No Matter How Loud I Shout - An Insider's Look at the Juvenile Justice System

The book No Matter How Loud I Shout outlines several of the major conflicts within the juvenile justice system in its pages.� The conflict between the need for the system to protect the public from the most violent and dangerous of its charges, and the desire to help these children get away from their lives of crime, a desire that is seemingly losing its battle.� Another conflict is between the rights of the children to due process in court, and the court's ability to administer the necessary punishments and treatments.� The last major conflict is between those that fight for a renewal of the system, and those that want to see it dismantled.� Each side of each conflict has strong supporters and strong arguments that favor it, which is why the issue of juvenile justice is such a hotbed of debate and confusion.

Few would argue that the justice systems first priority is to protect the public from those within its jurisdiction that are a danger to the safety of others.� There is however much debate on what can and should be done with these children once they enter the system and are deemed too dangerous to be released back to their parents or guardians.� Recent trends have been towards locking them away for as long as possible with little access to any sort of programs to help curb their involvement in criminal activities, or even to waive more and more of them into adult court with little consideration of the possibility of rehabilitation, or to the needs of each individual offender.

The book best demonstrates this with the cases of Ronald Duncan, George Trevino and Geri Vance.� Ronald Duncan, the one case illustrated in the book in which the juvenile system has almost no chance of saving the child from a future of crime is the one case in which it couldn't waive the child into adult court and enforce any sort of severe punishment.� At the same time in the cases of George and Geri, the system was very nearly forced to send them to adult court, even though they both demonstrated that they had at least a chance of being rehabilitated and leading productive law abiding lives after release.

The question this brings up in my mind is how a system that is so blind to the circumstances in each case that it becomes impossible to rehabilitate, or even punish, is supposed to accomplish either goal.� On the other side of the coin, one must ask how much discretion is needed in the system to best serve the needs of both the public and the children, and where to place that discretion.� Do we place it in the hands of judges like Roosevelt Dorn, who shows an alarmingly high level of contempt for the laws designed to protect children from the system, but who also probably one of the best hopes for reforming the system in such a fashion to help children?� Or do we place it with the DA's who as often as not, prosecute cases based on shoddy investigative work and bad evidence?� Until the system decides what it wants to do with offenders, I don't think these questions can be answered.

The issue of due process rights of juveniles is shown to have three sides in the book.� The first side is that of the prosecutors.� Because of the adversarial nature brought into juvenile court by the Gault decision, prosecutors have become more focused on getting the charges to stick than finding a positive solution to the youths criminal problems.� An attitude of "getting them" at any cost so that they at least pay in some fashion for their offences.

Opposing the prosecutors are the defense attorneys, often public defenders, who have adopted a policy of "zealous advocacy" or attempting to get their client off, since not doing so would leave them open to accusations of ineffective counciling which has legal and career ramifications.

Neither side is overly concerned with the best outcome for the juvenile in terms of preventing future criminal activities, or simply just helping them out of a bad situation so they can get their lives back on track.� It's the nature of the adversarial system that keeps either side from seeing a middle ground and accomplishing the long standing goal of the juvenile justice system of helping the children.

The third side of the issue is brought forward in the book through the example of several murder charges that turned out to be false.� Without the adversarial system, and the work of a few dedicated attorneys, these falsely accused children would have been convicted and served sentences for crimes they did not commit, something that could easily have happened before the Gault case.

The issue over what to do with the juvenile justice system, while not a central part of the book, is still an underlying current in it.� People like Judge Dorn want to see the juvenile justice system revitalized, with more attention given to helping children when they first start committing minor offences, rather than after four or five arrests and much more serious crimes are committed.� People in that camp want to see more money put into the system for more probation officers and more sentencing options for the judges.� They also tend to be less concerned with the due process rights of the children than with getting them set straight.

On the other side are people like the district DA who sees the juvenile courts as a failure and a waste of money that could be better spent on building more detention centers to house violent offenders.� This camp spearheads the movement to dismantle the juvenile system all together and move all offenders into adult court.� This is reminiscent of the way things were before the advent of juvenile courts, where children were held to the same level of accountability as adults and were subject to the same punishments.

The book uses a series of anecdotal examples to illustrate the issues being faced by the juvenile justice system.� The stories give insight into the many sides of the issues without providing any clear indication as to the solutions to the problems faced.� I think this is because all of the clear answers depend upon ones own perspective.� The "truth" of any issue depends greatly upon the goals one wants to achieve with the juvenile justice system.

I think the book does a very good job of exposing a system that is understaffed, poorly operated, and ultimately fails to achieve its stated goals due to an overload of cases and miles of bureaucratic red tape.� The book also shows that not only does the current system more often than not fail to meet its goals, it also has a very sad history of failing the children it is supposed to be helping.� Children like George, who has been a ward of the state since age five.

The book doesn't say as much but the impression that I have from reading it is that the children are often failing the system because the system is failing them, failing to do anything the first time they are brought in, and failing to do anything until its much to late.� It's seems that the system is in a downward spiral fueled by a supposed failure, which leads to cutbacks in the budget which makes it even harder for the system to succeed.� I think George Trevino summed up my impressions of the system best in his essay;

"The world's blind, neglecting its land.� The human race has turned on itself, destruction's loud, but the world is deaf!� Change can be found if it's truly being searched for, we as one need to communicate, guide our youth, because what we do today is setting the path for our children."

My perceptions of juvenile court have changed considerably after reading the book.� I knew that the juvenile courts had problems in finding successful ways of dealing with offenders and with being understaffed and under funded because those problems span the entirety of the criminal justice system.� I did no know, however, how much of a difference there was between the challenges faced by the adult system and those faced by the juvenile system.� I was surprised and alarmed at how badly the system is failing the country's children.� It is because of reading this book that I changed the direction I want to take my career, from law enforcement to working in some fashion within the juvenile justice system.

Edward Humes No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court (Simon & Schuster publications)