Giving Compass' Take:

• The Marshall Project reports on the practice by some New York county jails of putting teen prisoners in solitary confinement with a lack of accountability that has only recently been scrutinized.

• What are policy-makers doing to ensure that juveniles are not subject to inhumane treatment when incarcerated? Or, more importantly, how do we make sure they're not incarcerated in the first place?

• Here's why solitary confinement in U.S. prisons is a public health crisis.

When the police approached Imani and her friends outside a Syracuse, N.Y., dollar store in 2016, she wasn’t worried — she didn’t believe they had done anything wrong. But a clerk at the store had accused the group of stealing, and Imani, then 16 years old, was arrested and charged with robbery. Unable to afford bail, she waited for her day in court in a maximum-security adult jail.

Imani, petite and wiry, is small for her age. At the Onondaga County Justice Center she was constantly cold, the single jail-issued blanket doing little to keep her warm. After arguing with a guard over a grievance she had filed, she was promptly moved to the solitary confinement wing of the jail, she said. Her meals were fed to her through a slot in the door and her recreation time was spent outside in what seemed like “a cage for a dog,” Imani said. The Marshall Project and WNYC are not using her real name because her juvenile record is sealed.

“I’m ready to come home,” she thought to herself as hours turned to days in isolation. The Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail, referred calls to a county spokesman, who did not respond to requests for comment.

Solitary confinement is not allowed for inmates younger than 18 at federal and state-run facilities in New York, but for teens like Imani — held in a county jail, waiting for their cases to be heard — it’s a common practice. Local jails use solitary as punishment, and since many counties rarely have separate facilities for juveniles, isolation cells are also routinely used as holding cells for minors.

“It made me feel like nothing, like an animal,” Imani said of her 32 days spent in solitary. “Can’t call nobody, can’t talk to nobody. You just feel worthless.”

Read the full article about county jails that put teens in solitary confinement by Taylor Elizabeth Eldridge at The Marshall Project