Book Review: The evolution of the juvenile court: Race, politics, and the criminalizing of juvenile justice

• Date: 01 September 2021
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016818804873
• Author: Jessica Y. Cuthbert
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

by listening” (p. 74), to “start with the end in mind,” (p. 115), and that “more is less” (p. 142). A little

hackneyed, but in context they work.

The section on professionalism resonates with anyone who works with data development. The

chapter on judges, which relates to the lessons on professionalism, can be summarized as follows:

Judges’ decisions are only as good as the evidence/information they receive. Or even more suc-

cinctly, garbage in, garbage out. Judges do not generate evidence. They must make decisions on

what they are provided. Trial attorneys owe it to their clients, the jury, and the judge to produce as

much high-quality evidence as possible. Relatedly, reputation and integrity matter. They are hard to

earn, easy to lose, and important tools in the trial kit. The same could be said of any social science

research. The quality of the research depends on the quality of the data and the quality of the

analysis.

Finally, the most practical section of the book is the last. It is, in essence, a practice guide. Each

chapter ends with a practice checklist, but this last section casts aside pontification to provide the

true nuts and bolts of quality courtroom work. This section is a relative novelty and not something

that is often seen in social science research, but perhaps the authors are setting a trend.

While this work gives little attention to the technological aspects of modern trial work, or to the

benefits of using technology to develop evidence, profile jurors, or research the courtroom players, it

otherwise provides an exciting and highly usable approach to teaching trial practice. Bottom line:

Read it if you want to be a lawyer, work with lawyers, or just want to think like one for a little while.

Feld, B. C. (2017).

The evolution of the juvenile court: Race, politics, and the criminalizing of juvenile justice. New York: New York

University Press. 392 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4798-9569-4.

Reviewed by: Jessica Y. Cuthbert ,University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016818804873

In The Evolution of the Juvenile Court: Race, Politics, and the Criminalizing of Juvenile Justice,

Barry Feld (2017) provides a comprehensive historical analysis of the juvenile court from its

inception in Cook County, IL, in 1899 to the present day. Feld delivers a robust summary of the

juvenile court’s transformation throughout four distinct eras: the Progressive Era, the Due Process

Era, the Get-Tough Era, and the Kids Are Different Era. He demonstrates how each period was

shaped by the specific social, cultural, and political ideologies of its time. And in the last two eras in

particular, Feld lucidly demonstrates how courts are torn between whether to punish or rehabilitate

the child—punishment prevails.

Feld provides several key points supported by past research and sound evidence. He discusses

Supreme Court cases such as Miranda v. Arizona,Kent v. United States, and decisions from in re

Gault,Roper,Graham, and Miller to explain how our juvenile justice system has failed to extend full

protection to our youth while at the same time punishing them for their age, race, and economic

status. Feld also explores how political parties have planted and exploited public fears of crime and

use “White voters’ racial animus” to promote get tough policies to secure their own political

campaigns. This strategy has resulted in the abandonment of children’s rights in the juvenile system

and damaging the futures of largely Black and brown youth and their families. In addition, Feld uses

an interdisciplinary approach in his research that includes the work of developmental psychology

and neuroscience scholars to argue that the diminish ed culpability of minors is not adequately

388 Criminal Justice Review 46(3)