In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison

“Nell Bernstein’s book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson’s book was for the environmental movement.” —Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC News, about Bernstein’s Burning Down the House

Over the past twenty years, one state after another has shuttered its youth prisons and stopped prosecuting kids as adults, slashing the number of children locked in cages by a stunning 75 percent. How did this remarkable change come about? In the follow-up to her 2014 award-winning book Burning Down the House, journalist Nell Bernstein offers an eye-opening and inspiring look at the forces that converged to move us from a moral panic about “juvenile superpredators” in the 1990s 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 young activists, parents, 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. In a welcome “good news” account of positive change, this gripping story describes how communities are pursuing safety, rehabilitation, and accountability outside of locked institutions, and offers a model for how the United States might overcome its addiction to incarceration.

A veritable master class in social change, In Our Future We Are Free is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how large-scale transformation is possible.