--- title: Youth Prisons Don’t Work description: Youth prisons don’t work, does our democracy actually need a months-long presidential campaign and more. canonical: https://time.com/4551363/youth-prisons-dont-work/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-31T16:00:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:59:22.865Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Youth Prisons Don't Work og:description: These are today's best ideas og:url: https://time.com/4551363/youth-prisons-dont-work/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Youth Prisons Don't Work twitter:description: These are today's best ideas twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Youth Prisons Don't Work by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Oct 31, 2016 4:00 PM UTC by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Oct 31, 2016 4:00 PM UTC **1\.** [**Youth prisons don’t work. Here’s what does.**](http://time.com/4543401/youth-prison-reform/) By Mishi Faruqee in Time **2\.** [**Does our democracy actually need a months-long presidential campaign?**](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/26/sheryl-crow-short-presidential-election-cycle-bad-democracy) By Lucia Graves in the Guardian **3\.** [**To fight lung disease, scientists built a lung on a chip and taught a robot to smoke.**](https://wyss.harvard.edu/mimicking-life-like-cigarette-smoke-exposure-and-patient-specific-responses-in-human-lung-airway-chips/) By the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University **4\.** [**Did slaves produce your food?**](http://civileats.com/2016/10/25/did-slaves-produce-your-food-forced-labor/) By Elizabeth Grossman in Civil Eats **5\.** [**To get new scientific breakthroughs, we need scientists to branch out.**](http://www.nature.com/news/let-researchers-try-new-paths-1.20857) By Tolu Oni, Fabio Sciarrino, Gerardo Adesso & Rob Knight in Nature  [_The Aspen Institute_](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/) _is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4551363/youth-prisons-dont-work/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4551363/youth-prisons-dont-work/"},"headline":"Youth Prisons Don't Work","datePublished":"2016-10-31T16:00:40.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:59:22.865Z","description":"These are today's best ideas","url":"https://time.com/4551363/youth-prisons-dont-work/","keywords":["Innovation","elections","slavery","Science topic","Prison"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"The Aspen Institute","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/innovation/","name":"Innovation"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4551363/youth-prisons-dont-work/","name":"Youth Prisons Don't Work"}}]}] ```