Carla J Barrett, Courting Kids: Inside an Experimental Youth Court
| Author | Victoria L Schall |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474514528474 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Carla J Barrett, Courting Kids: Inside an Experimental Youth Court, New York University Press:
New York, 2012; 220 pp. (including index): 9780814709450, $67.50 (cloth), $22.50 (pbk)
In 1978, New York gained the dubious distinction of becoming the first state to
mandate that certain juveniles be tried in adult criminal court by passing the
Juvenile Offenders Law (Barrett, 2012: p. 26). In doing so, New York dovetailed
from the traditional understanding of youthful offenders as less culpable and more
amenable to treatment than their adult counterparts. According to Carla Barrett,
the author of Courting Kids: Inside an Experimental Youth Court, the result was the
creation of a new category of defendant: the ‘adult-juvenile’ (p. 12). A number of
legal contradictions exist in this hybridization of legal groups, which has led to a
system that is often excessively punitive and unjust to the juveniles it handles. To
help mitigate the harm caused by the Juvenile Offenders Law, Judge Corriero
revived the Manhattan Youth Part, a specialized criminal court for young offen-
ders that blends juvenile justice practices and ideologies into the proceedings of the
court room. In detailing the work of the Manhattan Youth Part in her new eth-
nography, Barrett offers a deeply sympathetic and humanizing look into the lives of
the juvenile offenders charged as adults, as well as a rich, sociological account of
how one criminal court room continues to treat kids like kids in the face of highly
punitive transfer laws.
In the early 1800s, progressive reformers began to recognize that delinquent
youth were significantly different than criminal adults, and as such, deserved dif-
ferential treatment. These early reformers were concerned about the general welfare
of youth who offended, and adopted the guiding principle of parens patriae, which
required the state to act in the best interest of the youth. This early juvenile justice
system explicitly acknowledged the youthfulness of children who offended, as well
as the inherently dynamic nature of adolescence. As such, it emphasized individua-
lized treatment and rehabilitation over the prevailing punitive ideology of the crim-
inal justice system. Underlying this rehabilitative ideology was the notion that all
youth were ‘salvageable’ (p. 4) and, given the opportunity to change, could become
law-abiding, productive citizens.
This rehabilitative ideology lasted in New York until 1978 when the state passed
the Juvenile Offenders Law. This law mandated that all youth 13 and older and
charged with murder, or all youth 14 and older and charged with a variety of
serious felonies (robbery 1 and 2, kidnapping, rape, and burglary 1 and 2, etc.)
be tried, convicted, and punished as adults. This was the culmination of two major
social trends: the shift away from rehabilitation and toward retribution more gen-
erally, and the ‘super-predator’ moral panic. By the 1970s, political rhetoric began
emphasizing ‘tough on crime’ legislation and ‘public safety’, while labeling rehabili-
tation as ‘soft on crime’. Simultaneously, some cities experienced an increase in
juvenile violence. Although this violence was primarily isolated to urban areas
affected by the crack cocaine market, scholars and media outlets both predicted
a new kind of juvenile ‘super-predator’ based on this uptick. The moral panic that
followed was ‘in both covert and overt ways, [...] racialized [and] highly attentive
to a perceived threat of hyperviolence perpetrated by poor urban black and
Book reviews 629
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