LOCKED UP TOO TIGHT: From the Washington Post. Excerpt: Guards moved young inmates around the prison on a leash. To control youths who disobeyed orders, guards would sometimes don riot gear and use “pepper spray” — tear gas mixed with cayenne pepper. At other times, groups of guards surrounded young inmates and handcuffed them by their wrists and ankles to the four corners of their beds. Young prisoners were held in isolation cells for weeks at a time. This mistreatment went on for more than a year, occurred regularly in the lockdown area of the prison, and involved more than 100 young people.This abuse did not occur thousands of miles away at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but here at South Dakota’s Juvenile Training School in Plankinton, where an investigation of the death of a 14-year-old girl in 1999 eventually uncovered a widespread pattern of cruel behavior, much of it later documented in a federal lawsuit brought by the Youth Law Center. The girl, who was in a boot camp program at Plankinton, had died of heat exhaustion after a forced run.

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