Who gets a childhood? : race and juvenile justice in twentieth-century Texas / William S. Bush.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

1967- Bush.

Contributor:

William S..

Series:

Politics and culture in the twentieth-century South.

Politics and culture in the twentieth-century South

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Juvenile justice, Administration of--Texas--History--20th century.

Juvenile justice, Administration of.

Discrimination in juvenile justice administration--Texas--History--20th century.

Discrimination in juvenile justice administration.

Juvenile delinquents--Texas--History--20th century.

Juvenile delinquents.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 p.)

Edition:

1版.

Place of Publication:

Athens, GA : University of Georgia Press, c2010.

Summary:

Using Texas as a case study for understanding change in the American juvenile justice system over the past century, William S. Bush tells the story of three cycles of scandal, reform, and retrenchment, each of which played out in ways that tended to extend the privileges of a protected childhood to white middle- and upper-class youth, while denying those protections to blacks, Latinos, and poor whites. On the forefront of both progressive and "get tough" reform campaigns, Texas has led national policy shifts in the treatment of delinquent youth to a surprising degree. Changes in the legal system have included the development of courts devoted exclusively to young offenders, the expanded legal application of psychological expertise, and the rise of the children's rights movement. At the same time, broader cultural ideas about adolescence have also changed. Yet Bush demonstrates that as the notion of the teenager gained currency after World War II, white, middle-class teen criminals were increasingly depicted as suffering from curable emotional disorders even as the rate of incarceration rose sharply for black, Latino, and poor teens. Bush argues that despite the struggles of reformers, child advocates, parents, and youths themselves to make juvenile justice live up to its ideal of offering young people a second chance, the story of twentieth-century juvenile justice in large part boils down to "the exclusion of poor and nonwhite youth from modern categories of childhood and adolescence."

Contents:

Introduction : Race, childhood, and juvenile justice history

The other lost generation : reform and resistance in the juvenile training schools, 1907-1929

Socializing delinquency : child welfare, mental health, and the critique of institutions, 1929-1949

Juvenile rehabilitation and the color line : the training school for Black delinquent girls, 1943-1950

James Dean and Jim Crow : the failure of reform and the racialization of delinquency in the 1950's

"Hard to reach" : the politics of delinquency prevention in postwar Houston

Circling the wagons : the struggle over the Texas Youth Council, 1965-1971

Creating a right to treatment : Morales v. Turman, 1971-1988

Epilogue : The new American dilemma.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612795817

9781282795815

1282795813

9780820337623

0820337625

OCLC:

676697516