|
||||||
|
|
 |
Reader’s Guide to “No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court”1. Introduction 3. Q & A with Author Edward Humes 4. Reading list 5. Postscript Introduction to the BookEdward Humes offers a poignant look at a year in the life of Los Angeles Juvenile Court — and a vivid portrait of the kids, cops, judges, defense attorneys, probation officers, prosecutors and parents who careen through it. “I don't know how Humes won the trust of the kids whose stories are at the heart of this unforgettable book — but he did — and they told him everything,” said Mark Horowitz of Los Angeles Magazine. “This is journalism at its passionate best.” Questions for Group Discussion
Q & A with Edward HumesWhy a book about juvenile court? Isn’t adult crime a far more pressing issue? Juvenile Court is society’s early warning system — and the red lights are flashing. Reports that crime rates overall are down overshadow a grim reality seldom mentioned: The demographics of youth crime suggests that juvenile offenses may soon rise again. Yet our archaic, often impotent juvenile courts have never been less equipped to tackle this. I thought it was time to show just what is going on in this crucial yet secretive branch of the justice system, and what can be done to turn the tide. How does NO MATTER HOW LOUD I SHOUT show that? By following a small number of kids through the system over the course of a year — and watching how the court fails or succeeds as these young people move from arrest to trial to sentence and, all too often, to new crimes. There is Karla, the honors student who does drive-by shootings; Ronald, the unrepentant murderer too young for the system to punish; Geri, facing life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit; George, the abused child imprisoned instead of helped; and Andre, the gangbanger who finds redemption in the eyes of a handicapped girl. Their stories put a human face on this crisis — while starkly illuminating the deep-rooted problems plaguing juvenile justice in America. So why isn’t the system working? Juvenile Court is the unwanted stepchild of the justice system: it gets less money, less manpower, the greenest lawyers and is considered a low-prestige assignment (even a punishment) for judges. Legally, a kind of institutional schizophrenia exists there: Court rulings giving adult-style legal rights to children have shifted the focus to proving the facts of the crime rather than dealing with the needs of kids, families and society, as was originally intended when juvenile courts were founded at the turn of the century. But the biggest factor is the system’s misplaced priorities: the system now spends most of its time and money on incarcerating the most serious, hardened delinquents, with little left over for the minor offenders who could still be turned from lives of crime. Many juveniles have to commit four, five or more crimes before the overloaded juvenile court takes any meaningful action — and then it’s too late. If Juvenile Court isn’t working, shouldn’t we move more kids into adult courts and prisons? Billed as a “reform,” trying juveniles as adults actually represents a return to Nineteenth Century policies, when kids were imprisoned — and sometimes executed — alongside adults. Unfortunately, it continues the current practice of dealing with delinquents only after they become hardened and violent criminals, rather than trying to intervene while they are still young, minor offenders. During my year in juvenile court, I observed that virtually every violent juvenile sent to adult court had been in the system for years for minor crimes — only to be let go time after time to rejoin their gangs and commit more crimes, until someone was hurt or killed. But beefed up detention, probation and prevention services for first-time and minor juvenile offenders could have brought this futile cycle to an end for many kids — and save many people from becoming crime victims along the way. But haven’t such liberal notions been discredited? We’ve seen that probation doesn’t work. This isn’t a liberal versus conservative issue — it’s a matter of public safety. Virtually every prosecutor and police officer I encountered in juvenile court decried the system’s refusal to deal with minor offenders, and felt this was the single, largest reason youth crime was out of control. Cops are tired of arresting kids for car theft or graffiti vandalism or burglary or even gun possession, only to see them walk free before the paper work is done. In the 1960s in Los Angeles, juvenile probation officers had caseloads as small as fifteen children. Today, they average over 200 kids per probation officer — impossible to supervise. (Imagine a teacher trying to manage a classroom that large, in which every kid was a behavioral problem, and a sizable number of them had guns.) Wouldn’t it cost too much to make such a change in the system? The Council on Crime in America, co-chaired by conservative William Bennett, has pointed out that the nation spends an average of $25,000 a year per prison inmate, but spends only $200 per probationer — far too little to provide any meaningful supervision. We are getting what we pay for: failure. And every failed probationer requires another $25,000 prison cell. What was the worst thing you observed during your year in Juvenile Court? The worst thing I observed was the indifference of some people working within the system. So many of them, burned out by huge caseloads, slashed budgets and a crushing bureaucracy, no longer seem to care. And kids pay the price: One boy I met, a gifted student and writer named George Trevino, had been an abused and neglected child who was removed from his mother at age five and raised under court supervision. Disastrous decisions made by his social workers left him in the care of drug abusing foster parents. When he ran away and committed some minor crimes, the system dumped him as a foster child, turned him loose with no supervision, and ultimately sent him to adult court and prison after he was lured into participating in a robbery (in which no one but the adult ringleader was hurt). He received a particularly harsh sentence when a probation officer erroneously informed the judge that George had been raised by gang members since age five, when in fact he had been raised by the state. Did you see any signs of hope? Absolutely. I saw many dedicated professionals — lawyers, judges, probation officers, teachers — working tirelessly to make the system work despite itself. And they had an impact. Kids lucky enough to encounter these heroes of the system as often as not never came back to Juvenile Court — the surest sign of success the system has to offer. They prove that the system can work — and ought not be abandoned. Have you stayed touch with the kids your write about? Yes. One is now in college and crime-free. Another is earning his degree inside a youth detention facility. Another has successfully completed his probation and has a full-time job. But several others — kids I met while working as a volunteer teacher at Juvenile Hall — are serving long terms in adult prison. What is the significance of the title? It’s from a poem by George Trevino, written while awaiting sentencing in his robbery case:
You write that strict confidentiality in Juvenile Court, originally intended to protect children from stigma, now does more to insulate the institution itself from public scrutiny of its many failings. How did you get inside? I persuaded the presiding judge that public support for the very concept of Juvenile Court would continue to erode unless the system opened its doors and allowed an unvarnished, detailed portrait of its daily travails, its successes and failures. After months of back and forth, he agreed, and issued a court order unlocking the doors and the filing cabinets for me. What surprised me, though, is that once I got inside, I found the front-line workers in the court, the folks who try to make an unwieldy system function every day despite itself, were not angry at my intrusion. On the contrary, the vast majority were delighted I was there. Prosecutors, probation officers, cops, counselors, judges and defense attorneys all told me the same thing: The public needs to know what goes on here. The only way the problems can be dealt with, the good within the system preserved, and the crisis of juvenile crime met head on, is by opening the doors of Juvenile Court and letting in the light. And that became my goal in writing NO MATTER HOW LOUD I SHOUT. Your work as a volunteer teacher at Juvenile Hall involved a creative writing class on the hall’s high-risk offender units. Most of the kids were in for murder, armed robbery ad other major crimes. How did they respond to you? I initially had some trepidation about dealing with such hard-core offenders. But these kids weren’t the monsters I expected. They were tough, yes, and some of them had done truly terrible things for which they had to be imprisoned. But beneath the streetwise veneer they remained fourteen and fifteen and sixteen year old boys. They were not very different from other kids, except they had been told in a multitude of ways from an early age that they were worthless — by teachers, by cops, by their own parents, if they were lucky enough to have parents. And they had come to believe it. This once-a-week class gave them a chance to succeed at something, to be praised perhaps for the first time in years. At first, they couldn’t believe that I — or the handful of other volunteers who came to the hall — would make time just for them. But once they realized we thought they were worth the effort, the gangbangers seemed to turn into kids again. Boys who could pull a trigger without flinching hyperventilated in fear at the notion of reading their own stories aloud — and beamed for hours if the class praised one of their writings. One boy won a citywide essay contest. Another drafted a letter so moving his judge reduced his sentence. Several of the boys were encouraged to restart their educations. Now I think such voluntarism, if greatly expanded, could have a profound effect on the system. Indeed, one veteran detention counselor told me that the single most effective means of reducing juvenile crime would be marshaling an army of volunteers to work with — and set examples for — troubled kids. Suggested further readingThere Are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz. The story of two boys growing up in the projects of Chicago. Turning Stones, by Marc Parent. First-hand report from the foster-care front lines from a New York City emergency children’s services caseworker. Do or Die, by Leon Bing. Gangsters of LA. Somebody Else’s Children, by John Hubner and Jill Wolfson. A report from inside California’s child-welfare system. The Throwaway Children, by Lisa Richette. 70s classic by a family court judge in Philadelphia. (out of print) In Re Gault — the US Supreme Court opinion that gave children accused of crimes the same rights and protections as adults — a well-intentioned reform with the unintended consequence of throwing our justice system into adversarial chaos. Must read for those who wish to understand how we got where we are today. PostscriptAfter publication of No Matter How Loud I Shout, Edward Humes was invited to testify about his research and observations by both houses of the California Legislature in Sacramento and the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Children, Youth and Families in Washington, DC. Winner of PEN Center USA award for research nonfiction and the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Best Book award, No Matter How Loud I Shout is required reading in many college and university courses, and Ed is regularly invited to speak about juvenile issues at conferences and symposiums. He has an upcoming article in Los Angeles Magazine about Los Angeles County’s problem-plagued emergency shelter for troubled youths. No Matter How Loud I Shout is being developed as a television series by Kevin Brown Productions.
|
||||
