Mountain State Spotlight – Geard Mitchell remembers the day he turned 17. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, sitting inside a Boone County juvenile correctional facility. The staff of the Donald R. Kuhn Juvenile Center didn’t put on much of a celebration, he recalled. No family or friends called or visited. The only sign of the milestone was a white-frosted cake from the center’s cooks. Read the full article.
“[That cake] was the only good thing about that day,” he said.
Now 19, Mitchell lives in Brooklyn with his aunt and cousin. He spent half of his childhood in West Virginia, and for seven of those years he was in state custody. Sometimes that meant foster homes, after he was removed from his aunt’s home in Boone County. But sometimes that meant places like the Kuhn Juvenile Center.
