Nell Bernstein and Chesa Boudin on the Fight to Close Youth Prisons

Over the past 20 years, one state after another has shuttered its youth prisons and stopped trying kids as adults, slashing the number of incarcerated children by a stunning 75 percent. How did this change come about? In the sequel to her 2014 award-winning book Burning Down the House, journalist Nell Bernstein dissects the forces that converged to move us from what she calls a moral panic about “juvenile superpredators” to a time in which the youth prison is rapidly fading from view. 

In Our Future We Are Free begins and ends with the imprisoned youth who took a leading role in their own liberation. Through vivid profiles, Bernstein chronicles the tireless work of mothers, activists, litigators, researchers, and journalists to expose and challenge the “racist brutality of youth prisons”—as well as the surprising story of prison officials who worked from the inside to close their institutions for good. The descriptions of how communities are pursuing safety, rehabilitation, and accountability outside of locked institutions offers a model for how we might overcome our addiction to incarceration writ large. 

Join Nell Bernstein and Chesa Boudin to learn how a coalition of parents, activists, and prison officials reformed what she calls a “racist and destructive institution,” and what other social movements can learn from that struggle.

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