
From left: Art room at Bridges Juvenile Detention Center; student work displayed in the hallway of the Detention Center
Bridges Juvenile Detention Center is a secure facility located in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, surrounded by a strip of used auto-parts stores and wholesale supply outlets. It houses both boys and girls, although the two groups are kept at a far remove from one another, and it has all of the familiar trappings of your standard-issue television or film depiction of prison: guards, jumpsuits, concrete, barbed wire, and barred windows. But it also has an art room. And a library. And hallways full of drawings and paintings and poetry.