Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 156
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4422-2766-8 • Hardback • December 2015 • $51.00 • (£39.00)
978-0-8108-9547-8 • Paperback • October 2017 • $34.00 • (£25.00)
978-1-4422-2767-5 • eBook • December 2015 • $32.00 • (£25.00)
Ashley Nellis, PhD, is a Senior Research Analyst with The Sentencing Project. She has an academic and professional background in analyzing criminal justice policies and practice, and has extensive experience in analyzing disparities among youth of color in the juvenile justice system. She leads The Sentencing Project’s research and legislative activities in juvenile justice reform and serves on several youth-serving coalitions. She regularly delivers testimony, authors articles, and conducts research. She is frequently interviewed by the media on a variety of juvenile justice-related topics. Nellis is actively engaged in federal and state efforts to eliminate life without parole sentences for juveniles and to reconsider lengthy sentences for all prisoners.
Introduction
1: VISIONS FOR JUVENILE JUSTICE
2: IMPROVING SAFEGUARDS
3: RACE-BASED REACTIONS TO THE RISE IN YOUTH VIOLENCE
4: FROM REHABILITATION TO RETRIBUTION
5: COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF YOUTH ENCOUNTERS WITH THE LAW
6: SHIFTING CLIMATE FOR REFORM
7: POLICING AMERICA’S SCHOOLS
8: IMPEDIMENTS TO SUSTAINABLE REFORM
Conclusion
This text could be of interest to those in the juvenile justice field, as it provides a good analysis of the development of the system.
— Corrections Today
This material would be of value to those that are looking at what has been done in the past and looking for questions to help further their questions for what can be done in the future.
— Journal of Youth and Adolescence
A Return to Justice, a comprehensive, eminently readable overview of America's broken juvenile "justice" system. Ashley Nellis deftly interweaves history, law, social science, and politics as she examines the problems that have long plagued the system - - including gross racial disparities, soaring recidivism, and high rates of institutional violence and abuse, among other - - and explores proven and promising alternatives. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in how our nation treats, and should treat, its most vulnerable children.
— Laura Cohen, Clinical Professor of Law, Justice Virginia Long Scholar and Director, Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic Rutgers School of Law, Newark
This is a well-written, well-researched book that will be accessible to many audiences. Nellis has a healthy skepticism for the successive "reforms" of the juvenile justice system over the last century since its creation.
— Mark Soler, Executive Director, Center for Children's Law and Policy
Nellis engagingly takes us on a journey that begins with the origins of the juvenile justice system with its vision of rehabilitation through the dark valleys of Reform Schools, Tough Love, Zero Tolerance and other false turns. She discusses the substantial gains and promise of the 21st century with evidence based interventions and a return to the system’s original vision that kids are different. Nellis revises the original vision by discussing the importance of caring for the whole child, not just addressing the child’s delinquent act, and the serious the role of race in the juvenile justice system. Nellis lucidly provides us the comprehensive facts to understand this on-going journey.
— Paolo Annino, JD, PhD, Glass Professor of Public Interest Law and Distinguished University Scholar, Public Interest Law Center, FSU College of Law