been helped by CJCJ and are now volunteering and working there. We made a documentary with the interviews and us speaking, which will be on YouTube soon.
SF4TAY: An organization that provides job readiness, life skills and education in general for people from ages 14-20 years old that are on formal or informal probation.
New York Times- Madness: A very informational article about the mistreatment and the impact it has on prison inmates.
HOW TO CONTRIBUTE
TO OUR CAUSE
Psychologists say that for one third of incarcerated youth diagnosed with depression, the onset of depression occured after the incarceration began, which means it probably caused it. Combined, the conditions of confinement and poor mental health, which most youth already have going into the system can cause effects like emotional withdrawal, suicidal thoughts or actions, violence and hostility. To fix these issues, laws could be made to protect youths with non-violent crimes from being incarcerated, since the entire purpose of confining people is to protect public safety. This would in turn make the facilites smaller, and better, more treatment-oriented therapy could be introduced.