Youth Pen

The tightly woven narrative of a young man who was there when the Feds' most ambitious plan backfired. America is still paying the price. Confronted with an unprecedented flood of young federal felons in the late 1960s, the Bureau of Prisons decided to isolate the youth of America in a penitentiary geared solely toward convicts between the ages of 18 and 28; to keep these young offenders from older convict populations. Nonviolent youths who had committed victimless crimes were caged in an environment that drove them to become even more criminal in order to survive.