A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court

by William Ayers and Bill Ayers

Book Overview

Most people know juvenile offenders only from daily headlines, and the images portrayed by the media are extreme and violent: predators and even "superpredators." Distorted and incomplete, these pictures shape the way Americans think and feel about city kids, poor kids, children of color.

A Kind and Just Parent gives us a transformative view of kids caught up in the justice system that we could never get from nightly news and newspaper stories. William Ayers has spent five years as teacher and observer in Chicago's Juvenile Court prison, the nation's first and largest institution of juvenile justice, founded by legendary reformer Jane Addams to act as a "kind and just parent" for kids in need. Today, immensely confused and confusing, it serves as a perfect microcosm of the way American justice deals with children.

Through brilliant storytelling, Ayers captures the lives and personalities of young people caught up in the juvenile justice system. The book follows a year in the life of the prison school. Its characters are three dimensional: funny, quirky, sometimes violent, and often vulnerable. We see young people talking about their lives, analyzing their own situations, and thinking about their friends and their futures. We watch them throughout a school year and meet some remarkable teachers. From the intimate perspective of a teacher, Ayers gives us portraits, history, and analysis that help us to understand not only what brought these kids into the court system, but why people find it hard to think straight about them, and what we might do to keep their younger brothers and sisters from landing in the same place.

Unsentimental yet wrenching, A Kind and Just Parent is a riveting look at kids and crime. It will change the way Americans think about juvenile crime and juvenile justice.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807044032
• ISBN13: 9780807044032
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great stories of juveniles and justice system in trouble.

This is a story of children, real children, still soft inside, and yet with a force field that can put off both the kindest and the most brutal attacks one can inflict. It is a story of a justice system long gone amuck, but often with good intentions, and some surprisingly good people lighting up the corners. Ayers is a good tale-teller, and catches students at the juvenile detention "home" in Chicago - it could just as well be many other places - in moments of anger, despair, humor, joy, self-deception and learning, along with the teachers that carefully try to offer regularity, challenge and choice. For those many to whom juveniles and juvenile detention facilities are not real, this book is a must. For those who know, it will be a renewed inspiration and challenge. [...]

This book is powerful, instructive, and brilliant.

Ayers book should be read by all educators who work with young people forgotten by the system. His case studies are brilliantly drawn and teach us a great deal about "juvenile justice". It has provoked discussion of poverty, violence, and social change. It has changed the thinking of many of my students for its clarity, insight, and hope.