Voices for the Young: Looking Out for Children at Risk
The Los Angeles juvenile-court system is a world turned upside down, a noisy, chaotic, and frustrating world abounding with injustice. Every element of this institution is in striking counterpoint to the world outside its decaying doors; everything here is diametrically opposed to the norm. The corridors of these courts are populated with parents who are still children themselves, children who know no parent but the state, and baby-faced teenagers charged with crimes worthy of the most hardened adult felons.
Such is the picture presented by Edward Humes in No Matter How Loud I Shout , a firsthand account of one of the most troubled institutions in one of the most troubled areas of the country. The book centers around a judge, a state prosecutor, and several of the children whose cases pass through the court. We see the chronic frustration of each one, a frustration brought about and compounded by a failed system. Most troubling are the stories of the defendants, children who inhabit an adult world but who fight to keep the status of a juvenile--and the more lenient sentences that come with it. Here, more than anywhere else in Mr. Humes' account, is the injustice of the juvenile system apparent. One boy, a few weeks shy of his 16th birthday and the adult status it brings, kills his benevolent employers with a shotgun, but can legally serve time only until he is 25. Another boy, just over 16, is simply present when a juvenile acquaintance commits murder, but he faces life in prison.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author writes from experience teaching a writing class at a juvenile detention center to the children whose stories he tells, and from this experience comes a tale that readers are likely to find at once infuriating, harrowing, and captivating. Perhaps most poignant are the products of the writing class that are excerpted throughout the book, heartfelt and heartbreaking memoirs from the pens of teenage murderers and armed...
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