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50 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1 (2015)
Children in Isolation: The Solitary Confinement of Youth

handle is hein.journals/wflr50 and id is 11 raw text is: 






        CHILDREN IN ISOLATION: THE SOLITARY
                  CONFINEMENT OF YOUTH


                        Tamar   R. Birckhead*



                           INTRODUCTION
     Ismael  Nazario  was  raised  in Brooklyn,   New  York,  by  his
mother,   a   single  parent   who   consistently   emphasized the
importance   of education and  doing  well in school.' When   Ismael
was  thirteen, his mother was diagnosed  with breast cancer.2 As  she
underwent   chemotherapy   and  radiation, Ismael began  to struggle.3
By  tenth grade, he had lost interest in academics and instead  spent
his time smoking  marijuana   and talking to girls.4 At fifteen, he got
into  a scuffle with another   student at  school and  was  arrested,
placed in handcuffs, and taken  to the police station. A year later, at
age  sixteen, he was charged  with assault and  sent to jail at Rikers
Island  to await resolution of his case.5 There  he was  attacked  by


     * Associate Professor of Law  and  Director of Clinical Programs,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law (birckhead@unc.edu).
Catherine Bruce (UNC '14) and Daniel Burke (UNC '16) provided invaluable
research assistance. Daniel Burke also assisted in the preparation of the
Appendix, which documents the current practices of the countries that legally
condone or utilize the solitary confinement of youth. I am grateful to Mike
Corrado and Richard Myers for inviting me to present a previous version of this
Article at the sixth annual conference on the Future of Adversarial and
Inquisitorial Systems, which focused on juvenile criminal justice and human
rights. Thanks also go to Joan Krause, who organized a UNC Law faculty
workshop at which I presented this Article, as well as to my colleagues Lissa
Broome, Barbara Fedders, Joe Kennedy, Holning Lau, Katie Rose Guest Pryal,
and Mark Weisburd for extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts.
    1. Trey Bundy, Sixteen, Alone, 23 Hours a Day, in a Six-by-Eight-Foot Box,
MEDIUM   (Mar. 5, 2014), https://medium.com/solitary-lives/sixteen-alone-23-
hours-a-day-in-a-six-by-eight-foot-box-26able09632d (She made sure she was
on top of me when it came to certain things, especially school, so all the way up
to junior high school, I was honor roll.).
    2. Id.
    3. Id.
    4. Id.
    5. Id. New  York is one of only two states in the United States in which
juvenile court jurisdiction ends at age fifteen, meaning that all sixteen- and
seventeen-year-olds are under adult criminal court jurisdiction. See Statistical
Briefing Book, OFF. Juv. JUST. &  DELINQ. PREVENTION  (Apr. 24, 2014),
http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/structure-process/qa04101.asp. Nine states end
juvenile court jurisdiction at age sixteen, and the remaining thirty-nine states
plus the District of Columbia end it at age seventeen. Id. Rikers Island jail is a


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