Juvenile Author:Joseph Rodriguez, Nell Bernstein In 1989, juvenile courts handed 1.2 million delinquency cases. A decade later, this number had risen 44 percent, to 1.8 million. During this same period the violent-crime index dropped for juveniles. Today, there are more than 100,000 young people behind bars in the United States, 14,000 of them housed in adult jails or prisons. Two thirds of th... more »ese are people of color, though minority youths account for one third of the entire juvenile population. Most of the incarcerated are boys, but the number of female inmates is rising at nearly three times the rate for that of males. Each year, about 11,000 detainees try to kill themselves.
For his second powerHouse Books monograph, Juvenile , photographer Joseph Rodríguez spent several years following several youths, from arrest, counseling, trial adjudication, and incarceration, to release, probation, house arrest, group homes, and the search for employment and meaning in their lives. Additionally, Rodríguez documented some of the people who work in the juvenile justice system: judges, public defenders, district attorneys, probation officers, and social workers. Many of these kids face great obstacles, including a criminal justice system with decreasing political interest in offering second chances. Through the power of his photographs, Rodríguez shows us how these kids struggle and how they fight to change their lives.« less