ABSTRACT
Violence against children is garnering increased attention in the United States as well as at the international level. The juvenile justice system is rightly an area of concern for violence against children, both as a place where young people who have disproportionately experienced violence are concentrated, and as a locus of further violence against children. This essay will briefly review international standards for the protection of children against violence as they pertain to youth in contact with the law. It will then compare the record of U.S. juvenile correctional institutions—which will be called "youth prisons" to avoid euphemizing them—to those international standards. Recommendations of ways to keep children safe at the hands of the U.S. juvenile justice system will be made that are specific to juvenile institutionalization, including a suggestion that is gaining increasing traction in the U.S.—replacing all youth prisons with a network of community-based programs and small, home-like secure facilities.
