🇺🇸 Forgotten Youth: Inside America’s Prisons | Fault Lines

n the 1990s, a trend to be “tough on youth crime” led to nearly every state in the United States to pass legislation making it easier to prosecute minors in the adult criminal justice system.

An estimated 200,000 children under the age of 18 are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults in the US each year, despite many of these cases involving non-violent crimes.

Fault Lines investigates the impact of these policies in Michigan, where lawyers have filed a class action lawsuit against the Department of Corrections and Governor Rick Snyder on behalf of hundreds of teenage prisoners who allege harassment and abuse by older inmates and prison staff.