Дети в тюрьме

65,000 minors are detained in the United States. From the age of 9, a child can be arrested and thrown in prison. The only country in the world not to have ratified the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, America judges its children as adults. Many minors thus serve their sentence in adult prisons where they are five times more likely to be raped and where their suicide rate is ten times higher than the average. Some are even sentenced to life imprisonment. Most juveniles sentenced in the United States, however, end up in juvenile prisons. Our teams had access to two prisons, designed especially for them. The first, located in Texas, accommodates young prisoners aged 12 to 21. She organizes visits from high school students to show them the horror of the place and dissuade them from committing crimes. The second, in Utah, chose a more humane way by trying to reintegrate them. But the methods that sometimes clash with the American legal system are not always easy to apply. Once outside, how do these children manage to live? What physical and psychological consequences will they have to suffer? We met former prisoners who spent part of their adolescence behind bars. Their stories are poignant. Finally, we were able to interview, in his cell, a young man sentenced to 40 years in prison, when he was only 16 years old. What are his daily detention conditions and how does he think he will hold out until his release, scheduled for thirty years from now? Investigation of a country that has chosen the hard way to punish its youth, sometimes at the limit of fundamental rights. © NOVA PRODUCTIONS