No Matter How Loud I Shout
A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court
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- USD 13.99
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- USD 13.99
Publisher Description
Now updated with a new introduction and afterword, this award-winning examination of the nation’s largest juvenile criminal justice system in Los Angeles by a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist is “an important book with a message of great urgency, especially to all concerned with the future of America’s children” (Booklist).
In an age when violence and crime by young people is again on the rise, No Matter How Loud I Shout offers a rare look inside the juvenile court system that deals with these children and the impact decisions made in the courts had on the rest of their lives. Granted unprecedented access to the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, including the judges, the probation officers, and the children themselves, Edward Humes creates an unforgettable portrait of a chaotic system that is neither saving our children in danger nor protecting us from adolescent violence. Yet he shows us there is also hope in the handful of courageous individuals working tirelessly to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds.
Weaving together a poignant, compelling narrative with razor-sharp investigative reporting, No Matter How Loud I Shout is a convincingly reported, profoundly disturbing discussion of the Los Angeles juvenile court’s failings, providing terrifying evidence of the system’s inability to slow juvenile crime or to make even a reasonable stab at rehabilitating troubled young offenders. Humes draws an alarming portrait of a judicial system in disarray.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After being granted access by court order to a system that is usually closed to the public, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Humes (Buried Secrets) spent 1994 surveying the largely futile attempts of Los Angeles to deal with its juvenile crime. He concentrates here on a few who have not let themselves be overwhelmed by the deluge of defendants-80,000 cases are pending at any given time: Judge Roosevelt Dorn, who is also a clergyman; Deputy DA Peggy Beckstrand, who finally leaves the system to work on adult cases; Probation Officer Sharon Stegall, who tries to cope with the insurmountable burden of supervising 200 juveniles; Shery Gold, a public defender who also wants to move to adult courts. Humes follows closely the cases of seven young people who were caught up in the system, three of whom have been saved by it--maybe. First serial to Glamour and L.A. Magazine.
