"No Place for Children: Voices From Juvenile Detention"

THE YOUNGEST KIDS

Their pants, like those on this 11-year-old charged with shoplifting, are too big. Nothing about the juvenile detention center - not the cinder-block cells, not the orange jumpsuits or the brown plastic slippers - seems made for children. And yet, every day the guests get smaller, and more confused about what brought them here. Psychiatrists say children do not react to punishment in the same way as adults. They learn more about becoming criminals than they do about becoming citizens. And one night of loneliness can be enough to prove their suspicion that nobody cares.