“Members of Maine Youth Justice, a campaign to end youth incarceration, are calling on a state task force to recommend closing the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland by next year. On Tuesday morning they rallied outside the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta, where the task force was scheduled to meet. But that option is currently not among those being proposed to reform Maine’s juvenile justice system.”

“I’m out here because I know that $18.2 million in my community could help my friends get housing, it could help my friends get community centers in their town,” said Al Cleveland, a campaign manager for Maine Youth Justice.

“If we live in a society where children aren’t being treated as children, then we’re not moving forward,” Tutu Oryem, of Maine Youth Justice, said

“Maine Youth Justice points out that the task of reforming broken carceral systems around the country falls in large part to state legislatures and governors’ offices, as the vast majority of incarcerated people are held in state prisons and local jails.”

“So I think this fight is not only for black people anymore,” Ali said. “I don’t think this fight is only for people of color. I think his fight is for white people, too. I think this fight is for everybody to come in unity and say, ‘Hey, we’ve really got to stop this.’”

As another state commission looks into what to do with Maine’s last youth prison, Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, a group of system-impacted youth have some demands.

Young people who have been in Long Creek urge the state to invest in things like housing, education and after-school programs.

Chief Justice Leigh Saufley tells the task force that the work of creating alternatives to incarcerating youths at the Long Creek Youth Development Center is unfinished business begun a decade ago.