Who Gets a Childhood Race and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century Texas [Paperback]

Bush weaves the compelling story of this 110-year conflict between advocates of imprisonment and the proponents of rehabilitation at this troubled institution, observing that this is a story repeated nationwide as the US struggles to address the issue of juvenile justice.

William Bush draws on a staggering amount of research to introduce a compelling cast of previously unknown characters who put Texas and the U.S. South at the center of mid-twentieth-century juvenile justice reform. Legal scholars and social and political historians will need to read and respond to this novel and intriguing study.

Combining innovative archival research, astute analysis of popular culture, and gripping prose, Who Gets a Childhood? presents a harrowing history of juvenile corrections in twentieth-century Texas. Bush reminds us what happens to young people who are denied a childhood, while demonstrating that American juvenile justice has become the New American Dilemma that urgently demands our attention.

An immensely informative account of the complexities of reform and repression within the training schools of a state known for its tough penal culture.

The book constitutes an important contribution to a field in which local- and state-level histories are scarce—though its greatest value lies in its breadth, which extends far beyond the institutions of the juvenile justice system.

Bush’s multilayered analysis of some seven decades of Texas juvenile justice breaks new ground in a number of ways, and it should be required reading for anyone working at the intersection of race and juvenile justice in the twentieth century. The book constitutes an important contribution to a field in which local- and state-level histories are scarce—though its greatest lƒf