Nelson Mandela once said, “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” If that’s true, then a society should be held to an even higher standard when it comes to how it treats its imprisoned children. By that measure, our society has a lot of room for improvement. That’s especially true when it comes to Louisiana’s Ware Youth Center. This is a hard-hitting and hard to read piece from the NYT and Berkeley’s school of journalism that has already resulted in the state’s governor calling for an investigation. Megan Shutzer and Rachel Lauren Mueller: ‘Dying Inside’: Chaos and Cruelty in Louisiana Juvenile Detention (Gift Article). “The Times/Berkeley investigation — based on more than 100 interviews with people previously held at Ware and current and former staff members, thousands of pages of records and court documents, and hours of security footage — reveals how a place meant to offer children care and rehabilitation instead descended into chaos and cruelty. Guards beat and choked their wards. Several forced children to endure sexual abuse as the price for phone privileges. They frequently maintained control by bribing children with food to assault other children.” The kids’ response was to attempt suicide in remarkably high numbers.