Nowhere to go for most troubled youth
As youth detention centers close, Minnesota runs out of places to rehabilitate kids who commit serious crimes
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October 28, 2022
Deddtrease Edwards was 14 when she was sent out of state to a center for troubled youth because of a lack of beds in Minnesota. "My childhood was robbed from me," she said.
Scores of protesters holding signs reading "Community Not Cages" streamed into a park in downtown Winona, Minn., pumping their fists in the air and yelling, "No new jails!"
The focus of their anger: A plan to house up to eight youth at the county jail. Officials hoped it would end the practice of sending local children arrested in serious crimes to detention centers hundreds of miles away.
"There will be zero youth incarceration in our county for as long as I live - and hopefully for long after I'm gone," declared Tova Strange, 21, a student and one of the organizers of that July protest.
Winona County commissioners quietly abandoned the proposal.
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