Return to Justice - by Ashley Nellis (Hardcover)

About the Book

The juvenile justice system has changed dramatically since its inception in this country. From a system that sought to protect and rehabilitate, to one that sought to punish and incarcerate, it is now refocusing on treatment and redirection. Here, Ashley Nellis delivers a hist...

Book Synopsis

The juvenile justice system has changed dramatically since its inception in this country. From a system that sought to protect and rehabilitate, to one that sought to punish and incarcerate, it is now refocusing on treatment and redirection. Here, Ashley Nellis delivers a history of the system and calls for more reforms to reflect current realities.

Review Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

About the Author

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.