Thousands of abuse claims found in detention centers

While conservatives baste to fantasies about "superpredators" in a flimsy attempt to justify growing the prison-industrial complex, the real "superpredators" are juvenile detention facilities themselves.

The American teenager of today - if they aren't placed in a "treatment" facility without even being charged with a crime - is increasingly at risk for criminal sanctions for even minor offenses. This helps fill juvenile corrections facilities all over the land. Young people are often sent to juvenile hall illegally: In Kentucky, for instance, it's illegal to put a young person in juvenile detention for a status offense such as truancy. The law states this clearly. However, Kentucky's detention centers are filled with teenagers whose only offense was ditching school.

Now it's been revealed that - just between 2004 and 2007 - there have been 13,000 claims of abuse in America's juvenile detention centers. With 46,000 detainees, this represents more than one abuse case for every 4 inmates - an amazingly high number.

This includes a facility in Mississippi where teenagers were forced to eat their own vomit and shackled for 12 hours a day. Some of the detainees there were sent there just for getting in a fistfight one time at school. In other facilities, children died while being hogtied in restraints.

I'm sure there were more than 13,000 acts of abuse. It's actually very difficult even to report abuse, because the system makes it difficult. Often the detainees are coerced into not reporting it. It's also a fact that if they do, the cases are often dropped without any real investigation. So the guards keep abusing.

If the guards ever get convicted, they get off easy. One guard in Hawaii "grabbed, squeezed and twisted" a boy's testicles, but was sentenced to only probation and to 90 days in jail spread out over many weekends.

I'm sure the problem has only gotten worse. Without a serious crackdown, it will likely get worse still.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080302/ap_on_re_us/juvenile_detention)