Examine the factors that contribute to youth crime and learn about the workings of the juvenile justice system.

When teenagers scuffle during a basketball game, they are typically benched. But when Will got into it on the court, he and his rival were sprayed in the face at close range by a chemical similar to Mace, denied a shower for twenty-four hours, and then locked in solitary confinement for a month. One in three American children will be arrested by the time they are twenty-three, and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centers that defy everything we know about how to rehabilitate young offenders. In a clear-eyed indictment of the juvenile justice system run amok, award-winning journalist Nell Bernstein shows that there is no right way to lock up a child. The very act of isolation denies delinquent children the thing that is most essential to their growth and rehabilitation: positive relationships with caring adults. Bernstein introduces us to youth across the nation who have suffered violence and psychological torture at the hands of the state. She presents these youths all as fully realized people, not victims. As they describe in their own voices their fight to maintain their humanity and protect their individuality in environments that would deny both, these young people offer a hopeful alternative to the doomed effort to reform a system that should only be dismantled. Burning Down the House is a clarion call to shut down our nation’s brutal and counterproductive juvenile prisons and bring our children home.

Discussions about prisoners often take for granted that a sizable number of those incarcerated are under the age of eighteen. Serving time as a teen has a unique set of challenges, and this book describes, in a relatable way, the issues facing young people behind bars both in the United States and abroad. The book includes information about teens incarcerated around the globe, including those who are economic prisoners forced to work to pay off familial debts. This volume also sheds light on what life is like for teens after their sentence has been served.

A very entertaining companion book to mega-bestseller HOLES Imagine your misfortune if, like Stanley Yelnats, you found yourself the victim of a miscarriage of justice and interned in Camp Green Lake Correctional Institute. How would you survive? Thankfully, Louis Sachar has lent his knowledge and expertise to the subject and created this wonderful, quirky, and utterly essential guide to toughing it out in the Texan desert. Packed with information about the characters in HOLES, as well as lots of do's and don'ts for survival, this is an essential book for all those hundreds of thousands of HOLES' fans.

The subject of juvenile detention is a major issue for Canadian and U.S. societies, and especially for teens. This book looks at juvenile detention: beginning with the environments that often produce troubled teens, to the legal process of the juvenile courts, to the varieties of detention arrangements and daily life in a juvenile detention facility. The book does not shy away from hard questions: are teen delinquents criminals, victims, or both? Should society punish or rehabilitate? The book offers multiple perspectives on difficult issues, considering both statistics and life stories. Youth in Prison is valuable reading for all concerned with juvenile crime, detention, and the future of troubled young people's lives.

Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.

When You Hear Me (You Hear Us) is an anthology of poetry and personal stories centering the voices of those directly impacted by the incarceration of young people in the United States. Compiled by Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop, this rich collection includes firsthand accounts from both the young people charged and incarcerated in the adult criminal legal system and from the community at large: the mothers, the loved ones, the correctional staff, public defenders, prosecutors, and others harmed and left with unhealed trauma. These critical voices, uniquely combined, illustrate the ecosystem that surrounds youth who are incarcerated--and expose the ripple effects that touch us all. This book challenges us to hear these voices calling out for accountability, transformative justice, and healing. Together, they demonstrate the collective impact of the prison system, and our collective responsibility to create a society where every one of us can thrive.