The Netflix mini-series “When They See Us” is a not-so-fictionalized account of the treatment of children in the U.S. criminal justice system. It shows what many international human rights observers have described for years: a system that violates the rights of children every single day in America, often children of color.
It is not simply the children’s vindication or innocence, however, that makes what they endured a violation of their human rights. It is the fact that their child status was completely discarded by the justice system at the point of arrest and interrogation through to conviction, sentencing and incarceration