BiblioVault - Books about Juvenile detention homes

Compassionate Confinement

A Year in the Life of Unit C

Abrams, Laura S.

Rutgers University Press, 2013

Received an Honorable Mention for the 2015 Society for Social Work and Research Outstanding Social Work Book Award

To date, knowledge of the everyday world of the juvenile correction institution has been extremely sparse. Compassionate Confinement brings to light the challenges and complexities inherent in the U.S. system of juvenile corrections. Building on over a year of field work at a boys’ residential facility, Laura S. Abrams and Ben Anderson-Nathe provide a context for contemporary institutions and highlight some of the system’s most troubling tensions.

This ethnographic text utilizes narratives, observations, and case examples to illustrate the strain between treatment and correctional paradigms and the mixed messages regarding gender identity and masculinity that the youths are expected to navigate. Within this context, the authors use the boys’ stories to show various and unexpected pathways toward behavior change. While some residents clearly seized opportunities for self-transformation, others manipulated their way toward release, and faced substantial challenges when they returned home.

Compassionate Confinement concludes with recommendations for rehabilitating this notoriously troubled system in light of the experiences of its most vulnerable stakeholders.

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Locked Up, Locked Out

Young Men in the Juvenile Justice System

Anne M. Nurse

Vanderbilt University Press, 2010

Locked Up, Locked Out follows forty juvenile male offenders, from their first-time admissions to the Ohio system through their incarceration and reentry into the community. The author conducted three lengthy interviews with each of these youth over a period of two and a half years. These interviews bring alive their attitudes and day-to-day prison experiences, as well as the intricate connections between life on the inside and life on the outside.

Status is key to everyday life in prison, and it is often played out in demonstrations of masculinity, misogyny, and violence. Some gangs and some "area codes" (as the old neighborhoods are called) are seen as tougher than others and are given more respect. Even letters from family members and girlfriends are important signs of whether a prisoner matters: one young man says, "I'd write letters every day to people to beg 'em to write me back." Another reports, "There would be people in there writing girls, saying, hey, write me this nasty letter of things we're going to do and things we did. And they'd write back with these letters. And now he'll get to walk around with his letter bragging, like, hey, check this out. These are the kind of girls I got."

Incarcerated youth also work hard at impression management. Coping with prison requires a young man to present one face to fellow prisoners and another to the authorities who will decide his release date.

The author pays substantial attention to the programs youth are offered, including those focusing on education, anger management, job training, and parenting skills. Another section looks at contact between incarcerated youth and the outside world, including a discussion of the impact of incarceration on families.

Based on her extensive knowledge of policies in other states, the author also provides a broad overview of the juvenile justice system nationally, describing how the system is organized, administered, and funded. Readers are taken through the juvenile justice process from conviction through parole with special attention paid to new state initiatives and sentencing structures.

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Weeping in the Playtime of Others

America’s Incarcerated Children. 2nd edition.

Written by Kenneth Wooden with a foreword by Kathleen M. Heide

The Ohio State University Press, 2000

Kenneth Wooden’s Weeping in the Playtime of Others—first published in 1976 and an enduring work of investigative journalism and criminology that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize—exposes the harsh realities faced by children in the American juvenile justice system. Wooden’s extensive research and firsthand accounts highlight the systemic abuse, neglect, and violence that incarcerated youth endure. Investigative reporter Wooden journeyed across thirty states to document brutal conditions in juvenile detention centers and training schools. His work revealed in stark detail how these institutions regularly failed to provide the rehabilitation they promised, perpetuating cycles of violence and criminality, and presented a devastating picture of the detrimental effects on of solitary confinement, physical punishment, and inadequate educational and psychological support.

Wooden’s many case studies include that of a young Charles Manson, illustrating how early institutionalization can presage lifelong criminal behavior. Wooden also critiques the political and economic forces that sustain these abusive systems, calling for comprehensive reforms.

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