Is it always in the interest of the public safety to seek the prosecutor's traditional solution -- the harshest penalty possible? Or is the public best served by finding ways to change a kid's lot in life for the better, even if that means opening the prison door?

Locking everyone up is not the solution,' she sighs, staring into a cup of coffee gone cold as The Box at Juvenile Hall. 'It's just the symptom of the problem. It's the proof that we're doing something wrong.

Take a trip in my mindsee all that I've seen,and you'd be called abeast, not a human being...Fuck it, cause there'snot much I can do,there's no way out, myscreams have no voice nomatter how loud I shout...I could be called alow life, but life ain'tas low as me. I'm in juvenile hall headedfor the penitentiary. George Trevino, sixteen, "Who Am I?

It's not like they can take anything from me,' he says later, back with his homeboys in Juvenile Hall. 'Ain't got nothing to give. Nothin' but time, that is. And I been doin' time my whole life, one way or the other.

They do horrible, unchildish things because they they have had very horrible, unchildish lives.

These kids are already hard. They don't need to be made harder. The issue is softening them up. They need to learn how to care about life again. They've lost that. That's what we need to give back to them.

the fundamental question Juvenile Court was designed to ask - What's the best way to deal with this individual kid? - is often lost in the process, replaced by a point system that opens the door, or locks it, depending on the qualities of the crime, not the child.