juvenile delinquency

"Liz Hauck and her dad had a plan to start a weekly cooking program in a residential home for teen-aged boys in state care, which was run by the human services agency he co-directed. When her father died unexpectedly after a brief illness, Liz decided to attempt the cooking project without him. She didn't know what to expect volunteering with court-involved youth, but as a high school teacher she knew that teenagers are drawn to food-related activities, and as a daughter, she believed that if she and the kids made even a single dinner together she could check one box off of her father's long, unfinished to-do list. This is the story of what happened around the table, and how one dinner became one hundred dinners"--Provided by publisher.

"An intense yet tender story of two teens, trapped in impossible circumstances and unjust systems, willing to risk everything for love--no matter the consequences. Adriana knows that if she can manage to keep her head down for the next seven months, she might be able to get through her sentence in the Compass juvenile detention center. Thankfully, she's allowed to keep her journal, where she writes down her most private thoughts when her feelings get too big. Until the day she opens her journal and discovers that her thoughts are no longer so private. Someone has read her writings--and has written back. A boy who lives on the other side of the gender-divided detention center. A boy who sparks a fire in her to write back. Jon's story is different than Adriana's; he's already been at Compass for years and will be in the system for years to come. Still, when he reads the words Adriana writes to him, it makes him feel like the walls that hold them in have melted away. This . . . novel exposes what life is like in detention--and reveals the hearts of two teens who are forced to live in desperate circumstances"--Provided by publisher.

The founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest and most successful gang-intervention program in the world, through a series of moving stories that bear witness to the transformative power of tenderness, challenges ideas about God and about people.

"Stanley Yelnats ... has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes.".

"The author relates how her cousin was imprisoned at the age of fifteen for attempted carjacking and how she took him in upon his release, only to lose him to the deadly streets of South Central L.A."--OCLC.

"After being caught stealing one too many times, Benjamin Waterfalls is sent to a 'boot camp' at the Ojibwe reservation where he searches for answers as he tries to turn his life around and embrace this second chance"--OCLC.

"Very little has been written about juvenile justice. In the greater consciousness, the word 'justice' in this context has been leeched of meaning; it just signifies prison for kids. But to those living and working in various capacities within that system, the word 'justice' holds a sepulchral gravity. In Children of the State, bestselling author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace Jeff Hobbs presents three different true stories that show the day-to-day life and the existential challenges faced by those living and working in juvenile programs: educators, counselors, administrators, and--most importantly--children. While serving a year-long detention in Wilmington, DE--perennially one of the violent crime capitols of America--a bright but stunted young man considers the benefits and also the immense costs of striving for college acceptance while imprisoned. A career juvenile hall English Language Arts teacher struggles to align the small moments of wonder in her work alongside its overall statistical futility, all while the city government presumes to design a new juvenile system without cinderblocks--and possibly without those teaching in the current system. A territorial fistfight in Paterson, NJ is characterized by the media as a hate crime, and the boy held accountable for that crime seeks redemption and friendship in a rigorous Life & Professional Skills class in lower Manhattan. These stories are followed to their knotty conclusions in triptych form. In chronicling the work of this constellation of people trying to accomplish good work in abjectly horrible systems and circumstances, Children of the State asks: What should society do with young people who have made terrible decisions? For many kids, a woeful mistake made at age thirteen or fourteen--often as a result of external factors bearing upon a biologically immature brain--will resonate through the rest of their lives, making high school difficult, college nearly impossible, and a middle class life a foolish fantasy. To observe these missteps and raw challenges and small triumphs from shoulder height, through the experiences of thinking, feeling, poignant young people, is to be moved to consider altering the fixed narrative currently laid out of them. As Hobbs demonstrates in piercing, vivid prose: No one so young should ever be considered irredeemable"--Provided by the publisher.

"When Drix was convicted of a crime--one he didn't commit--he thought his life was over. But opportunity came with the Second Chance Program, the governor's newest pet project to get delinquents off the streets, rehabilitated and back into society. Drix knows this is his chance to get his life back on track, even if it means being paraded in front of reporters for a while. Elle knows she lives a life of privilege. As the governor's daughter, she can open doors with her name alone. But the expectations and pressure to be someone she isn't may be too much to handle. She wants to follow her own path, whatever that means. When Drix and Elle meet, their connection is immediate, but so are their problems. Drix is not the type of boy Elle's parents have in mind for her, and Elle is not the kind of girl who can understand Drix's messy life"--Provided by publisher.

Sixteen-year-old Cindra is caught in an armed robbery and sent to Montana to attend a reform camp, very different from her suburban upbringing. There she meets and falls in love with Lucky, a boy of mysterious origin, whose vast wilderness knowledge makes the two of them think they can flee and live off the grid in the wild. Then, Cindra is "rescued" and forced into a relationship in the now-stultifying suburban world with her so-called rescuer, but she never forgets or gives up the hope of finding Lucky and returning to her soulmate again.

After three years in juvenile detention, Angela is just months shy of release, but then ten-year-old Jessica arrives in shackles and is placed in segregation, and while no one knows what she did to end up there, creepy things begin to happen and it becomes clear that Jessica and her possible supernatural powers are more dangerous than anyone.