The officials agreed that it’s harmful when done for prolonged periods.

That’s a good starting point for reform efforts to make sure that the practice of putting teens in a brief “time out” does not slip into something that actually would be counter-productive.

The adolescent brain is still in the process of development, psychiatrists and other experts say. Solitary confinement can exacerbate mental health problems, leading to breakdowns and violence.

In 2012 the Attorney General’s National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence said, “Nowhere is the damaging impact of incarceration on vulnerable children more obvious than when it involves solitary confinement.” Of the juveniles that committed suicide while in detention, half were in solitary confinement at the time.

There was, however, dispute on the extent to which solitary confinement is used in facilities around the state. Lancaster County officials said flatly that they do not use solitary confinement, despite written records which can be interpreted as documentation of the practice.

Lancaster County Youth Service System Director Sheli Schindler said the local center uses a behavior management system, but that youths are never kept locked and isolated in their rooms for more than four hours at a time.

Other juvenile detention facilities said they are already in the process of reducing the use of solitary confinement. The average length of stay in isolation has dropped by about 50 percent between 2012 and 2014, when it was 2.55 hours at the Geneva YRTC and 1.99 hours at the Geneva YRTC.

ACLU Nebraska found a wide range of policies and practices in juvenile facilities across the state. Some facilities did not even have time logs on how long youths were placed in solitary.

Better and more uniform reporting on how long and how often youths are placed in solitary confinement is called for in a bill, LB845, introduced by Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln.

That’s one of the reform measures suggested in the report “Growing up Locked Down.” ACLU Nebraska also suggested a number of other measures, ranging from an outright ban to limiting solitary confinement to last-resort situations and for no more than four hours.

Since apparent agreement already exists on the need to strictly limit use of solitary confinement for juveniles, it should be possible to make quick progress toward reform. Locking kids up in isolation for extended periods does more harm than good.