Juvenile Offenders, a Right to Treatment, and the Costs And

William S. Bush. Who Gets a Childhood?: Race and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century Texas. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. 276 S. $24.95, e-book, ISBN 978-0-8203-3762-3. Reviewed by Mark Carroll Published on H-Law (August, 2012) Commissioned by Ethan Zadoff (CUNY Graduate Center) That the United States may soon have to ra‐ tiny town of Pyote, Bush tells the 120-year story of tion health care resources, including mental the Texas juvenile justice system that spawned health services, will almost certainly require its this notoriously dysfunctional institution. Orga‐ people and governments to take into account the nized into seven chapters and an epilogue, Who needs of adult prisoners, civilly committed mental Gets a Childhood? seeks to explain how Texas’s hospital patients, and a growing number of juve‐ regime of juvenile justice reached its current posi‐ nile offenders committed to the care of the states. tion as one of the more controversial systems in The questions of whether public resources are be‐ the United States, while also advocating aggres‐ ing used effectively in behalf of juvenile justice, sive juvenile justice reform across the nation. Ex‐ and whether they can be used more efficiently, amining closely the experiences of African Ameri‐ are of crucial importance at this time. Who Gets a can, Mexican American, and Euro-American girls Childhood? by historian William S. Bush illumi‐ and boys in the Texas training schools, which nates the historic mistreatment and outrageous racially segregated inmates into the 1960s, Bush abuses of poor African American, Latino, and unpacks the historic relationship between race, white youth in the training schools of twentieth- juvenile justice, and, importantly, competing un‐ century Texas. Equally important, the book makes derstandings of childhood. In this account, the an argument in behalf of a constitutional “right to history of the Texas juvenile justice system, which treatment” that would provide mental health re‐ began in 1889, is marked by a cyclical pattern of habilitation services for juveniles committed to abuse and scandal--from humanitarian reforms state custody. Bush thus makes a distinctive con‐ in the 1910s, 1940s, and 1970s, to juvenile crime tribution to the history of racial discrimination panics and “get-tough” “law and order” crack‐ and juvenile injustice in a multicultural southern downs in the 1950s and 1960s and from about state. Furthermore, his juvenile justice reform ad‐ 1985 to 2009. Public fears of “teenage terrorists” vocacy rekindles decades-old moral and political at the height of the Cold War and of “super-preda‐ debates that implicate directly the currently tors” in the Ronald Reagan era and early 1990s strained budgets of numerous states and the fed‐ generated the growth of expensive and remote eral government. lockdown facilities, which failed to deter juvenile Writing in response to the 2007 sexual abuse crime but unleashed unconscionable physical and scandal at the West Texas State School near the psychological abuses on inmates. This was so not‐ H-Net Reviews withstanding the fact that, since the 1940s, ex‐ lishment of the constitutional foundations for perts had reached a consensus on the superior ef‐ such programs articulated in that decision. fectiveness of smaller, community-based, rehabili‐ Bush acknowledges his intellectual debts to tative programs. Texas consistently failed to sus‐ those whose work has explored the historical de‐ tain its periodic reform efforts--a pattern Bush at‐ velopment of the early nineteenth-century notion tributes most to a widespread willingness to view of protected childhood, most recently reprised in juvenile offenders as fully responsible adults. He Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood also argues that the inadequacies of the Texas sys‐ (2005) by historian Steven J. Mintz, and to social tem have been a consequence of structural neces‐ historian David J. Rothman, whose The Discovery sity; white racism; the ideological commitments of of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the administrators; the resistance of juveniles placed New Republic (1971) frst revealed fully the diver‐ in state custody; recalcitrant townspeople who gence between lofty child-saving rhetoric and the staffed, ran, and protected the institutions; legisla‐ hard realities of juvenile justice in the United tors who were generally hostile to expenditures States. Also clearly informing Who Gets a Child‐ for juvenile delinquents they deemed morally sus‐ hood? is Bad Kids: Race and the Transformation pect' and the transience and disorganization of of the Juvenile Court (1999) by legal historian Bar‐ child advocates, at least until the 1970s. ry C. Feld and Juvenile Justice in the Making According to Bush, Texas resembled many (2004) by legal historian David S. Tanenhaus, both other states in its utter failure to live up to Pro‐ of which examine the tensions between viewing gressive-Era promises of professional, individual‐ juveniles as children in need of protection and as ized treatment--a lapse, he argues in several chap‐ “little more than adult criminals in miniature” (p. ters, that extended the privileges of a “protected 3). Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth childhood” to white middle- and upper-class (1996), authored by critical pedagogy theorist youth, while denying those protections to African Henry A. Giroux, and Rethinking Juvenile Justice Americans, Latinos, and poor whites. The central (2008), coauthored by juvenile justice expert Eliz‐ shortcoming of juvenile justice in Texas and else‐ abeth S. Scott and psychologist Laurence Stein‐ where has been its chronic inability to shelter berg, provide some of the conceptual grist with youth from the dangers, responsibilities, and ex‐ which Bush makes his point that the characteriza‐ periences of the world of adult criminal justice, tion of violent juveniles as super-predators is, including, of late, the death penalty. Federal court- when fung at people of color, fundamentally ordered reforms in the Texas case Morales v. Tur‐ racist and that scholars, policy makers, and youth man (1974) advanced new due process rights for advocates have begun to rethink the recent trajec‐ referred juveniles, a constitutional right to treat‐ tory toward stern punishment of juveniles. Quite ment, and community-based rehabilitation pro‐ evidently influencing Bush’s presentation also is grams for them. But the latter were abandoned by The Cycle of Juvenile Justice (1992) by late crimi‐ the Texas authorities in the late 1980s in the face nal law specialist Thomas J. Bernard, which exam‐ of a growing public panic over rising juvenile ines alternating advocacy for lenient treatment crime and super-predators. A central feature of and harsh punishment for juvenile offenders in the solution that Bush advocates for offenders un‐ American history. der the age of eighteen, violent and nonviolent, is Who Gets a Childhood? joins a host of fne more aggressive implementation of the kinds of works, including those referenced above, that reforms ordered in Morales and the frm estab‐ have taken the study of juvenile justice in the United States into new directions. In fact, a verita‐ 2 H-Net Reviews ble rediscovery of juvenile delinquency and cor‐ historian Mary E. Odem; Reform and Resistance: rections has occurred, one that revisits their his‐ Gender, Delinquency, and America’s First Juvenile torical development with an array of new meth‐ Court (2001) by educational studies expert Anne ods, approaches, and geographic foci. Bush de‐ Meis Knupfer; Caught: Montreal’s Modern Girls serves much credit for producing the frst book- and the Law, 1869-1945 (2007) by Canadian histo‐ length study to examine the juvenile justice sys‐ rian Tamara Myer; and Justice for Girls? Stability tem of a state once belonging to the Confederacy. and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the But it also joins company with criminal justice United States and Canada (2009), coauthored by specialist Jennifer A. Trost’s Gateway to Justice: criminal justice specialist Jane B. Sprott and crimi‐ The Juvenile Court and Progressive Child Welfare nologist Anthony N. Doob. in a Southern City (2005), which breaks new Bush is completely transparent about his ground in this regard by examining the juvenile choice to make Who Gets a Childhood? a strong courts in Memphis, Tennessee. Expert in criminal response to those who have, since about the justice Geoff K. Ward’s The Black Child-Savers: mid-1980s, called for incarceration, sterner penal‐ Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice (2012) ex‐ ties, and adult sentencing for violent juvenile amines the Jim Crow juvenile justice systems that criminals. He makes no effort to conceal his inten‐ developed across the United States in the twenti‐ tion to make his book both a scholarly history and eth century and the failure within them of the re‐ a tool with which to educate readers about the habilitative ideal for black youth. Complementing 1990s-spawned myth of the super-predator and Bush’s investigation of Latino and black youth in the actual circumstances and challenges of juve‐ the Texas system is Chicana/o studies specialist nile offenders. His research, presentation, and ar‐ Miroslava Chávez-García’s States of Delinquency: guments, quite clearly, show an abiding sympathy Race and Science in the Making of California’s Ju‐ for the plight of wayward youth who end up in venile Justice System (2012), the frst book to ex‐ the custody of the state. But it should be noted amine the experiences of Mexican American, that Bush proceeds evenhandedly. He gives credit African American, and ethnic Euro-American to the Texas juvenile justice system when credit is youth in the California juvenile correctional facili‐ due. He provides full coverage of the courageous ties--experiences made more difficult by the inter‐ efforts of reformers, judges, and administrators play of racist science, pseudo-scientific research, who, time and again, bucked recalcitrant “locals” and the disproportionate classification of youths and conservative reactionaries in the political of color as “degenerate.” Equally relevant to arena.

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