Excellent article. It seems to me this comes down to lazy politics and self serving politicians. All the evidence points to the treatment of children as criminals and mass incarceration as injurious to society but it doesn’t buy votes.

It not only brutalises the perpetrators but is also red meat to the lock-em-up brigade who are never satisfied. We have very sick societies and the state of our prisons, including the abominable prison industrial complex, reflects this.