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This book, which analyzes the justice system's response to sexual misconduct by children and adolescents in the United States, discusses American society's failure to consider the developmental status of adolescent sex offenders. Too often, the author argues, the American legal system ignores age and developmental status when adjudicating young sexual offenders, in many cases responding as they would to an adult.

Building the Prison State is a new look at why the United States locks millions of people behind bars, in harsh conditions, with little opportunity to better themselves, for long periods of time. Drawing on the story of one high incarceration state between 1950 and 2016, the book argues that racial conflicts led to the bureaucratization and modernization of policing, courts, and corrections. The book demonstrates that policymakers’ investments in carceral capacity in the 1960s and 1970s built the foundation for the punitive carceral state by empowering law enforcement and victims and incentivizing tough-on-crime political posturing. As a result, despite the high fiscal costs and grave collateral consequences, politicians from both sides of the aisle advocated for more prisons and longer prison sentences. Richly contextualized in Florida and the nation’s partisan and racial politics, the book takes readers through civil rights protests, lawsuits over prison conditions, attempts at sentencing reform, the advent of the War on Drugs, and the rise of conservative politics. By focusing on the choices made by politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, and activists, the book demonstrates that mass incarceration was not inevitable. It concludes that reversing prison growth will require changing political incentives and developing a new ideological basis for criminal punishment.

One of the most astonishing aspects of juvenile crime is how little is known about the impact of the policies and programs put in place to fight it. The most commonly used strategies and programs for combating juvenile delinquency problems primarily rely on intuition and fads. Fortunately, as a result of the promising new research, these deficiencies in our juvenile justice system might quickly be remedied. The book demonstrates here that as crime rates have fallen, researchers have identified more connections between specific risk factors and criminal behavior, while program developers have discovered a wide array of innovative interventions. The result of all this activity, it reveals, has been the revelation of a few prevention models that reduce crime much more cost-effectively than popular approaches such as tougher sentencing, D.A.R.E., boot camps, and “scared straight” programs. This book presents the most promising of these prevention programs, their histories, the quality of evidence to support their effectiveness, the public policy programs involved in bringing them into wider use, and the potential for investments and developmental research to increase the range and quality of programs.

For over a century, as women have fought for and won greater freedoms, concern over an epidemic of female criminality, especially among young women, has followed. Fear of this crime wave — despite a persistent lack of evidence of its existence — has played a decisive role in the development of the youth justice systems in the United States and Canada. This book is a comprehensive comparative study of the way these countries have responded to the hysteria over “girl crime” and how it has affected the treatment of both girls and boys. Tackling a century of historical evidence and crime statistics, the book traces the evolution of approaches to the treatment of young offenders. Seeking to keep youths out of adult courts, both countries have built their systems around rehabilitation. But, as the book reveals, the myth of the “girl crime wave” led to a punitive system where young people are dragged into court for minor offenses and girls are punished far more severely than boys. Thorough, timely, and persuasive, this book will be vital to anyone working with troubled youths.

Legal and public policies concerning youth gun violence tend to rely heavily on crime reports, survey data, and statistical methods. Rarely is attention given to the young voices belonging to those who carry high-powered semiautomatic handguns. This book recounts in-depth interviews with youths detained at an all-male correctional facility, exploring how they talk about guns and what meanings they ascribe to them in a broader attempt to understand some of the assumptions implicit in current handgun policies. In the process, the book redraws the relationships among empirical research, law, and public policy. Home to over 150 repeat offenders ranging in age from twelve to seventeen, the Catalina Mountain School is made up of a particular stratum of boys—those who have committed the most offenses but will still be released upon reaching adulthood. In an effort to understand the symbolic and emotional language of guns and gun carrying, dozens of these incarcerated Catalina boys were interviewed. What do these youths see in guns? What draws them to handguns? Why do some of them carry and others not? Their often surprising answers unveil many of the presuppositions that influence our laws and policies.

Without our consent and often without our knowledge, the government can constantly monitor many of our daily activities, using closed circuit TV, global positioning systems, and a wide array of other sophisticated technologies. With just a few keystrokes, records containing our financial information, phone and e-mail logs, and sometimes even our medical histories can be readily accessed by law enforcement officials. As this book explains, these intrusive acts of surveillance are subject to very little regulation. Applying the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, the author argues that courts should prod legislatures into enacting more meaningful protection against government overreaching. The author sets forth a comprehensive framework meant to preserve rights guaranteed by the Constitution without compromising the government's ability to investigate criminal acts.

Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers examines the sexual exploitation of maturing teenagers by adults. It explores why scientific facts concerning adolescent neurological and psychosocial development are incongruent with protective laws concerning juvenile consent to sexual activity. Adolescents may not have the wisdom—the emotional, intellectual, and experiential tools—to handle challenges, such as sexual harassment. The book recounts the stories of several teenagers who filed federal or state anti-discrimination cases. It analyzes these cases in light of evolving law and gendered social attitudes concerning sexually active women and youth. From case stories, readers can evaluate the factors, including adolescent development and judicial bias, which arguably play a role in exploitation cases. The book also highlights conflicting criminal and civil laws, detailing the legal and social mixed message received by adults and teenagers. It traces why personal injury law, sexual harassment law, and statutory rape laws fail to protect American teenagers adequately. The book concludes that while teen sexual exploitation remains problematic, corrective remedies more congruent with teen developing capacity exist. For example, “legal assent,” a new proposal affords adolescents autonomy but also allows them to correct their errors by retracting their “consent” when they realize during their minority that they have made a mistake. The book provides a thorough interdisciplinary discussion of the science of adolescent development, the problem of sexual exploitation, and sexual harassment law. It proposes legal, administrative and public policy changes for how parents, jurists, and concerned citizens might better protect American teenagers from sexual coercion and abuse.