"The Criminal Child offers the first English translation of a key early work by Jean Genet. In 1949, in the midst of a national debate about improving the French reform-school system, Radiodiffusion Française commissioned Genet to write about his experience as a juvenile delinquent. He sent back a piece that was a paean to prison instead of the expected horrifying exposé. Revisiting the cruel hazing rituals that had accompanied his incarceration,...

The Jack-Roller tells the story of Stanley, a pseudonym Clifford Shaw gave to his informant and co-author, Michael Peter Majer. Stanley was sixteen years old when Shaw met him in 1923 and had recently been released from the Illinois State Reformatory at Pontiac, after serving a one-year sentence for burglary and jack-rolling (mugging), Vivid, authentic, this is the autobiography of a delinquent-his experiences, influences, attitudes, and values....

"Robyn's scared of dogs -- like, really scared. But she agrees to spend her summer working at an animal shelter anyway. (It's a long story.) Robyn soon discovers that many juvenile offenders also volunteer at the shelter -- including Nick Di'Angelo, a boy from Robyn's past. A boy she hoped never to see again. Nick has a talent for getting into trouble, but after his latest arrest, Robyn suspects that he just might be innocent. And she sets out to...

Twelve-year-old Jonathan Grisby has been sent to the Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys, a former lunatic asylum which is currently run by a sadist who enjoys punishing the boys and setting them against each other; but when a lightning strike kills all the adults the boys find themselves suddenly free--and trapped on Scar Island which seems to be sinking into the ocean.

After a party gets raided by the police, four teenagers who barely know each other find themselves on the run in a car with a trunk full of stolen drugs--and in the next few hours they will make decisions that will determine the course of the rest of their lives.

There are three rules in the neighborhood: Don't cry ; Don't snitch ; Get revenge. Will takes his dead brother Shawn's gun, and gets in the elevator on the 7th floor. As the elevator stops on each floor, someone connected to Shawn gets on. Someone already dead. Dead by teenage gun violence. And each has something to share with Will.

Discusses and takes a look at the gun control debate and describes the harsh realities of this issue.

"After getting in trouble with the law, a group of wayward teens are given an ultimatum: serve time in juvenile detention for their crimes or walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across Spain over the summer holidays with a pair of court-appointed counselors. Although they come from diverse backgrounds, the unlikely friends try to make the best of their situation. The pilgrims grow closer on their journey, but they may not make it to their destination--the...

Despite having moved out of the rough housing project where he grew up, ten-year-old Junebug continues to encounter crime, gangs, and violence.