What do You think about No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year In The Life Of Juvenile Court (1997)?
I am not sure where to begin, this book is both fantastic and horrible. Fantastic because the sheer amount of work,research, blood sweat and I am sure, tears went in to it. Horrible, because of the subject matter.The percentages, facts and figures in this book were frightening to me, but became more frightening when I checked the publication date,1997. By all accounts things have gotten worse in the U.S.This book is a in depth look at the juvenile court system from many different perspectives including the children, who are children in age only. I cannot imagine Humes's ability to carve out a little piece of his heart while he was researching this book.
—Astrid Yrigollen
This book broke my heart. Over and over and over and....This is an extremely well-written book, in which Humes manages to show us the humans behind the label 'criminal'. He shows us the inside and the backdrop of their lives, how they rationalise, think, what they want and how they feel, and how they are (and have been) treated by caregivers, society and the system, and finally how the many chance factors that play into how their fate is decided in court. The books aim isnt to relieve the youngsters of the responsibility of their actions, but more to debate the whole way the system works and to pose the central question: 'okay, so we have young people committing crime... now what do we do about it ?' Do we dare take the chance on rehabilitation or do we pursue justice, a (false) sense of security and punishment for the actions comitted? What responsibility does society have for it's citizens, all of them, and the chances it provides them?The book manages to show us all the different ways these questions can be anwsered, and all the different angles that weigh in on how they are anwsered, making it clear, that this is not an easy topic, for anybody involved. Leaving you to ponder for yourself, where you stand on the matters. The book shows us how different people in the system, judges, probation officers, attorneys, politicians, a nun and several others think on the matter, based on their experiences. It shows us their frustrations with the system, the hopes they have and the reasons for the actions they take, that sometimes from the outside can seem incomprehensible.this is an important book because it is a book where many voices, we usually dont get a chance to listen to, is heard.this is a book, where you are shown how they feel, and you can't help feel with them.This is a book that leaves you with the feeling that something is not right and that something must be done. The what is up to you to decide.The only critique I have of this book is that it can sometimes be hard to follow all of the different people playing a part in this book, and that maybe it could have been benefitted from some overarching structure (if there was one, I didnt get it. The chapters seemed not to have any particular order, but be somewhat randomly put together), or at least an explanation of why it was put together the way it was. Also, here and there, there is a little too much 'lawtalk' and beaurocratic formality and institutional history pasages, that I dont think are entirely necessary, and could just as easily be handled (as it also is) to only the most important and central aspects and facts and making them part of the different stories/cases, and leaving out the longer 'fact monolouges'.That would also make the book less entrenched in the american system only, making it more universal, since I think the problems and debates are important to any one society, because we all most decide how we deal with crime offenders, especially the young ones, who has so much life left in them.The facts of the system are important, but even so it is the cases and the voices of these people that is the books strongest point and the most compelling read, and the facts would be better told if in direct relevance to the cases at hand.A small matter (that can be handled by skimming over it, if it doesnt have your interest), that does not take away from the book being both important and so so wellcrafted .I have much respect for what Edward Humes did here, both as a researcher and as a writer.
—MizzSandie
Humes immersed himself in California's juvenile justice system--most specifically, Thurgood Marshall Branch--chronicling the arrests of seven teenagers, their experiences in juvenile court, and their experiences following disposition (in juvenile court, defendants are "disposed of," not "sentenced"). He also discusses at length the work of and interplay between prosecutors, public and private defenders, and judges--in this case, namely Judge Roosevelt Dorn. The book begins by explaining that prior to the 1960s juvenile offenders were almost entirely at the mercy of the judge before which they appeared--they were not entitled to the same rights as adults. These conditions allowed an Arizona judge to sentence a teenager--without allowing him to plead the fifth and without his accuser appearing in court--to a six year term for making an obscene phone call. Three years later the Supreme Court intervened and overturned the conviction, ruling that juveniles could not face sentences more severe than those faced by adults.This ruling, while safeguarding against overzealous judges, has also allowed serious juvenile offenders to receive sentences far more lenient than their crimes warrant. In California at the time Humes wrote his book, only offenders sixteen years old and up could be tried in adult court--a fairly arbitrary and often infuriating cut-off. Humes follows one teen arrested for double homicide who, because he committed the murders nine days before his 16th birthday, will be prosecuted in juvenile court and thus must be released by his 25th birthday--and with a clean record. At the same time, much less culpable offenders--slightly older teens prosecuted because they were with friends who committed much less violent crimes--receive much greater sentences.On the other hand, the system sometimes produces the best results when it does *not* work as it was designed. For instance, one teenager charged with possession of crack cocaine received a six month stay at a rural detention camp. But this decision comes only because the juvenile's parents and attorney agree this is in his best interest. Had the attorney adhered to the wishes of the client, the client likely would have walked.Another major issue: as is true throughout the criminal (in)justice system, juvenile offenders with financial resources receive much more lenient sentences. Humes describes this as rich kids getting sentences tailored to them, and poor kids get sentences tailored to their crimes. This is usually because the private attorneys of rich kids produce character witnesses that demonstrate to the judge that the offender's behavior was an aberration or that the offender is otherwise an ideal candidate for rehabilitation, not a long sentence. One controversial but interesting approach to bettering the system is to remove kids from their homes for a length of time not determined by the seriousness of their offenses, but by the degree of dysfunction in their homes. As support for this idea, Humes includes sentiments from some offenders that they wish they had been dealt with more sternly during their earliest offenses, so they hadn't continued down a path that lead to *very* severe sentencing.
—Jeff Doucette
