No Matter How Loud I Shout - An Insider's Look at the Juvenile Justice System

The book No Matter How Loud I Shout outlines several of the major conflicts within the juvenile justice system in its pages.� The conflict between the need for the system to protect the public from the most violent and dangerous of its charges, and the desire to help these children get away from their lives of crime, a desire that is seemingly losing its battle.� Another conflict is between the rights of the children to due process in court, and the court's ability to administer the necessary punishments and treatments.� The last major conflict is between those that fight for a renewal of the system, and those that want to see it dismantled.� Each side of each conflict has strong supporters and strong arguments that favor it, which is why the issue of juvenile justice is such a hotbed of debate and confusion.

Few would argue that the justice systems first priority is to protect the public from those within its jurisdiction that are a danger to the safety of others.� There is however much debate on what can and should be done with these children once they enter the system and are deemed too dangerous to be released back to their parents or guardians.� Recent trends have been towards locking them away for as long as possible with little access to any sort of programs to help curb their involvement in criminal activities, or even to waive more and more of them into adult court with little consideration of the possibility of rehabilitation, or to the needs of each individual offender.

The book best demonstrates this with the cases of Ronald Duncan, George Trevino and Geri Vance.� Ronald Duncan, the one case illustrated in the book in which the juvenile system has almost no chance of saving the child from a future of crime is the one case in which it couldn't waive the child into adult court and enforce any sort of severe punishment.� At the same time in the cases of George and Geri, the system was very nearly forced to send them to adult court, even though they both demonstrated that they had at least a chance of being rehabilitated and leading productive law abiding lives after release.