Juvenile Justice Books

Ayers book should be read by all educators who work with young people forgotten by the system. His case studies are brilliantly drawn and teach us a great deal about "juvenile justice". It has provoked discussion of poverty, violence, and social change. It has changed the thinking of many of my students for its clarity, insight, and hope.

This is a story of children, real children, still soft inside, and yet with a force field that can put off both the kindest and the most brutal attacks one can inflict. It is a story of a justice system long gone amuck, but often with good intentions, and some surprisingly good people lighting up the corners. Ayers is a good tale-teller, and catches students at the juvenile detention "home" in Chicago - it could just as well be many other places - in moments of anger, despair, humor, joy, self-deception and learning, along with the teachers that carefully try to offer regularity, challenge and choice. For those many to whom juveniles and juvenile detention facilities are not real, this book is a must. For those who know, it will be a renewed inspiration and challenge. For those who want to look further than Ayers points at a the development of our justice system and really systemic changes in the way we handle wrongs, both adult and juvenile, a great place to start would be Howard Zehr's, _Changing Lenses: A New Focus on Crime and Justice_.

This book really inspired me when I read it. I am a high school teacher and was able to use the information immediately in my class. The students really responded to the work. I recommend the book!

I am only in my second year teaching high school english and just found this book. I wish I had discovered it earlier! Ms. Singer opened my eyes to a whole new way of engaging my students - they actually LOVE my class now and nearly every student has made incredible progress. Just seeing their confidence grow as they realize they have the capability to write is truly a joy to watch. Our school year is just ending, but I'm already looking forward to the coming years and I am so happy to have found this book.

The story of how William Penn evolved to become what Thomas Jefferson described as "the greatest lawgiver the world has produced" (Pennsylvania's Charter of Privileges) is well told by these authors. Penn's ideas were, of course, foundational to the U.S. Constitution, just as "Cosmic Laws" are foundational to the Second American Evolution and The CONSTITUTION of UNITED DIVERSITY. Triaka, aka Wm Penn

Read this book before you anything else about William Penn! This is the best for all age groups. You will want to read everything these authors have written on "Heroes of History"

Read this book. Change the system.

For anyone interested in how courts deal with juvenile crime, and for anyone who thinks there must be a better way, read this book. Drawing upon the simple, yet profound idea that children do not turn into adults on a single day, the authors elaborate on the deficiencies of a legal system that is, in fact, largely based upon just that notion. The chapters help us to envision a legal system that would see adolescent development as a gradual and continuous process, and that would not allow prosecutorial ambition alone to determine which young offenders should be held criminally responsible for their actions.

While violence rates have been in decline in many cities over the past few years, there has been a steady increase in violence involving young people in many cities across the country. When a similar increase occurred in the late 80s and early 90s, the country reacted on the one hand with mass hysteria, enacting punitive criminal justice policies, tightening civil liberties for those suspected of gang involvement and on the other with community based programs designed to promote positive youth development, national youth organizing programs and research to promote primary prevention of youth violence. Lost in this reaction was a clear sense of the perpetrator/victims of youth violence -- who they are, how they fare after their violent involvement, and what can be done to help them cease involvement in violence. This missing voice is an important one as it potentially provides a view of a remedy for prevention from those most directly affected by violence.
Youth Violence, Resilience and Rehabilitation by Joan Serra Hoffman offers a hard hitting, yet empathic and comprehensive view of the effects of violence on the lives of youth and thoughtful suggestions for programmatic and policy interventions to prevent it. Written with a strong focus on public health, Hoffman provides a firsthand account of her work with groups of young people in Boston and Los Angeles with whom she had contact as a youth worker/community organizer over a six-year period beginning in 1990. All had been referred because of contacts with a variety of treatment and rehabilitation systems, i.e., child welfare, pediatric and adolescent health care, juvenile justice. Many had suffered life-changing events (including paralysis) as a result of their exposure to violence. She traces the history of their involvement in violence, touching on the impact of child abuse (including sexual), domestic violence, generalized community violence and gang violence in the lives of these young people - and she painfully chronicles the re-victimization of many of them by the systems supposedly designed to protect them and promote their positive development. The young people of Hoffman's book are the most undesirable of the undesirables -violent youth of color - and she presents their stories in their own voices in a way that brings clarity, empathy and understanding to their plight.
In its first two chapters, Youth Violence, Resilience and Rehabilitation, seeks to bring clarity to the factors that place youth at risk for violence, trace the individual journeys of youth involved in violence and examine the factors that cause them to end their violent careers. Hoffman places youth violence within both a historical context in the U.S. and then within the broader context of public health. The first three chapters of the book delineate a framework for her investigation and provide comprehensive analyses of the youth violence and the role of the public health system in the prevention of violence. The body of the book presents the autobiographies of several of the young people and examines the role of trauma and its treatment in providing a means for youth to exit their violent lifestyles. Hoffman then analyzes the various interventions in youth lives and the extent to which they support change or perpetuate continued involvement in violence. Finally she makes recommendations for program development and policy change that are responsive to the needs of these most vulnerable youth. Recommendations encompass those needed for individual treatment (better trained and more responsive clinicians who can provide the structured, intensive and individualized treatment needed by young people who have been exposed to trauma and who have in turn traumatized); for systems change (multi-dimensional and comprehensive approaches that cut across disciplines and agencies that serve young people); for holistic responses from the health/hospital systems (including involving young people as change agents); and for macro-level policies (dismantling barriers to opportunity, health and education at the community and higher societal level).
Youth Violence, Resilience and Rehabilitation is a thoughtful examination of young people and violence. Its focus on young people as individuals, and not just the violence in which they are engaged, provides an important contribution to the research literature in primary prevention of youth violence. Public health workers, social workers and youth workers and activists would gain much from this book. One would also hope that those in charge of policy in juvenile justice, mental health and community and economic development would take a close look at Hoffman's book and the recommendations it makes for inclusion of young people in real ways in our society.

Dr. Serra Hoffman has written an essential work on urban youth violence today. Her writing is informed both by her thorough command of the literature and by her unparalleled eye and ear for the voices and experiences of youth damned to lives of poverty and violence in the killing zones of America's poor urban areas.

Few scholars of criminal justice policy and violence prevention possess Dr. Serra Hoffman's command of her subject and fewer still have so effectively captured the urgency of creating a New Deal for reversing the inequities that have contributed to the death and maiming of so many of our young people by other youth armed with weapons that ought to make even the NRA squirm.

Through her book the clarion voices of victims of urban gang warfare in two of America's most violent communities are made accessible in a way they have rarely been before. Were the country's mayors, police chiefs, school principals, and judges, and the entire white house staff to read Dr. Serra Hoffman's book the next generation of America's urban youth might have a fighting chance to see the resources and attention they deserve more equitably distributed in their direction. Kudos to Dr. Serra Hoffman for informing the debate over youth violence with scholarship rather than diatribes and vapid television news soundbites.

For my governmnet class I had to pick a subject to do my report. I decided to chose this because like I said I'm a minor and it's important for me to know the rights I have. I was really intrested how the book had all the diffrent problems, what they went through, and what the young person did to get the rights they deserve. I'm glad there is people in the world that helps us youg people out and they give us the chance to let us live freely. I really recomend it to anyone.

I bought the Batman books for my grandson, age 5, who loves all the Batman books.
He reads very well and quickly devours them. Excellent choice for "Batman" enthusiasts!

Some comparative legal studies can be overly descriptive and dry, but Fishman views the French juvenile justice system through the lens of recent history and her book is a pleasure to read. She traces the French approach to youth crime policy and its origins, and in doing so she helps American readers to see our own system a little more clearly.

This book was in new condition when I purchased it, and it was a lot cheaper then in the student bookstore where i attend school.

My media class always does a section on law and Wilker's book on Cons and Swindles was very useful as it gave an alternative view of cops and robbers that is seldom seen in elementary reference books.