Every day roughly 7,500 youth are incarcerated in adult prison, sometimes for the most minor of offenses. Take, for example, the Wisconsin case of one 17-year-old girl [PDF] sentenced to over two months in adult jail for stealing a neighbor's bicycle. Or the Florida case of a 17-year-old boy [PDF], likewise incarcerated in an adult facility after stealing a classmate's gym clothes...

...Across the nation, states are reconsidering and revising the harsh laws that continue to leave thousands of youth behind bars. In 2006, Colorado eliminated the state's juvenile life-without-parole sentence. The New York Times reported that last year Connecticut, which previously tried all 17-year-olds as adults, revised its law upward to age 18. Similar moves are being explored in California, Michigan and Illinois, among other states. Advocates are additionally pushing for tighter federal protections of youth in the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, currently up for renewal in Congress.

It would be worthwhile to actually see how many children are locked up in your local jails and prisons right now. What are their crimes? How do jails try to separate juveniles from adults?