NO MATTER HOW LOUD I SHOUT : A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court

by Edward Humes

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684811952
• Release Date: May 1997
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.4" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Powerful, haunting, and illuminating

I read this book for a history of child welfare class and found it impossible to put down. Humes clearly illustrates the problems with the U.S. Juvenile Justice system in Los Angeles. He follows several teen-agers through their trials, mis-trials, time in the California Youth Authority, and rehabilitation. Even though these children are often convicted, you have a chance to see that they really are just children. This book inspired me to pursue a career in juvenile justice.

One of the best I've read

I read this book for my sociology class. It was the best I've read. The stories of these kids are so involving and twisted that you wonder if this is book is fiction. This gives such insight to the problems of todays juveniles and how the court system fails them repeatedly and how the kids fail themself. Truly sad and yet reminding us how cold life can be and how fortunate some of us actually are relative to these kids. Although you can read this book in a few hours, it's still worth having on your shelf. This book is part indictment of the system and part spotlight on the troubles ahead for us all if it's not corrected.

there has to be a better way

This is the quintessential book for me. All I can say is that everyone and no one is responsible for the plight of kids like "George Trevino". His impossible situation haunted me, surfacing raw emotions. Why do we turn our backs on kids like this? We need to find an answer fast before we transform conscientious orphans into delinquents whose only dominant emotion is hate. Where is George now? Has he given up on the system yet? I hope not. Every time I think of his disadvantaged life I need an easy culprit to lay the blame on, when in reality I should be holding the person in the mirror accountable...

Reminds me of Hill Street Blues--with kids

This book is fast-paced, eye-opening and so very well written that I just couldn't put it down. Edward Humes takes you on a marvelous, often maddening, trip inside the secret world of juvenile court. In another writer's hands, this could have been a dull story. But No Matter How Loud I Shout swept me up from the very first page. To me, the best part is the real life characters who make up the eclectic cast of kid criminals, cops, lawyers, judges and hapless parents. The author weaves their stories together in an amazing book that reads like a novel, yet unfortunately is all too real.

Right Out of the Headlines...

This book, which just won the PEN Center USA West Literary Award in Research Nonfiction, is a must read for anyone who is concerned about youth, crime, and our justice system. Humes presents the incredibly complex situation in Los Angeles' juvenile courts to the reader, allowing us to feel it, see it, hear it, and at times even smell it. We see the impact of tougher laws, how they tie the hands of all involved, and we begin to understand that decisions are rarely based on what's right or even what's best. Instead no one seems satisfied with the way our juvenile courts work, certainly not the judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, families, and victims. Humes, who spent a year observing the court system and who taught creative writing to the some of the troubled youth, allows us to see just how vulnerable or horrific some of them are. You will never read the headlines in the same way again. The most engrossing book I've read in years