Having a child with physical or mental disabilities is usually a social experience, and you are embraced by other families facing the same challenges. Having a child who goes to prison frequently imposes isolation. Parents on visiting day at a juvenile facility may complain to one another in a friendly way, but aside from those communities in which illegality is the norm, this is a misery that doesn't love company. The parents of criminals have access to few resources. No colorful guides posit an upside to having a child who has broken the law; no charming version of "Welcome to Holland" has been adapted for this population. This deficit also has advantages: no one trivializes what you are going through; no one uses learning centers with colorful crepe-paper decorations to try to turn your grief into a festivity. No one proselytizes that the only loving response to your child's crime is gladness or urges you to celebrate what you want to mourn. through; no one uses learning centers with colorful crepe-paper decorations to try to turn your grief into a festivity. No one proselytizes that the only loving response to your child's crime is gladness or urges you to celebrate what you want to mourn.

Thousands of institutions have been designed to assuage the challenges attached to many horizontal identities: schools for the deaf, mainstreaming programs, hospitals for those afflicted with schizophrenic psychosis. Most juvenile criminals are institutionalized in state facilities intended more to punish than to rehabilitate. Many can't be turned around; the idea of near-universal rehabilitation is a liberal fantasy. But there are enough young convicts in whom the damage is situational that the moral imperative is to treat them all. An oncologist can tolerate the deaths of most of his patients because of the ones he saves; if we can redeem even 10 percent of would-be career criminals, we can reduce human suffering and economize on prosecution and prison. Jails draw on the popular belief that the more we punish people, the safer the country becomes. This resembles the assumption that the more you whip your children, the better they will turn out.

The three cardinal principles of imprisonment are deterrence, incapacitation, and retribution. Deterrence works to some degree; the prospect of jail can discourage those contemplating a crime, but it does so less than most of the general population thinks. Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, an organization led by more than twenty-five hundred police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, and others in law enforcement, states, "Those on the front lines in the fight against crime know that it's impossible to arrest and imprison our way out of the crime problem." A meta-analysis that collated two hundred studies found that while the best rehabilitative programs-behavioral therapy, teaching family programs-achieved a 30 to 40 percent reduction in recidivism even for serious offenders, punitive therapies had null or negative effects. The National Institutes of Health advised, "Scare tactics don't work and may make the problem worse."

Incapacitation works insofar as people behind bars cannot easily commit further crimes. But unless one plans to keep offenders in jail for life, the problem remains of how they will behave when they get out. Prisons are often the locus of contagion, where first offenders learn criminal ways from more experienced peers. Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, recently said, "Juvenile justice systems have become colleges of criminality, paving the way to further crimes and adult incarceration." More than 80 percent of those incarcerated under age eighteen will be arrested again within three years of release. If you want your son to stay out of jail, then keep him out of jail, because once he's been in, he's likely to be in repeatedly. want your son to stay out of jail, then keep him out of jail, because once he's been in, he's likely to be in repeatedly.

Retribution is a fashionable euphemism for is a fashionable euphemism for revenge revenge, the schadenfreude a wronged person feels from seeing his tormentor disciplined. Retribution is a way of indulging the victims; they feel powerless, and seeing their adversaries jailed or executed sometimes makes them feel enfranchised. That has a limited merit; interviews with people who have fought to have others put to death reveal that execution did not afford them the satisfaction they had anticipated.

Cora Nelson was verbally and physically abused as a child in rural Minnesota. Her early marriage, which produced two daughters, Jennifer and Mandy Stiles, was a disaster; in her mid-twenties, she developed cervical cancer and was told she would never again conceive. When she fell in love with Luke Makya, a handsome, alcoholic Native American, he didn't mind that they would be unable to have a family. Then, to the astonishment of her doctors, Cora became pregnant and delivered what she called her "miracle baby," Pete. For Jennifer, Cora's eldest daughter, her new half brother was "my living doll that talked and walked." Luke, however, became increasingly alcoholic and vicious. "Something happened to him," Jennifer recalled. "The good man my mother had married, and that we all loved, ceased to exist."

When Luke went on a rampage, Jennifer would keep Pete in bed with her to protect him. Nonetheless, Pete witnessed his mother getting hit and choked, and he was walloped, too. "There were times when it was going to be a bad day-but there were times when it was good," Pete recalled. "The first time I ever shot a rifle, we were aiming at pop cans in the water, and the first one I shot at, I hit. He just scooped me up in his arms, like he was so proud of me." Once, Luke crawled into Jennifer's bed and put his hand on her thigh; Jennifer, who had already been the victim of sexual abuse from a male babysitter when she was six, fought him off. "I have more good memories of this man than I do bad," she said, "but the bad ones are so so bad." bad."

One evening when Luke was wasted, he beat Pete badly, then drove off to hit the bars. For Cora, this was the end; she packed their bags and left with Pete, then six, and Mandy, who was a teenager; Jennifer had already moved out. Cora had Luke evicted and moved back home. Luke broke into the house, cut up Cora's dresses, and took his guns. Cora obtained an order of protection and filed for divorce. In the months that followed, Pete would sometimes visit his father on weekends, but Luke would usually be wasted. Cora started seeing Ethan Heinz, a bus mechanic.

One week before Cora's no-fault divorce was supposed to come through, Mandy returned from school to find Luke at the kitchen table. She called Cora, who called the police, but Luke had fled before they arrived. Cora took the family to stay with Ethan. When they returned a few days later, they found the door open and called the police. Again, they found nothing unusual; Cora asked them to check the basement. "They go down, and he's in there," Pete remembered. "He's got a shotgun, a .22 rifle, and a .30-30 rifle. He comes out with the rifle in his hand, like he was going to shoot 'em. The gun was jammed, so he couldn't get a shot off-but they didn't know that. They shot him three times, and they killed him." Cora and her three children were upstairs.

Luke's plan had been to kill both Cora and himself. He had left his son a note, saying that what was to happen was not Pete's fault, and that if Pete should ever miss him, he need only "look at the constellation Orion, because that's me. Always the hunter, never the hunted." Pete said, "He had depression but wouldn't get help because he thought they'd make him give up his alcohol, and he loved his alcohol more than anything else. I wish so much he'd chosen me over alcohol. But he didn't."

After that, Cora would be fine some days, but on others, Pete recalled, "she just couldn't do much, and I'd have to take care of her a lot." That was a steep task for a grieving six-year-old-especially one who "felt like if I'd done something different, maybe he wouldn't have tried to kill my mom." Pete ached for the loss. "My father wasn't tall like me," he said to me. "But there's this jacket he had that fits perfectly. I wear it when I'm lonely."

The whole family went to live with Ethan. "Who wants to stay in a house where there's bullet holes in the appliances?" said Jennifer. She had gotten pregnant in high school and dropped out after her daughter, Sondra, was born. When her relationship with Sondra's father ended, she and Sondra moved back in with the family. Jennifer developed chronic migraines. "I retreated to my dark room, for years," she said. "If Sondra didn't share a room with me, I don't think I would have done anything for her." Just as Jennifer had been Pete's childhood companion, so six-year-old Pete was now Sondra's. "Pete picked up the slack, paid attention to her," Jennifer said.

But Pete was often sullen and withdrawn. In third grade, he got annoyed at a girl and stabbed her in the thigh, deeply, with a pencil. He developed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and had trouble in school despite his obvious intelligence. The family moved to a pleasant working-class suburb, and the counselor at his new school tried to combat Pete's inattentiveness with Ritalin. But the ADHD was mingled with serious depression, and Ritalin made him more agitated. Antidepressants provoked hypomania in him. By then, his teachers had labeled him a troublemaker. mingled with serious depression, and Ritalin made him more agitated. Antidepressants provoked hypomania in him. By then, his teachers had labeled him a troublemaker.

Pete rejected Ethan as a father figure; as time passed, he began to rebel against his mother as well. Cora found it difficult to discipline him. "She loved him to the point of not seeing him," Jennifer said. At thirteen, Pete broke into a store, stole some cigarettes, and was charged with a gross misdemeanor. A year later, he tried to walk out of the Mall of America with a shoplifted skateboard and went briefly to jail. By then, he was also getting in trouble for truancy. Cora requested a psychiatric consultation for him from her HMO, but Pete was denied treatment.

Soon thereafter, Marcella, the nine-year-old daughter of Jennifer's best friend, Annie, told her mother that Pete had forcibly kissed her and had rubbed her chest through her shirt; she insinuated that he had done more to Sondra. Annie immediately called Jennifer. "I remember, vividly, throwing up right afterwards," Jennifer said. That night, she asked Sondra about it. "Full-on sexual abuse, starting when she was six," Jennifer said. "My baby brother, who I had taken care of, who I would have died for, had done this to my daughter." She called the police immediately.

Cora told Pete, "This is the absolute worst thing you could have possibly done. I couldn't have imagined anything this bad, and I can't imagine anything worse. But now I know. And I'm still your mother, and I still love you. So you know what? Now you know for sure that there's nothing you can't tell me." She also gave him an ultimatum: he would have to get help and reform his behavior if he wanted to return to her house. Jennifer said, "My mom did everything she could. He wasn't able to say what he needed, and we couldn't read his mind."

The DA wanted Pete to be tried as an adult, even though he was only fifteen. Jennifer wrote a letter on his behalf, noting, "My brother needs to be punished, but even more, he needs help." Pete was sentenced to a program for sex offenders, where he was to serve almost two years, and would then remain on extended juvenile jurisdiction (EJJ), which meant that any future offense would earn him twelve years in the penitentiary. While he was inside, he told his therapist that Sondra's father had abused her sexually before he had done so; an abuse expert who interviewed Sondra said her knowledge was "far too detailed to be made up." Jennifer said, "Incest. I feel like I should be in a trailer, married to my cousin, on Jerry Springer Jerry Springer. It's weird-I was abused by the babysitter, then Luke; and Sondra was abused by her father, then Pete. They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but that's just not true."

Pete worked hard at the euphemistically named Hennepin County Home School, a facility for juvenile offenders in Minnetonka, Minnesota. While he was there, he cried about his father's death for the first time. He also told Ethan that he loved him. "He would not have opened up like that if he hadn't been forced to," Cora said. Pete also became interested in creative writing and produced a collection of sonnets, a startling accomplishment for a boy with ADHD. Pete is physically intimidating, but in prison he achieved a gentle quietude. As his release date approached, Jennifer said, "I miss him so much. Yet I feel guilty for missing him, because it's like I'm betraying my daughter." She looked earnest. "My brother will never have the opportunity to be alone with any of my children. But I want him back-I do."

The Home School set up apology sessions for Pete to meet with his mother, Jennifer, and Mandy. He did not see the little girls because they were liable to be further traumatized by such an encounter; Annie chose to pass. "My daughter says if Jesus Christ can forgive the sinners on the cross next to him, she can forgive Pete," Jennifer wrote to me. "I said, 'Prove that my faith in you was justified.' And he's done everything I asked." She worried, however, that the full consequences of Pete's abuse might not surface until Sondra's adolescence.

A few weeks after Pete's release, the family celebrated Christmas together at Cora's, at Sondra's suggestion. By the time I returned to Minnesota the following May, new dynamics were in place. It was one of the first real spring days, a Saturday. Pete, Mandy's fiance, and Sondra were playing football on the lawn, while the others cheered from the porch. Pete was seventeen; Sondra was eleven. I was momentarily shocked to see Pete tackle Sondra; one could sense no physical unease or emotional tension between them, which was unnerving. But the positive change in Pete was incontrovertible. "That sad kid who lived here is gone," Jennifer said.

Pete had made several visits to the Home School, and I asked why. "Inside, I got really close to this guy who vanished out of my life when he was released," he said. "That hurt me, and I was determined not to do that to the other guys. So I stop in once a month to see the people who helped me." Jennifer said, "He needed something more than we could give, and his way of crying out for help was through Sondra. It's almost like it had to happen-to save him, you know? Like poor Sondra was the sacrificial lamb." A year later, she wrote to me, "I was finally able to tell Pete this week that I forgive him. I couldn't do that until I was able to see for myself that he has changed. He is truly dedicated to living a productive life. My brother, for all of his weaknesses, is an amazing young man. I'm so grateful that I'm able to see that."

Two years after I met Pete, Jennifer married. At the rehearsal dinner, she wore a T-shirt with the lyrics LET IT BE LET IT BE, which seemed like a reflection of the family mood. After we ate, we watched Pete play baseball. At a change of innings, he came over and accepted hugs all around; as he returned to the field, Cora turned to me and said, "I finally have the son I always wanted."

Jennifer's matron of honor was Annie; Marcella and Sondra were the bridesmaids. Because Marcella was still uneasy about Pete, he had agreed to arrive at the reception late, when Marcella would be free to leave. But she chose not to do so. She and Sondra drew a chalk hopscotch court in the driveway, and after most of the guests had dispersed, the core group hopped through in wedding finery, including Pete. Pete had committed a crime of intimacy; his family had altered the nature of that closeness, but not its degree.

In a sweeping survey of over two million American teenagers, one in four had used, carried, or taken part in an episode involving a gun or a knife in the previous year. Other sources suggest that as many as one in ten has made a physical assault on at least one of his parents. About three million juveniles-a number greater than the entire population of Chicago-are taken into custody every year, and over two million of these are arrested. Juveniles are more likely to be caught than are adult criminals; like any beginners, they are somewhat incompetent. About 70 percent are referred to juvenile court; about a third receive probation, and 7 percent are incarcerated or placed outside their homes. Arrest has become what one critic called "an extension of the principal's office."

Despite these high numbers, the rate of violent juvenile crime has gone down fairly steadily since 1994; the per capita rate of arrest for violent juvenile crime is about half of what it was then, and the rate of arrest for murder in this population is down by about 75 percent. The many competing explanations for this shift include the economic growth through the earlier part of the new millennium; the end of the crack epidemic; the expansion of imprisonment, which keeps many would-be violent criminals off the streets; and changing methods of policing. It is impossible to amass reliable statistics on crime except inferentially from statistics on arrests. At times the police are under social pressure to arrest for every crime, with other periods of relative leniency. If people believe there is more crime, more police are hired, which leads to more arrests, which lead to statistics that seem to confirm that suspicion.

Kids who have committed crimes together reap different sentences according to the engagement of family. One judge told me that she would always give less time to an offender whose parents appeared to be positive influences, because "those kids might be able to learn, as opposed to destroying lives again." One young man I met was sentenced to ten months, while his cohort, at least in part because he had no family support, got five years. The thinking is sound, but the irony is inescapable: the deprivation that encouraged the child's criminality now lengthens his sentence. Juvenile crime results from the interplay of the genetics, personality, and inclinations of the juvenile himself; the behavior and attitudes of his family; and his larger social environment. The idea of the bad seed seems outmoded, but some people seem to be born without a moral center, much as some people are born without a thumb. The genetics of decency are well beyond our primitive science, but despite boundless love and support, some people are geared toward violence and destruction, lack all powers of empathy, or have a blurry sense of truth. In most people, though, the criminal potential requires external stimulus to be activated; the intense, internally determined psychopath of the movies is unusual. according to the engagement of family. One judge told me that she would always give less time to an offender whose parents appeared to be positive influences, because "those kids might be able to learn, as opposed to destroying lives again." One young man I met was sentenced to ten months, while his cohort, at least in part because he had no family support, got five years. The thinking is sound, but the irony is inescapable: the deprivation that encouraged the child's criminality now lengthens his sentence. Juvenile crime results from the interplay of the genetics, personality, and inclinations of the juvenile himself; the behavior and attitudes of his family; and his larger social environment. The idea of the bad seed seems outmoded, but some people seem to be born without a moral center, much as some people are born without a thumb. The genetics of decency are well beyond our primitive science, but despite boundless love and support, some people are geared toward violence and destruction, lack all powers of empathy, or have a blurry sense of truth. In most people, though, the criminal potential requires external stimulus to be activated; the intense, internally determined psychopath of the movies is unusual.

Yet much of the law is organized around the notion that young criminals are intractably malign. Waivers, for example-which are issued by prosecutors or judges to allow a case to be moved from the juvenile system to an adult criminal court that can issue heavier sentences-have become increasingly popular. Ironically, most juveniles who are waived are not in for murder or assault; they have committed crimes against property or been picked up on drug charges. Judges in overburdened adult courts often dismiss these cases, but sometimes they use adult sentencing guidelines; punishment therefore tends to be either negligible or far too severe. Further, judges may be more likely to direct into adult courts the cases of juveniles who are members of racial minorities, who do not present themselves well, or who appear not to have supportive families. These circumstances do not justify heavier prosecution. In the 1990s, every state except Nebraska enacted legislation making it easier to try juveniles in adult criminal courts; the number of juveniles in adult prisons skyrocketed. In 2001, before the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to sentence someone to death for a crime committed before the age of eighteen, some 12 percent of the population on death row were nineteen or younger.

The waiver problem is only the latest manifestation of our nation's confused attitude toward juvenile punishment and reform. The first American juvenile to be executed was Thomas Granger, killed in 1642 at sixteen for sodomizing a horse, a cow, and several other animals. Since then, more than three hundred juveniles have been executed; the youngest was a ten-year-old, in 1850. An 1819 report from the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism lamented, "Here is one great school of vice and desperation with confirmed and unrepentant criminals. And is this the place for the youngest was a ten-year-old, in 1850. An 1819 report from the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism lamented, "Here is one great school of vice and desperation with confirmed and unrepentant criminals. And is this the place for reform reform?" In 1825, that same organization sought to create an ideal rehabilitative environment where "simple labor" would equip inmates with skills so that the society at large would gladly receive them back. The first court specifically for juveniles was established in Illinois at the end of the nineteenth century, based on a subjective system of judging the character of young offenders. One of Chicago's earliest juvenile court judges said, "The problem for determination by the judge is not, Has this boy or girl committed a specific wrong, but, What is he, how has he become what he is, and what had best be done in his interest and in the interest of the state to save him from a downward career." In 1910, Judge Benjamin Lindsey wrote, "Our laws against crime are as inapplicable to children as they would be to idiots." Through the early twentieth century, the courts' discretion was a version of parens patraie parens patraie-the government as parent-with an all-powerful state acting outside the adult system of checks and balances.

By the 1960s, reformers had begun to rise up against a capricious system. In 1967, in In re Gault, In re Gault, the Supreme Court examined the case of a young man convicted of making offensive sexual phone calls to a neighbor. The juvenile court judge committed the youth to a state school for up to six years-even though an adult found guilty of a similar offense would have gotten off with a fine of no more than $50 or two months in jail. In overturning the youth's sentence, the Supreme Court granted juvenile offenders the rights to a notice of charges, to counsel, to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination; writing for the majority, Justice Abe Fortas declared, "The condition of being a boy does not justify a Kangaroo Court." The 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act limited the time that juveniles could be detained without trial and stipulated that they should be separated from adult offenders by sight and sound. The Reagan administration pushed for a reversion to "get tough" policies; the head of delinquency prevention in the Justice Department complained that the courts had listened to the "psychobabble of social workers." States began using the waivers system, enforced the death penalty for some juveniles, and saw a significant increase in juveniles in jail; by the late 1990s, almost half of committed juveniles were locked up rather than in community or treatment programs. the Supreme Court examined the case of a young man convicted of making offensive sexual phone calls to a neighbor. The juvenile court judge committed the youth to a state school for up to six years-even though an adult found guilty of a similar offense would have gotten off with a fine of no more than $50 or two months in jail. In overturning the youth's sentence, the Supreme Court granted juvenile offenders the rights to a notice of charges, to counsel, to confront and cross-examine witnesses, and to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination; writing for the majority, Justice Abe Fortas declared, "The condition of being a boy does not justify a Kangaroo Court." The 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act limited the time that juveniles could be detained without trial and stipulated that they should be separated from adult offenders by sight and sound. The Reagan administration pushed for a reversion to "get tough" policies; the head of delinquency prevention in the Justice Department complained that the courts had listened to the "psychobabble of social workers." States began using the waivers system, enforced the death penalty for some juveniles, and saw a significant increase in juveniles in jail; by the late 1990s, almost half of committed juveniles were locked up rather than in community or treatment programs.

Juvenile justice remains paternalistic. Police officers have discretion to dismiss detained youths, and many kids are remanded to their parents with a warning. Over the past twenty years or so, the Left, led by the ACLU and similar organizations, has sought more due process and better-defined rights for young offenders, but the resulting formalization has deprived the system of its leniency; one recent survey showed that only a third of juveniles felt their attorney had helped them. The Right has, meanwhile, pushed for harsher sentencing. The Left wants children to have the rights of adults but not the responsibilities; the Right pushes for exactly the opposite. The processing of cases is terribly slow, and juveniles may languish in detention for as much as a year pretrial, vastly upsetting their social and academic development. Though juveniles have their Miranda rights read to them, at least half have no idea what is being said. Sentences are harsher than they were pre- with a warning. Over the past twenty years or so, the Left, led by the ACLU and similar organizations, has sought more due process and better-defined rights for young offenders, but the resulting formalization has deprived the system of its leniency; one recent survey showed that only a third of juveniles felt their attorney had helped them. The Right has, meanwhile, pushed for harsher sentencing. The Left wants children to have the rights of adults but not the responsibilities; the Right pushes for exactly the opposite. The processing of cases is terribly slow, and juveniles may languish in detention for as much as a year pretrial, vastly upsetting their social and academic development. Though juveniles have their Miranda rights read to them, at least half have no idea what is being said. Sentences are harsher than they were pre-Gault. As juvenile justice scholars Thomas Grisso and Robert G. Schwartz have said in Youth on Trial, Youth on Trial, "The adult-like procedures introduced by the left worked in spiral-like tandem with punitive measures introduced by the right to create an ungainly, harsh, and internally contradictory juvenile court." "The adult-like procedures introduced by the left worked in spiral-like tandem with punitive measures introduced by the right to create an ungainly, harsh, and internally contradictory juvenile court."

Maturity does not arrive with adolescence; statutory regulations long ago set a minimum age for drinking, voting, sex, and driving. Biological evidence now demonstrates that the adolescent brain is structurally different from the adult one, which supports making a distinction between adult and juvenile crime. In the prefrontal cortex of a fifteen-year-old, the areas responsible for self-control are undeveloped; many parts of the brain do not mature until about twenty-four. While the full implications of this variant physiognomy cannot yet be mapped, holding children to adult standards is biologically nave. On the one hand, kids who commit crimes are likely to become adults who commit crimes; but on the other hand, kids who commit crimes act on impulses in part because they are kids.

More than half of juveniles who are arrested test positive for drugs, and more than three-quarters are under the influence of drugs or alcohol when committing their crimes. Arrested juveniles are twice as likely as age peers to have used alcohol, more than three times as likely to have used marijuana, more than seven times as likely to have used ecstasy, more than nine times as likely to have used cocaine, and twenty times as likely to have used heroin. These statistics do not elucidate whether substances actually influence juveniles to commit crime, whether substance abuse and criminality are symptoms of a single underlying personality disorder, or whether laws restricting access to substances compel abusers into criminal activities. They do suggest, however, that drug treatment for juveniles is important to fighting crime. Sadly, only slightly over 1 percent of those arrested receive substance abuse treatment.

Sophia and Josiah McFeely had no idea that their seventeen-year-old son, Chuck, was supporting a cocaine habit by dealing, nor that he was carrying a gun around south Boston. So they were completely bewildered when they heard a loud bang one night while Chuck and his friends were at the house. One of them had brandished a gun and mockingly proposed a game of Russian roulette. The others had tried to stop him, but he pulled the trigger once and shot himself in the head. Josiah ran upstairs just in time to hold him as he died. "When I go through recovery," Chuck said, more than twenty years later, "I relive that moment over and over again. That I could have stopped it, and didn't."

In college, Chuck was drinking and using heavily. He failed all his classes, and Josiah told him he wasn't going to pay tuition if Chuck wasn't going to study. Chuck went back to dealing and soon met a girl, Lauren, also a user; one night when they were high, they held up a gas station in Everett, Massachusetts, at gunpoint, wearing masks. Chuck bludgeoned the owner with a tire iron. Josiah found him a good lawyer, and the judge let him out on probation. "He'd already blown the money he stole up his nose," Josiah said, but he and Sophia repaid the injured party. To their dismay, Chuck and Lauren married-they were twenty-one-and soon had their first child, Mackenzie. When he was high, Chuck would hit Lauren; he went to jail twice for assault. Though they were both using heavily, mostly cocaine but also other substances, they had soon had two more children, Madison and Kayla; then, they divorced.

The kids stayed with Lauren, who disappeared on drug runs at night; eventually Social Services threatened to remove them. Chuck brought his three daughters to his parents' house and moved in with them as a stopgap to keep the girls out of foster care. Soon Chuck was using, and Sophia and Josiah told him he had to go. A year later, they applied for temporary custody; Sophia had to stop working, and she was resentful. "I used to be upset with myself," she told me. "For God's sake, they're your grandchildren. But it wasn't what I'd planned."

Since then, Chuck has been through major rehab fourteen times, as well as countless AA meetings and day programs; has lived in halfway houses; has gone through repeated detox. He has never managed more than nine months without a relapse. While cocaine and alcohol still figure large, he has also used heroin and OxyContin. He has been imprisoned for parole violations, driving under the influence, domestic violence, and petty theft. When he is clean, he is a different person, but he is seldom clean long enough for this other persona to be relevant. When I met Sophia and Josiah, Chuck was nearly forty, and their grandchildren had been living with them for a decade. Chuck is both reliant on and enraged by his parents' generosity. He was furious that they had told the kids about his heroin use. "That would be so upsetting for them," he said-seeming not to have assimilated that the use itself was upsetting. When I met Sophia and Josiah, Chuck was nearly forty, and their grandchildren had been living with them for a decade. Chuck is both reliant on and enraged by his parents' generosity. He was furious that they had told the kids about his heroin use. "That would be so upsetting for them," he said-seeming not to have assimilated that the use itself was upsetting.

Nine years after Josiah and Sophia made their sorry peace with taking care of the three girls, they were shocked at the news that Chuck's newest girlfriend, Eva, was pregnant, and that they were keeping the baby. "What the fuck are they thinking?" Josiah said. "She's a druggie, he's a druggie. They're three months clean and she gets pregnant?" When the baby was born, Sophia saw that the bassinet had Eva's name on it but not Chuck's. Eva said she did it that way to qualify for government aid for single mothers. "I thought, 'Oh, God, have we come to this?'" Sophia said. "I didn't want to hold the baby. I was thinking to myself, 'You poor thing, what have you got to look forward to?'" Yet Mackenzie, Madison, and Kayla keep holding out hope. "He's back in recovery," Sophia said. "They'll be angry, but the minute they see him, they just melt. It's sad to see how much loyalty they have." By Christmas, Eva had relapsed, and the baby was living with Eva's mother. "The kids were saying to me, 'Nana, are you going to take the baby? We'll take care of her!'" Sophia recalled. "How can I? Now?"

It is hard not to be struck by the mix of love and anguish Josiah and Sophia feel in relation to the three granddaughters who live with them. When I met the two younger girls, I was moved by the warmth between them and their grandparents-a warmth that belied the despair just beneath the surface. "The question is, are we doing it better this time around?" Josiah said. In early adolescence, Mackenzie started using drugs, and Sophia started calling the police. After a few arrests, Sophia went to court and said she couldn't keep going this way. The judge asked whether Sophia would take her home, and she said, "Absolutely not." Mackenzie said, "You never did this to my father!" And Sophia replied, "If I'd known more then, I would have, and maybe we wouldn't all be in this mess." Mackenzie went to a temporary shelter in Yarmouth, then to the only place in the state that treated addiction in teenagers. Sophia and Josiah now think that the second eldest, Madison, was born addicted. Kayla, the youngest, seems to be doing better, but since she's just eleven, it's hard to be sure.

"My mother worked as a scrubwoman, cleaning office floors at a buck thirty-five an hour," Josiah said. "We had to bring ourselves up. Then we brought our children up, and now we're bringing our grandchildren up." Sophia said, "For such a long time, I thought that everything was going to get better, and I told the kids that. I don't have any hope left now. We used to say, 'When is it going to end?' Now we say, 'We'll just take it as it comes.' The extent of alcoholism in the family makes me feel better, in a way; I can say that it's genetic. If I had known, I probably wouldn't have had children. Chuck could do better than he does, but I know he's not out having a good time. Once I was saying to him, 'Chuck, I'd like my life back.' And he said, 'Well, don't you think I would, too?'" going to get better, and I told the kids that. I don't have any hope left now. We used to say, 'When is it going to end?' Now we say, 'We'll just take it as it comes.' The extent of alcoholism in the family makes me feel better, in a way; I can say that it's genetic. If I had known, I probably wouldn't have had children. Chuck could do better than he does, but I know he's not out having a good time. Once I was saying to him, 'Chuck, I'd like my life back.' And he said, 'Well, don't you think I would, too?'"

As many as three out of four incarcerated juveniles have a mental health diagnosis, as opposed to one of five in the general nine- to seventeen-year-old population. Some 50 to 80 percent of incarcerated juveniles have learning disabilities. Juvenile crime is also associated with low IQ, impulsivity, poor self-control, deficient social skills, conduct disorders, and emotional underdevelopment. These predisposing characteristics are manifest terribly early. In one study, parents were asked to describe their toddlers; they were reinterviewed ten years later. Those labeled "difficult" as small children were twice as likely to have committed crimes as those labeled "easy." Another longitudinal study looked at boys rated "troublesome" when they were eight to ten and found that they were three times as likely as controls to be adolescent offenders. Of course, for every simple equivalence (difficult babies become lawbreakers), there is a parallel possibility (mothers who find their children disturbing bring up criminals).

Those who swing into full-fledged delinquency before age twelve are highly likely to become chronic adult offenders and are much more likely to commit violent crimes than are those whose behaviors kick in later. This may reflect habit; the norms of your childhood are particularly hard to buck. It may also be that some children who are troublesome early have that missing moral thumb and are manifesting something so fundamental to their personality that it will be nearly impossible to ameliorate. If a child's delinquency stems from habit, then early interventions to break those habits might be effective; if it's genetic, then such interventions are much less likely to succeed. These possibilities are, of course, not mutually exclusive.

In the chapter on schizophrenia, I noted how many schizophrenics are in jail; in researching this one, I learned how many people in jail suffer from some vague mental health diagnosis. Incarcerating mentally unstable people with the larger prison population may exacerbate criminals' destructive behavior toward themselves and others. Carol Carothers, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Maine, has said, "It is hard to imagine a worse place to house a child that requires services for their mental illness."

Brianna Gandy, whose mother was a crack addict, was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and left in the charge of her grandmother. "I call my grandma 'Mom,' so she won't forget that she's taking care of me," Brianna said to me. Her father was entirely absent. "He has no job; he doesn't come to see me; he doesn't call up here; he doesn't write me," Brianna said. "And I don't know where he lives, so I don't write him, either."

At fifteen, Brianna had been in all sorts of trouble, but was especially given to truancy and lying. "I used to wake up in the middle of the night and steal food out of the refrigerator," she said. "And I would always tell my grandmother, 'It wasn't me, it wasn't me'-when there wasn't no one else it could be." At fourteen, Brianna started running away; she would sit in a park at night until someone came along and invited her home for a meal. "Just random people," she said. "Some of 'em couldn't have kids-and always wanted a kid. So I was their kid for that time." She also hung out with drug dealers and with homeless people. "I just don't like to be told to do something that I don't want to do."

Brianna was in for assault, and when she was angry, she was terrifying. "I had one assault here," she told me. "At Harbor Shelter, I assaulted their director. At St. Joe's, I assaulted staff. At St. Croix, I assaulted the director and staff there." There was something eerie about the calm way she listed these offenses. "I want to be a chef or a plumber," she went on, as though this sentence were contiguous with the last. "If I don't find a job right away, I'll be crocheting things to sell-instead of selling drugs, which I did, but it's too much drama. I crocheted two shirts already, and a hat, and I'm working on a purse."

Brianna's grandmother was at a loss over how to deal with her. "Since I got locked up, we talk more about personal things," Brianna said. "I've been telling her things that I wouldn't usually, like about getting raped-let's see-two different times. When I was three, by the neighbor; when I was thirteen, by my ex-boyfriend." Brianna's grandmother had suggested Brianna join Job Corps. Despite Brianna's disinclination to live with her grandmother, this proposal hurt her feelings. "I was wondering why she didn't want me home once I'm out of here-if she loved me anymore," Brianna said. But then she added, "I wish my grandma didn't love me so much and would just leave me alone and stop interfering." To wish for and resent parental love is a familiar adolescent paradox, but Brianna seemed completely unaware of any incongruity in her statements.

Clearly, a confused relationship to reality can enable criminal behavior-but so, too, can depression. Jackson Simpson shares his mother's depressive tendency, but whereas she has manifested the illness through withdrawal and drinking, he has manifested it through failure and aggression. Jackson told me that he'd always "had an interest for people who were depressed," and he thought a lot about his mother's diagnosis, but he couldn't seem to see that it might also apply to himself.

Jackson joined a gang when he was in the fifth grade and "ended up selling drugs, using drugs, carrying guns," he said, "stealing, robbing-everything you could pretty much name. I wasn't raised like that. I knew it was wrong, but after you do it for a while, you actually like it." He had committed the felony assault that landed him inside, however, only after he failed to make the basketball team at his school; his life's dream was to be a basketball star, but his school required that players have a minimum grade point average, and his was too low. He was so distraught that he dropped out; he eventually enrolled elsewhere, but he never bounced back. Earlier deeds had earned him probation, but following the basketball debacle, he fell into serious trouble. "He knew it was his fault and he was angry at himself about it," his mother, Alexa, said. "The self-esteem got real low. When you're in court every other month? And you're still doing things that you know are wrong? To me, that's a form of depression."

Six months after the basketball incident, Jackson was arrested on charges of assaulting someone. He was eighteen, and they planned to try him as an adult. Jackson finally gave a confession as a way to get a plea bargain, and he was sentenced to time in the Home School. "I knew it was making my mother's depression worse," he said. "In court she'd just be crying. Could barely even walk-had to have my dad help her in the courtroom. You could just see it in her face. They was so disappointed."

Alexa said, "I started drinking. I'm on antidepressants now." Jackson's depression likewise remained acute and carried with it an intense disaffection. His appetite and sleep were dysregulated; he was unable to imagine future plans. "I love my parents," he said. "But I've always thought I was adopted, because growing up, I felt like nobody could ever relate to me. I didn't even understand myself. That's how different I felt. And I still do." Jackson's error carried its own punishment. What he had done to his mother and how he had disappointed himself-these things caused him so much pain that his confinement to a jail cell was merely secondary. He was alone in ways more profound than any physical lock and key could enforce.

The public endlessly debates what children and teenagers who have broken the law deserve and don't deserve: drug treatment, adult sentencing, mental health care, etc. Yet juvenile justice in the United States is largely a story of gross abuses. In 2003, an article in the New York Times New York Times described Mississippi's juvenile detention system: "Boys and girls were routinely hogtied, shackled to poles or locked in restraint chairs for hours for minor infractions like talking in the cafeteria or not saying, 'Yes sir.'" A lawsuit brought against the operators of one center said, "Toilets and walls are covered with mold, rust, and excrement. Insects have infested the facility, and the smell of human excrement permeates the entire building. Children frequently have to sleep on thin mats that smell of urine and mold." Many children claimed to have been assaulted by guards; many were locked in their cells for twenty-three hours every day; infections caused by filthy conditions were rampant. Suicidal girls in Mississippi prisons have been stripped and put on lockdown in isolation cells with no light or window, and only a drain in the floor. described Mississippi's juvenile detention system: "Boys and girls were routinely hogtied, shackled to poles or locked in restraint chairs for hours for minor infractions like talking in the cafeteria or not saying, 'Yes sir.'" A lawsuit brought against the operators of one center said, "Toilets and walls are covered with mold, rust, and excrement. Insects have infested the facility, and the smell of human excrement permeates the entire building. Children frequently have to sleep on thin mats that smell of urine and mold." Many children claimed to have been assaulted by guards; many were locked in their cells for twenty-three hours every day; infections caused by filthy conditions were rampant. Suicidal girls in Mississippi prisons have been stripped and put on lockdown in isolation cells with no light or window, and only a drain in the floor.

Another Times Times story reveals that in California's juvenile facilities "youths in solitary confinement are often fed what officials call 'blender meals,' in which a bologna sandwich, an apple, and a carton of milk are pulverized and fed to the inmate by straw through a slit in the cell door." A state review showed the California juvenile prison system to be "a dysfunctional jumble of antiquated facilities, under-trained employees, and endemic violence that fails even in its most fundamental task of providing safety." The US Attorney General's office found in Nevada that staffers were "punching boys in the chest, kicking their legs, shoving them against lockers and walls, slapping youths in the face, and smashing youths' heads in doors" and subjecting them to "verbal abuse in which their race, family, physical appearance and stature, intelligence, or perceived sexual orientation were aggressively attacked." A report by the Florida Inspectors General described how staff at a juvenile facility stood by as a seventeen-year-old begged for help and slowly died of a ruptured appendix. The list could go on and on. Joseph Califano has said, "We have fifty-one different systems of juvenile story reveals that in California's juvenile facilities "youths in solitary confinement are often fed what officials call 'blender meals,' in which a bologna sandwich, an apple, and a carton of milk are pulverized and fed to the inmate by straw through a slit in the cell door." A state review showed the California juvenile prison system to be "a dysfunctional jumble of antiquated facilities, under-trained employees, and endemic violence that fails even in its most fundamental task of providing safety." The US Attorney General's office found in Nevada that staffers were "punching boys in the chest, kicking their legs, shoving them against lockers and walls, slapping youths in the face, and smashing youths' heads in doors" and subjecting them to "verbal abuse in which their race, family, physical appearance and stature, intelligence, or perceived sexual orientation were aggressively attacked." A report by the Florida Inspectors General described how staff at a juvenile facility stood by as a seventeen-year-old begged for help and slowly died of a ruptured appendix. The list could go on and on. Joseph Califano has said, "We have fifty-one different systems of juvenile in injustice with no national standards of practice or accountability." The abuse in the juvenile justice system is commensurate with the corrupting nature of its absolute power.

To immerse myself in the worldviews of juvenile prisoners, I took a position advising a theater project at the Hennepin County Home School. The school's ethos is not representative, which is why I chose it; Minnesota is known for its strong focus on rehabilitative programs. With a population of mostly recidivist felons and a particularly strong program for underage sex offenders, the Home School presumes that punishment is accomplished by the lack of freedom accorded to inmates. The well-kept campus houses about 120 juvenile felons at a time, with 167 acres of grounds and a staff who help inmates understand their emotional lives as a means to contain their destructiveness. It offers full high school classroom work, with particularly strong arts and athletics programs; the name was chosen so that prospective employers would perceive the graduates without prejudice. It also provides intensive individual, group, and family therapy, as well as a special program for substance abusers. In some ways, it felt less like a prison than like a boot-camp boarding school; one inmate complained, "They want you to think all day. I'd rather be breaking up rocks or shit." Some of the kids keep up friendships with staff after they leave; some return to visit the place, nostalgic alumni of their own punishment. Many express ambitions to go to college; though few follow through, the desire reflects the optimism with which they have been treated. Let it not be supposed, however, that it is all talk therapy and crafts. Freedom of movement is constrained; even using the bathroom requires permission. When necessary, units are put on lockdown, and inmates are placed under harsh restraints. Outbreaks of violence, although usually quickly contained, are not uncommon. With a population of mostly recidivist felons and a particularly strong program for underage sex offenders, the Home School presumes that punishment is accomplished by the lack of freedom accorded to inmates. The well-kept campus houses about 120 juvenile felons at a time, with 167 acres of grounds and a staff who help inmates understand their emotional lives as a means to contain their destructiveness. It offers full high school classroom work, with particularly strong arts and athletics programs; the name was chosen so that prospective employers would perceive the graduates without prejudice. It also provides intensive individual, group, and family therapy, as well as a special program for substance abusers. In some ways, it felt less like a prison than like a boot-camp boarding school; one inmate complained, "They want you to think all day. I'd rather be breaking up rocks or shit." Some of the kids keep up friendships with staff after they leave; some return to visit the place, nostalgic alumni of their own punishment. Many express ambitions to go to college; though few follow through, the desire reflects the optimism with which they have been treated. Let it not be supposed, however, that it is all talk therapy and crafts. Freedom of movement is constrained; even using the bathroom requires permission. When necessary, units are put on lockdown, and inmates are placed under harsh restraints. Outbreaks of violence, although usually quickly contained, are not uncommon.

The play I worked on with a group of twenty residents and several supervising adults was intended to awaken them to their capacity for accomplishment, and to teach them a better way to express their pain. Cynics decry such programs as incompatible with punishment, but giving wayward kids insight into how to build a better life benefits the society at large. Habits of ruthlessness had made the inmates' own hearts obscure to them. The director of the theater program, Stephen DiMenna, composed an affecting monologue for a broken chair and asked the kids which emotions he was expressing. The kids came up with "mad" and "resentful" and "weak" and "angry," but it took them twenty minutes to think of "sad," an alien concept to this roomful of sad people.

The Home School uses family therapy to resolve conflicts between inmates and their parents, to coach offenders on how to interact at home, and to train parents to exercise more effective control. Such methods may be crucial to breaking the kids out of a criminal identity, and to helping their parents see that their children's problems are not immutable. "I show these parents how to encourage their kids," said Terry Bach, one of the resident case managers. "These kids are just thirsty thirsty for praise. No matter how tough they seem, they need, they for praise. No matter how tough they seem, they need, they want, want, that." that."

The post-Freudian notion that all flaws are based in family relations is out of favor. It remains common, however, to blame an abusive childhood environment for the rate of juvenile crime, and certainly criminality can be the upshot of fear, loneliness, hatred, and neglect. I met parents of offenders who were preoccupied with their own problems or who seemed unacquainted with the usual rules of love, people who witnessed their children's pain without the slightest disturbance of their own mood. Some parents were criminal themselves and couldn't imagine or didn't value a different life. Some were hooked on substances. Others were so mired in poverty that they thought survival justified any means. Some were so angry at their children that affection seemed to have closed up shop, and some were acutely depressed. Many had given up on children they felt incompetent to help.

Some kids laughed when I asked how their parents felt about their incarceration. "Why the fuck would they even care? I'm in here, they don't gotta pay no bills for me," one inmate snarled. Others had no idea where their parents were. One said, "I'd love to have parents who hate me, like everyone here complains about, instead of just not having parents at all." Another said, "When I get outta here, I'm gonna find my mom and tell her I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused her, and then maybe she's gonna love me, if anyone can." When a female staff member addressed one inmate affectionately as "son," he said tartly, "I don't have no mama and no woman ever called me son and you ain't gonna be the one to start." One said, "I'm so homesick all the time-which is weird, 'cause I have no home."

But this popular narrative of abuse and neglect was not the most common one. Even if they couldn't cope or were narcissistic, most of the parents I met in researching this chapter loved their kids. Most knew that it would serve their children's interests to avoid crime-or at least to avoid punishment. Some were afraid of their own children. Many engaged in self-criticism and voiced a wish to make up for past deficits. Staff told me that some parents who seem attentive when their kids are in prison disengage once those kids are released; they can't act on love once a formal structure for it is removed. Even among those who loved well, affection often did not seem to keep regular company with insight. Nonetheless, love is among the good medicines for crime and anger. A broken family is still a family, and a broken home, still a home.

The relationship between kids in the justice system and their parents usually follows one of four tracks. The parents may abandon the child when he goes to prison, which may lead the child to feel lonely, lost, isolated, and desperate. The parents may abandon the child, which may prompt the child to take responsibility for himself or herself. The parents may remain or become deeply involved with the child, making the child feel that a bright future is possible. The parents may remain or become deeply involved with the child, reinforcing antisocial behavior by creating a permissive atmosphere of denial. may prompt the child to take responsibility for himself or herself. The parents may remain or become deeply involved with the child, making the child feel that a bright future is possible. The parents may remain or become deeply involved with the child, reinforcing antisocial behavior by creating a permissive atmosphere of denial.

Dashonte Malcolm, known to his family and friends as Cool, was sixteen when we met, a good-looking, well-spoken African-American with manners that reflect both training and instinct, and a sense of humor about himself. He seems like a fellow you'd trust with your checkbook or your sister, so it was easy to believe that he was locked up because of someone else's bad behavior. "This is my first offense," he said, hanging his head, "and my last." While many of the kids at the Home School evinced embarrassment about the humiliation of being stripped of basic freedoms, Dashonte seemed genuinely remorseful about his crime.

Dashonte's father, a bus driver, had died of an alcohol-triggered stroke when Dashonte was five, and his mother, Audrey, had brought up her only son in the tough neighborhoods of south Minneapolis under the general patronage of her imposing father, the bishop of Minnesota of the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, with forty-four churches under his aegis-a man by whose air of grand authority I was always slightly awed. Audrey Malcolm is large and beautiful, with soft eyes and an aura of quiet dignity. She enfolds you in good cheer, although closer observation reveals that she is somewhat reserved beneath her outgoing manner. Audrey and Dashonte live six blocks from her parents, and her brothers and sisters all live within a mile; they see one another almost every day. Dashonte describes his mom as his best friend; he told me he was thinking about having her face tattooed on his arm "so I'd always have her with me."

Audrey had moved a neighborhood away from the worst part of the ghetto to distance Dashonte from crime. "But there was always that thing picking at me, to go back to where the trouble was," Dashonte said. He described himself as "a badass" in school. According to Audrey, he got into scuffles, "always protecting somebody else." She added, "You want him to be compassionate, so some things you have to live with."

In third grade, a new kid arrived at Dashonte's school: Darius Stewart from Tallahassee. They got into a horrendous fight because Darius was allegedly harassing a smaller child. "They tore the classroom up," Audrey recalled. "Chairs flew, desks flew." The next day Dashonte and his opponent were best friends. Audrey didn't like Darius's influence, and she switched Dashonte to another school in sixth grade, to separate them. Two years later, Darius enrolled at the new school. When Dashonte was sixteen, Audrey bought him a car because public transportation was a prime setting for gang recruitment. Darius didn't have a car, and Dashonte took to giving him rides. After Dashonte crashed his car, Audrey told him to ride the public bus, but he complained that he was being drawn into gang life, so she bought him his second car. and she switched Dashonte to another school in sixth grade, to separate them. Two years later, Darius enrolled at the new school. When Dashonte was sixteen, Audrey bought him a car because public transportation was a prime setting for gang recruitment. Darius didn't have a car, and Dashonte took to giving him rides. After Dashonte crashed his car, Audrey told him to ride the public bus, but he complained that he was being drawn into gang life, so she bought him his second car.

Audrey was to buy Dashonte five cars before he turned eighteen. He wrecked three of them and maintained that each of those crashes was the other driver's fault. With the image of those wrecked cars in mind, I listened to the rest of his story. "Darius started getting more dependent, so I moved Cool out of his school, again," Audrey explained. Darius showed up at the new school's orientation. Soon thereafter, Dashonte came home from time on the town with Darius, and Audrey smelled alcohol on his breath. "I told him, 'Had your dad not been an alcoholic, he'd be living right here with you. Cool, you're going down. And I'm not going to let this happen, even if I have to lock your butt in the house for the rest of your life.'" To Dashonte, however, separation from Darius was almost inconceivable. "We were like brothers," he said.

The offense that landed Dashonte behind bars was aggravated assault. He and Darius had picked up a girl at a bus stop and wanted to go to a pool hall tournament that had a $7 admission fee. Darius proposed robbing someone. Dashonte had a gun and they found a boy alone, threatened him, and took $80 along with his jacket and sneakers. The news traveled around school after Darius wore the stolen clothing. Darius and Dashonte were arrested. "The detectives called and said, 'Aggravated robbery and assault.' I couldn't fathom it," Audrey said. She insisted that her son had never had guns-she searched his room from time to time and she knew. She walked into the Juvenile Detention Center, and Dashonte started crying. "I said, 'Cool, I might beat you half to death tomorrow-but I want to know tonight what happened,'" she recalled. "So he saw that I was more with him than against him."

At the trial, Darius blamed Dashonte; Dashonte blamed Darius. "Me and him both said that it was 'death before dishonor,' but when it came down to it, he got selfish," Dashonte said. I met them both and found Dashonte a great deal more likable than Darius, but Dashonte undeniably was the one with the gun. Following his arrest, Dashonte spent a week in detention and two months on house arrest, with an ankle bracelet that sent out an alarm signal if he went beyond the garage. He and Audrey sat up late talking, night after night. She kept asking for his motive, but he couldn't say.

Both boys were sentenced to eight months at the County Home School. "I felt like, you've already humiliated yourself," Audrey explained. "My mom used to tell us, 'I don't care if you killed somebody. I want you to come home and tell me.' That's what I wanted Cool to hear: whatever you do, you're my son. If it was murder, would I turn my back? No way. And I told him that." Audrey was known at the Home School for being the first visitor to arrive every visiting day, and the last to go. She wrote Dashonte a letter every day and closed each one, "Love you more than life itself, Mom." She was planning a celebration for Dashonte's release and had rented a penthouse in Las Vegas for their first weekend together. It was a mutual attachment. I had known Dashonte a month when he was granted his first off-premises time-four hours with his social worker. I asked what he was going to do, and he was definite: "I'm going to Bath & Body Works to buy my mom a birthday present."

There's a fine line between heroic love and willful blindness, and Audrey Malcolm has visited both sides of that line. "He said he didn't even think the boy they held up really took offense, because he was laughing at them through the whole thing," she told me. "Cool actually tried to give the money back, and Darius snatched it out of his hand." I wanted to believe what his mother believed, but both staff and other inmates told me that Dashonte was actually in the Bloods. It was easier to learn the hereditary titles of dynastic China than it was to get a handle on all the gangs in Minneapolis and how they overlapped. "I have older cousins that had their own little gang," Dashonte explained. That gang was the Fergusons-which sounded to me more like an indie band than like a sinister operation devoted to programmatic violence. "The Fergusons, their family is all Bloods," Dashonte added, "and we used to have little wars, in the school hallway after lunch, fun, fighting for real, but it was just all smiles." When I mentioned the gang to Audrey, she said that Dashonte had always had a need to be popular and pretended to be a gang member to get respect.

Dashonte admitted that acting out had been gratifying for him. "I had a lot of anger after I realized I didn't have a father," he said. I came to understand gangs as an answer to his hunger for male connection-a counterweight to his church heritage and the intense intimacy of his relationship with his mother. He explained his gang affiliation like this: "A lot of 'em are your blood family, or people married to my girl cousins, and people you're not related to at all, but you just feel like you're related. Having parties, just hanging out at the park, or just joking with each other-I liked that. Fighting for territory and just rivalries, that was secondary."

Shortly before Dashonte was released, I went with his mother to the Emmanuel Tabernacle Church of God in Christ. We arrived as people were streaming in, the women in bell-shaped hats that matched their dresses and handbags, their stiletto-heeled shoes adorned with diamante butterflies and silk blossoms; the men in dandyish confections of suits, with pleats and gathered neckties. The atmosphere was warm and friendly. I greeted Dashonte's grandmother, the first lady of the church. A man was already in the pulpit, and soon a woman got up and started singing, and before long, everyone was singing, accompanied by a Hammond organ and a drum set. Periodically someone would say, "Praise the Lord!" or "I need you, Jesus." First-time visitors to the church were asked to stand and introduce ourselves. The first woman who spoke up said, "I am on business in the Twin Cities and it is Sunday, and I was not going to let this blessed day go by because without Jesus I am nothing!" A second made a similar speech that ended, "I am here today to be brought out of sin! Hallelujah!" Then the microphone was passed to me. Meekly I said, "I am here as a guest of Audrey Malcolm and Mother Forbes, and I am so moved by this congregation's faith." Everyone clapped.

The bishop was performing a consecration that day, so the head of the Sunday school preached. He began by talking about how parents didn't want to see what their kids were doing wrong, and referred to 2 Samuel and to 1 Corinthians as models for vigilance. "You've got to watch the company your kids is keeping," he said, "and when they start in with that wrong crowd, that wrong crowd is going to bring them down and they will do wrong." I was struck by this blaming of the "wrong crowd" that somehow compromised the natural purity of the kids of this church. Then began the enumeration of evil. The people of the church must rise against the "principality of homosexuality," and the modern moneylenders must be expelled from the holy places. The notion that the problems of black people in Minneapolis were the fault of gays and Jews or bankers reminded me of the excuses for Dashonte's three car crashes, or the notion that Darius had tricked Dashonte into malfeasance. The congregation's generosity braided with militancy and a hatred of otherness was oddly reminiscent of the gang ethos. The community saw this mix of harshness and kindness as an extension of a Christ who embodied both infinite love and the terrible verdicts of Judgment Day.

I called on the Malcolms six months later. Dashonte was out of the Home School; his grandmother came over, and the four of us had lemonade and carrot cake. "You know, as bad as I hate to say it," Audrey told me, "this was probably one of the better things that could have happened to Cool. It was overkill. But he needed a deterrent." I had heard that he still belonged to the Bloods, but with his mother in the room, he described the fine life he had imagined for himself, with a wife and an office job. It felt more like tact than deception. "Gang life is always going to be on my mind," Dashonte conceded when I later spoke with him alone. "When I'm at that desk job, it's going to be, 'What could I be doing right now if I was on the streets?' But if you're selling drugs, you've got to keep your guard up. Sometimes you can't even trust your cousin, your mom. And I'm through with that." You don't quit a gang in some grand ceremony; you let the affiliation peter out, often with ambivalence. I wanted to believe in Dashonte's resolve, but at that stage, his innocence felt like a flexible, daily decision. happened to Cool. It was overkill. But he needed a deterrent." I had heard that he still belonged to the Bloods, but with his mother in the room, he described the fine life he had imagined for himself, with a wife and an office job. It felt more like tact than deception. "Gang life is always going to be on my mind," Dashonte conceded when I later spoke with him alone. "When I'm at that desk job, it's going to be, 'What could I be doing right now if I was on the streets?' But if you're selling drugs, you've got to keep your guard up. Sometimes you can't even trust your cousin, your mom. And I'm through with that." You don't quit a gang in some grand ceremony; you let the affiliation peter out, often with ambivalence. I wanted to believe in Dashonte's resolve, but at that stage, his innocence felt like a flexible, daily decision.

Loyalty turned out to be Audrey's strong suit. Unlike most interview subjects, she always expected our conversation to be a two-way street. When I finally told her I was gay, she wrote me a letter that said in part, "Thank you so much for being open and honest with us. Nothing has changed as a result of you telling us that you are gay and have a partner. You never judged us because we were black, or because Cool was locked up, or because I'm a single parent raising a son alone and living in the inner city. Some don't get a chance at love and happiness, and now I know you to have that chance, and I'm happy. I choose friends because of their hearts. I'm sure God brought us together as friends for a greater purpose."

I came to love my visits with the Malcolms. Dashonte didn't quite get the white-collar job he'd talked about, but he managed to avoid serious trouble and did not return to prison. When he met a girl he really liked, he talked about her with joy; soon enough, they were engaged. In the end, his mother had believed him into becoming who he had sometimes pretended to be. Her gift for faith proved strong enough to achieve redemption not only in the next world, but also right here in this one.

I resolved to write about parents of criminals after seeing a television interview with Paul Van Houten, in 2002. His daughter Leslie was one of the Manson girls, members of a quasi-commune in the 1960s who committed vicious crimes under their charismatic leader's instruction. In August 1969, Leslie stabbed grocer Rosemary LaBianca fourteen times in the back. Thirty-three years later, Paul Van Houten appeared on Larry King Live Larry King Live to plead for parole for his daughter. "If Leslie had never smoked her first marijuana cigarette, this would never have happened," Paul Van Houten said. "You're blaming it on marijuana?" asked an incredulous King. "With marijuana and LSD, Manson was to plead for parole for his daughter. "If Leslie had never smoked her first marijuana cigarette, this would never have happened," Paul Van Houten said. "You're blaming it on marijuana?" asked an incredulous King. "With marijuana and LSD, Manson was able to maneuver these people," Paul said. King rebutted, "Millions have smoked marijuana and didn't go kill people." An expert on the program added that Leslie hadn't been on drugs when she committed the crime. I was riveted by Paul's blindness to his daughter's free choice to murder. It reminded me of the parents of deaf children who couldn't understand that those children would never use spoken language happily or fluently, or the parents of people with schizophrenia who still fantasized that their intact children were only waiting to be revealed again. able to maneuver these people," Paul said. King rebutted, "Millions have smoked marijuana and didn't go kill people." An expert on the program added that Leslie hadn't been on drugs when she committed the crime. I was riveted by Paul's blindness to his daughter's free choice to murder. It reminded me of the parents of deaf children who couldn't understand that those children would never use spoken language happily or fluently, or the parents of people with schizophrenia who still fantasized that their intact children were only waiting to be revealed again.

Soon afterward, I read an interview with the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, in which she described how she became alienated from her son as he moved toward fundamentalist Islam, criticized her for not wearing a veil, and was inspired by a cousin to refuse womanly jobs such as making his bed. Still, his mother was unprepared for seeing her son's face on TV in connection with the attacks. "How could he be involved in such a thing?" she said. "I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. I keep saying to myself, 'Could this be?' All my children, they each had their own rooms. They had pocket money. They went on vacations. I could understand if he had grown up unhappy or poor. But they had everything." The quotations bespeak a relationship between a mother who had no idea who her son had become and a son who had no wish to tell her.

A young man from a middle-class family whom I met when he was serving in a juvenile prison told me he stole and crashed cars "because I can." Dan Patterson never cared about the things once he had them-he had proudly traded a $300 car stereo for a pack of cigarettes. When I asked about the cars' owners, he said, "What the fuck did they ever do for me?" At seventeen, he was on his tenth car-theft arrest. He talked about despair in his interactions with his parents. "When we tried to talk, it was always like there was a glass window in front of us. One time the cops picked me up and then let me go home. My dad was just like, 'Well, go to bed. I'll talk to you later.' So I went to bed, and about a half hour later I went out the window, and I took off again. And later, when he asked me why I did it, I told him, 'Because you didn't try talking to me.'" When Dan appeared in court, his mother said on the stand, "This is not my son. He's not that kind of person. Why can't I just take him home?" I asked Dan when he started lying to his parents. "When they stopped noticing who I am," he said.

Lionel Dahmer's book, A Father's Story, A Father's Story, describes his relationship with his son Jeffrey, who killed seventeen young men in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. The memoir is both a celebrity biography and a cry for expiation. Jeffrey was clearly a disturbed child from a troubled describes his relationship with his son Jeffrey, who killed seventeen young men in Milwaukee between 1978 and 1991. The memoir is both a celebrity biography and a cry for expiation. Jeffrey was clearly a disturbed child from a troubled family, but most boys from troubled families do not develop a sexual obsession with murdering, dissecting, and eating their victims. Lionel wrote, "My life became an exercise in avoidance and denial. Now, when I think of those final days, I see myself in some kind of mental crouch, half expecting some sudden blow, but hoping against hope that it would never hit. It was as if I had locked my son in a soundproof booth, then drawn the curtains so that I could neither hear nor see what he had become." family, but most boys from troubled families do not develop a sexual obsession with murdering, dissecting, and eating their victims. Lionel wrote, "My life became an exercise in avoidance and denial. Now, when I think of those final days, I see myself in some kind of mental crouch, half expecting some sudden blow, but hoping against hope that it would never hit. It was as if I had locked my son in a soundproof booth, then drawn the curtains so that I could neither hear nor see what he had become."

Such denial to the point of dissociation is not infrequent. In Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories, Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories, Rachel King follows nine families as they struggle with death sentences. She includes the story of Esther Herman, whose son Dave committed a vicious murder, then came home for Christmas and refrained from mentioning his crime. "I had two very active businesses, and health issues, and was overseeing the care of people, and I was pretty much overburdened," Esther said. "Mother and my brother were in very bad health. It was an extremely difficult time. [Dave] was always a very kind person. He didn't want to overload me." In describing Dave's trial, Esther said, "We had not provided Dave with a healthy, loving environment growing up. We fought a lot and there was a lot of tension in our home. Even so, Dave had been a good person." The psychological conundrum for the child in Dave's position is that it is extremely alienating-even traumatic-to have parents who are in denial about who you are. A mother who would think you are "a very kind person" and "a good person" even after you've committed murder makes you feel you have to do yet wilder, more dramatic things to be credited with agency. Parental denial, ironically, may contribute to the unspeakable crimes that it later renders invisible. Rachel King follows nine families as they struggle with death sentences. She includes the story of Esther Herman, whose son Dave committed a vicious murder, then came home for Christmas and refrained from mentioning his crime. "I had two very active businesses, and health issues, and was overseeing the care of people, and I was pretty much overburdened," Esther said. "Mother and my brother were in very bad health. It was an extremely difficult time. [Dave] was always a very kind person. He didn't want to overload me." In describing Dave's trial, Esther said, "We had not provided Dave with a healthy, loving environment growing up. We fought a lot and there was a lot of tension in our home. Even so, Dave had been a good person." The psychological conundrum for the child in Dave's position is that it is extremely alienating-even traumatic-to have parents who are in denial about who you are. A mother who would think you are "a very kind person" and "a good person" even after you've committed murder makes you feel you have to do yet wilder, more dramatic things to be credited with agency. Parental denial, ironically, may contribute to the unspeakable crimes that it later renders invisible.

As a child, Noel Marsh often saw his father, Tyrone, beating his mother, Felicity; Tyrone pushed Felicity down the stairs while she was pregnant with triplets, causing one fetus to die. Felicity's first job was to protect Noel, and her identification with him as a beleaguered victim would handicap all their future relations. She left Tyrone and married Steve Tompkins when Noel was six; of the five children she brought with her, Noel was her favorite. Steve found his new situation extremely difficult. "Anything Noel wanted, if she couldn't come up with it, then she felt like she was doing wrong," he said. Noel exploited these concerns relentlessly, trying to drive a wedge between Felicity and Steve when he thought he could profit by it.

Noel's transgressions began to accumulate. "The late hours; the lying; the stealing," Steve recalled. Felicity insisted that Noel couldn't be the one taking money from her purse. Steve would say, "Felicity, ain't nobody else here, baby. Why won't you wake up your eyes and see that Noel is not Noel anymore?" The situation inevitably created marital friction. Then Steve was diagnosed with pulmonary disease and was hospitalized for almost two months. After Steve returned home, Noel's erratic behavior escalated. Felicity recalled, "I used to ask him, 'Noel, do you hate me that much? I never would've dreamed that you would put the pressure and feelings you have on me.'" He asked her to tell the police he was home when he wasn't. "I stopped being me when I started to lie for him," she said. be the one taking money from her purse. Steve would say, "Felicity, ain't nobody else here, baby. Why won't you wake up your eyes and see that Noel is not Noel anymore?" The situation inevitably created marital friction. Then Steve was diagnosed with pulmonary disease and was hospitalized for almost two months. After Steve returned home, Noel's erratic behavior escalated. Felicity recalled, "I used to ask him, 'Noel, do you hate me that much? I never would've dreamed that you would put the pressure and feelings you have on me.'" He asked her to tell the police he was home when he wasn't. "I stopped being me when I started to lie for him," she said.

Noel traces much of his pain to his deadbeat father. During one of Tyrone's infrequent visits, he asked Noel if he needed money. "I said, 'Yeah,'" Noel told me. "And he gave me some drugs and said, 'Here, sell these.'" Felicity said that Noel was just like Tyrone. "It really amazes me how that bloodline is in there," she explained. After Noel's brother was killed in a car crash, Noel's relationship with his mother deteriorated further. "She would sit in the house all day," Noel said. "I would leave and not come back. We was both depressed." By the time Noel turned sixteen, he had quit school; he was constantly stealing; he was dealing drugs; and his sister tipped off their parents that he was keeping guns.

Thugs started calling the house late at night, threatening Felicity. It was more than she and Steve could handle. "I had to call the police on him," Felicity recalled. "I think that's about the lowest, hardest thing a mother should have to do. But I knew, if I really loved my son, I had to." The police were rough during the arrest, and Noel ended up in the emergency room, but Felicity still felt that since Noel had made a name for himself resisting arrest, he was getting off light. She and Steve stood by him during his trial, and their united front influenced his sentencing; with such a good home, he seemed like a candidate for rehabilitation. He had been arrested with $3,000 in his pocket and had said it was Steve's. Steve reluctantly let the story go unchallenged, figuring that Noel would do enough time on the gun charge.

The prison time healed the silence that had set in between Noel and his mother. They didn't have much to say to each other at first, and she would often leave in tears. "He had me feeling so bad about myself, myself," she said. Noel said, "She told me to strive for better. She don't be thinking I be listening, sometimes. But I listen. I remember everything." With more than a hundred pairs of stolen sneakers at home, Noel was a veritable Imelda of the ghetto. The Home School rule was that no inmate could have more than two pairs of shoes, but they could swap them out-so Felicity, unable to break the habit of indulgence, would bring two pairs every Sunday, taking away the previous, enabling Noel to reign as fashion prince even in jail. bring two pairs every Sunday, taking away the previous, enabling Noel to reign as fashion prince even in jail.

The fathers who were missing from the lives of the boys I got to know seemed often to occupy more of their psychic energy than did other family members with whom they actually had daily interactions. No one else could substitute for the shortfall in paternal love; even Dashonte's strong grandfather and Pete's and Noel's upright stepfathers couldn't fill the aching absence in these boys. Their guilt-ridden mothers wanted to compensate for this underlying sadness, which they couldn't do; instead, they postponed making their sons take responsibility for their actions until the government stepped in to do it for them. Yet the relationship that was so traumatic for these young men was the first thing they set out to echo. I was shocked time and again by how these incarcerated kids reached for emotions far beyond their affective means, a reality often reflected in their having children of their own as early as possible. These children begetting children figured that maturity would be a consequence of parenthood, rather than viewing parenthood as an expression of an already established maturity. That conceptualization of parenting is appallingly nave, but also touchingly optimistic, as though having children could provide a repair kit for damaged egos and fathomless despair.

Noel had two children before he was locked up at sixteen. "I buy all the Pampers my girl needs for my son," Noel told me proudly. He had grown up hearing the repeated parable of Tyrone's neglect of this particular matter, but apparently had not processed that his own drug dealing and resultant disappearances to jails and safe houses might be even more traumatic for his new family than their not having diapers readily at hand. Although he had experienced real love from his mother and meaningful support from his stepfather, Noel had it tattooed in his mind that Pampers, drugs, and sneakers were what fathers gave their sons.

Arguments about the nature-or-nurture origin of criminality are just as engaged as those about the origin of autism or genius. The National Institutes of Health's Maribeth Champoux and her colleagues have shown that newborn monkeys with a gene for extreme aggression will not grow up to be aggressive if they are cross-fostered to extremely gentle mothers, even though the aggression gene is still biologically active in them. In human beings, criminal behavior has been related to a genetic irregularity associated with changed function in a particular serotonin transporter. The neuroscientist Avshalom Caspi at Duke surveyed people with that polymorphism who had had a nonviolent childhood and found that they had the usual odds of developing antisocial behavior; among those people in his study who had that polymorphism antisocial behavior; among those people in his study who had that polymorphism and and were beaten as children, 85 percent exhibited antisocial behavior. So the gene appears to confer not criminal behavior, but a vulnerability to develop such behavior under certain circumstances. While family can be a negative influence, it can also be constructive. One study concludes that "a positive family environment is the major reason youth do not engage in delinquent or unhealthy behaviors." A child who feels the lure of delinquency may resist it if he has a family characterized by intimacy. In a seminal collation of studies, Jill L. Rosenbaum declared, "The parental attachment factor explains delinquency better than any other factor." were beaten as children, 85 percent exhibited antisocial behavior. So the gene appears to confer not criminal behavior, but a vulnerability to develop such behavior under certain circumstances. While family can be a negative influence, it can also be constructive. One study concludes that "a positive family environment is the major reason youth do not engage in delinquent or unhealthy behaviors." A child who feels the lure of delinquency may resist it if he has a family characterized by intimacy. In a seminal collation of studies, Jill L. Rosenbaum declared, "The parental attachment factor explains delinquency better than any other factor."

Sometimes when poor family dynamics seem to have traumatized a child, it emerges that the child has actually instigated the poor dynamics. Single mothers have more delinquent children, though it is hard to say whether that is because growing up without a father is traumatic, or because single mothers are women who made poor choices of mate and make poor choices as parents, or because these women are forced to work overtime to take care of their families financially, with the inevitable consequence that intimacy suffers.

A child whose family relationships are troubled is more likely to seek out a negative peer group than a well-adjusted child is, and at that point it is hard to say whether the child has been influenced by his friends or has influenced them. Mothers often told me, "Jimmy just got in with the wrong crowd"-and then I talked to other mothers who claimed that Jimmy was the wrong crowd with whom their sons had fallen in. It seemed noteworthy to me that, with a few exceptions, the criminals I met were not enjoying their own crimes; they were trapped in behavior that often made them as miserable as it made their victims. Criminality felt in many cases more like an illness than many of the "illnesses" I had set out to study. We "cure" disabled people who would prefer not to be cured, but we fail to treat some people with this condition who could recover and would like to do so.