This article from the Washington Post tells the story of Geard Mitchell, a foster youth who spent part of his childhood in a juvenile detention center. Mitchell was placed in the detention center when case workers were unable to find a foster family for him. “We are just destroying these kids. They’re warehoused into emergency shelters, out-of-state institutions and juvenile detention centers, which can cause lifelong emotional trauma — their childhoods spent segregated from the outside world,” said Marcia Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood (ABC), a nonprofit child advocacy organization.
