Lost sometimes in all the rhetoric about this budget – and prior ones – and how we can’t afford to return 17-year olds to the juvenile system is the simple fact that kids should not be housed with adults.
No one speaks more eloquently and passionately about this issue than Vicky Gunderson from Onalaska whose son Kirk committed suicide while being held in the La Crosse County Jail in 2005. Vicky has taken her message around Wisconsin and the country, speaking simple truths about the dangers of placing youth in adult facilities.
Despite being broke, we found money to give additional tax breaks to corporations, more to building highways and roads, and more for private voucher schools – all of which cost way more than it would cost to solve the problems associated with holding youth in adult facilities.
Jim Moeser
