Jeff Hobbs's Blog, page 2
January 29, 2023
NPR Review — Children of the State
‘Children of the State’ Examines the American Juvenile Justice System
By Martha Anne Toll
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/25/115072...
America persists in having the highest incarceration rates in the world. Juvenile justice, though, presents a somewhat brighter picture.
Author Jeff Hobbs', whose last work The Short Tragic Life of Robert Peace was published to acclaim, has written a new book examining America's juvenile justice system.
Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System provides background on the evolution of America's juvenile justice system — but it is primarily about people, not statistics. Many of the statistics are grim and the outcomes depressing. America's penal system is overly punitive, infected by racism, and generally not geared toward rehabilitation, Hobbs writes.
Most crimes are a matter of state, not federal law. Dispensing "justice" are courts and institutions in a hodgepodge of 50 states, the District of Columbia, and myriad sub-governmental entities, such as counties and municipalities. Depending on where a crime is committed, the offender may or may not be subject to the death penalty, will receive a longer or shorter sentence, and so on. Legal definitions of what constitutes a crime vary widely across the U.S.
Though egregiously late in doing so, the Supreme Court outlawed juvenile executions in 2005, acknowledging "the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty." And the number of incarcerated youth declined 77% from 2000 to 2020, according to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. These are significant steps, but for those who remain incarcerated, the system continues to destroy lives and families, a point amply illustrated by Hobbs.
Hobbs tells the story from three points of view. In the first third of the book, called "Residence," he follows Josiah Wright, a young Black man from Wilmington who is released after 11 months in detention but ends up with a longer and more severe sentence for violating his parole. (Technically, prisons are for adults, and detention is for juveniles. For people behind bars, this can be a distinction without a difference.) Escalating punishments for violating parole, even for very minor infractions, helps keep America's incarceration rates high.
Hobbs follows Josiah and his peers to classes, visits them when they are released, and listens to their opinions. All but a tiny handful of these young people are Black or brown. Some, including Josiah, make stupid and impulsive decisions, as all teenagers do. The difference between these kids and their peers on the "outside" tends to be deep childhood trauma, and being born into low-income families who lack the ability to help shape their children's lives due to the necessity of keeping food on the table. Wealthier parents, whose children make the same stupid and impulsive decisions, have access to resources, including time, financial and legal means, and social connections that tend to keep their kids out of the system.
In the book's midsection, "Education," Hobbs homes in on the Woodside Learning Center in San Francisco. "Depression was one of the most prevalent afflictions at Woodside. Young people thrived on connection yet were also quick to retreat inward to ... a protected space with their spirits: walled, hard, dark, much like the rooms in jail."
Hobbs focuses on the adults tasked with teaching and counseling young people convicted of crimes. Woodside has plenty of committed caring staff with long experience in the system. They too, have trouble balancing the stress of the institution with their home lives. They are barely consulted when San Francisco embarks on a major effort to redesign and institute reforms. Woodside is given a closing date. Closing legacy institutions is a goal for many juvenile justice advocates, but without a constructive alternative, closure may repeat existing weaknesses in the system, Hobbs notes.
In the final portion of the book, entitled "Exile," Hobbs spends time at Exalt Youth, a New York City agency charged with helping youth in the juvenile justice system get internships and jobs. This is important work, and a small group of young people get launched in potential careers. But for many of them, it is too difficult to meet the challenges of working in a world that is so foreign to them (read: white and wealthy), or they are unprepared academically, or their internships are meaningless, or depression and self-defeating behaviors are too overwhelming.
Throughout, Hobbs lets his characters describe the broken system, rather than writing as an advocate. With admirable research, he does a wonderful job bringing out his subjects' humanity. The reader cares about these people — adults and young people alike — and wants them to succeed. Sadly, this is rarely the case.
Hobbs concludes that America's youth incarceration system "is convoluted, flawed, and above all intractably mired in generations of seesawing, opportunistic, naïve, racist thought — but, for the time being, it is incrementally improving and being redesigned, with deeper concern for the individual."
Hobbs doesn't stop there. He writes that "the humans within the system, both those tasked with operating its many layers and those subject to its labyrinthine laws — [are] impassioned, benevolent, weary, admirable, and truthful. Above all, I've found young people incarcerated, even for truly heinous acts, to be redeemable..."
If only redemption were the overarching goal of America's penal system.
Martha Anne Toll is a DC based writer and reviewer. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and was published by Regal House Publishing in Fall 2022.
By Martha Anne Toll
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/25/115072...
America persists in having the highest incarceration rates in the world. Juvenile justice, though, presents a somewhat brighter picture.
Author Jeff Hobbs', whose last work The Short Tragic Life of Robert Peace was published to acclaim, has written a new book examining America's juvenile justice system.
Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System provides background on the evolution of America's juvenile justice system — but it is primarily about people, not statistics. Many of the statistics are grim and the outcomes depressing. America's penal system is overly punitive, infected by racism, and generally not geared toward rehabilitation, Hobbs writes.
Most crimes are a matter of state, not federal law. Dispensing "justice" are courts and institutions in a hodgepodge of 50 states, the District of Columbia, and myriad sub-governmental entities, such as counties and municipalities. Depending on where a crime is committed, the offender may or may not be subject to the death penalty, will receive a longer or shorter sentence, and so on. Legal definitions of what constitutes a crime vary widely across the U.S.
Though egregiously late in doing so, the Supreme Court outlawed juvenile executions in 2005, acknowledging "the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty." And the number of incarcerated youth declined 77% from 2000 to 2020, according to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. These are significant steps, but for those who remain incarcerated, the system continues to destroy lives and families, a point amply illustrated by Hobbs.
Hobbs tells the story from three points of view. In the first third of the book, called "Residence," he follows Josiah Wright, a young Black man from Wilmington who is released after 11 months in detention but ends up with a longer and more severe sentence for violating his parole. (Technically, prisons are for adults, and detention is for juveniles. For people behind bars, this can be a distinction without a difference.) Escalating punishments for violating parole, even for very minor infractions, helps keep America's incarceration rates high.
Hobbs follows Josiah and his peers to classes, visits them when they are released, and listens to their opinions. All but a tiny handful of these young people are Black or brown. Some, including Josiah, make stupid and impulsive decisions, as all teenagers do. The difference between these kids and their peers on the "outside" tends to be deep childhood trauma, and being born into low-income families who lack the ability to help shape their children's lives due to the necessity of keeping food on the table. Wealthier parents, whose children make the same stupid and impulsive decisions, have access to resources, including time, financial and legal means, and social connections that tend to keep their kids out of the system.
In the book's midsection, "Education," Hobbs homes in on the Woodside Learning Center in San Francisco. "Depression was one of the most prevalent afflictions at Woodside. Young people thrived on connection yet were also quick to retreat inward to ... a protected space with their spirits: walled, hard, dark, much like the rooms in jail."
Hobbs focuses on the adults tasked with teaching and counseling young people convicted of crimes. Woodside has plenty of committed caring staff with long experience in the system. They too, have trouble balancing the stress of the institution with their home lives. They are barely consulted when San Francisco embarks on a major effort to redesign and institute reforms. Woodside is given a closing date. Closing legacy institutions is a goal for many juvenile justice advocates, but without a constructive alternative, closure may repeat existing weaknesses in the system, Hobbs notes.
In the final portion of the book, entitled "Exile," Hobbs spends time at Exalt Youth, a New York City agency charged with helping youth in the juvenile justice system get internships and jobs. This is important work, and a small group of young people get launched in potential careers. But for many of them, it is too difficult to meet the challenges of working in a world that is so foreign to them (read: white and wealthy), or they are unprepared academically, or their internships are meaningless, or depression and self-defeating behaviors are too overwhelming.
Throughout, Hobbs lets his characters describe the broken system, rather than writing as an advocate. With admirable research, he does a wonderful job bringing out his subjects' humanity. The reader cares about these people — adults and young people alike — and wants them to succeed. Sadly, this is rarely the case.
Hobbs concludes that America's youth incarceration system "is convoluted, flawed, and above all intractably mired in generations of seesawing, opportunistic, naïve, racist thought — but, for the time being, it is incrementally improving and being redesigned, with deeper concern for the individual."
Hobbs doesn't stop there. He writes that "the humans within the system, both those tasked with operating its many layers and those subject to its labyrinthine laws — [are] impassioned, benevolent, weary, admirable, and truthful. Above all, I've found young people incarcerated, even for truly heinous acts, to be redeemable..."
If only redemption were the overarching goal of America's penal system.
Martha Anne Toll is a DC based writer and reviewer. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and was published by Regal House Publishing in Fall 2022.
January 24, 2023
Children of the State publication day
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...
Jeff Hobbs immerses himself in the country’s juvenile-detention network in his new book, “Children of the State.”
BY STUART MILLER
JAN. 23, 2023 6 AM
'Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System'
By Jeff Hobbs
Scribner: 384 pages, $29
“Children of the State,” Jeff Hobbs’ new book about children caught up in the juvenile justice system, includes some history. There are some telling statistics and discussions of public policy. But ultimately, all of those are bit players: For Hobbs, whose “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, storytelling is about the people. So above all, this sensitively written book offers finely wrought portraits of the teenagers in juvenile hall, as well as the educators and counselors trying to help them find safe passage back to — and through — the real world.
“When I’m doing the work, I focus on the small scale, on the individuals and the relationships,” Hobbs said by video from his home in Los Angeles. That was the approach he took with his book about Robert Peace, a bright young man from Newark, N.J., who managed to escape the streets and attend Yale but remained an outsider and was murdered at 30.
With “Children of the State,” Hobbs does zoom out to note that a quarter of a million kids serve in some form of detention each year: “The impact on their lives is deep and long term.” He knows some of these kids need to be locked up at least briefly — “if you pull a gun on someone there needs to be consequences” — but he believes passionately that their lives still have value, and he hopes to inspire readers to volunteer or advocate for or at least care about the children inside those closed-off buildings.
Hobbs’ narrative gets us inside the heads of his subjects in the depths of the night, when he clearly wasn’t there. “I always ask people about their emotions,” he explained. “I sometimes feel like overstepping, but if you want to get readers to care about them you have to go there and get those details.”
“Children of the State” is divided into three sections, with Hobbs immersing himself in different programs around the country for seven months. In the first, at the only youth residential detention facility in Delaware, Hobbs focuses on the story of Josiah Wright, serving a one-year sentence for a violent
The middle section, set in the Woodside Learning Center in San Francisco, emphasizes the educators, especially the principal, Chris Lanier, and one English language arts teacher, Megan Mercurio. Hobbs explores the ways the program strives to educate these children but also the toll it takes on the adults. “I was really surprised by the level of caring and investment in the classrooms, which causes a lot of burnout,” he said. “You really are close to tragedy in there.”
The final section focuses on the program Exalt Youth in New York, which keeps kids out of detention; they go to their own high school, then come to Exalt to learn life lessons and get paid internships that will help prepare them for the life available to them if they can stay out of trouble. Here, we are introduced to Ian Alvaro and the program’s teacher, Alex Griffith, who struggles to keep Ian moving forward.
Hobbs’ in-person research was interrupted by the pandemic; he continued following the stories but felt that the lockdown deprived him of the chance to focus as much as he’d planned to on the guards and counselors in all three facilities.
There is no sense of such limitations for the reader; we feel we are always in the room. There are scenes of heartbreak (a recent alum of one program is murdered soon after returning to the streets) and more everyday frustrations (given 30 minutes to write an essay, some students jot down a sentence or two while most leave their pages blank). But there are also just enough bright signs to justify the book’s subtitle, “Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System.”
“Hope is a tricky word,” Hobbs acknowledged. “I certainly see it in these stories. Still, if you look at juvenile hall, it’s about the erasure of potential. I wanted to show how hard it is to come out the other side.”
For those teens who can respond, a good program with caring educators and counselors can be a “reset point,” Hobbs said. One teacher notes that for kids who attain their degrees in juvenile hall, or at least credits to finish high school afterward, even just doing OK by many societal standards amounts to a “spectacular” outcome.
Hobbs notes that nearly all the children who end up in juvenile hall are poor and from communities of color — and many of them are also weighed down by loss, violence and other traumas. As a result, Hobbs writes, they live in the present and are haunted by their pasts but can rarely envision their future.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Some of these traits — not being able to look down the road, being told what to do by adults who don’t take your ideas seriously — are fairly universal for teenagers,” he says. But for students with trauma and not much support at home, it risks becoming a permanent condition. “There’s often a deep hopelessness about, ‘What’s out there for me after this?’ Kids in class are constantly muttering about that, so they might as well fight somebody or give the teacher a hard time.”
While Hobbs is reluctant to presume enough expertise to make prescriptions, he says these schools are badly understaffed and need more counselors. “It really did feel like the moments of progress happened when it was just a kid and a caring adult sitting across from them, looking them in the eye and listening,” he said.
He believes state-funded programs that could guarantee vocational training and jobs for graduating students would help those kids envision that elusive future. That kind of support “is the major dream of many of the people I worked with for this book,” he said.
One reason he’s reluctant to prescribe is that he knows he’s an outsider, a privileged “white guy” whose children went to a preschool where even parents discussing timeouts prompted gasps. (“You’d get the stink eye for weeks,” he said.)
“I definitely cannot for a second say I am understanding anyone’s perspective here,” despite all the time he spent talking to his subjects, he said. He knows some readers may even insist these aren’t his stories to tell.
“I don’t have a clean answer to that because there isn’t one and I struggle with the question,” he said. He faced the same issue while writing the book about Robert Peace.
“One day I was driving around with a close friend of Rob’s nattering about this exact question,” Hobbs recalled. “We were at a stoplight and he said, ‘Jeff, I’m not going to give you permission, and I certainly can’t give you absolution. But if you’re listening, maybe I can help you understand. And then because you’re a white guy, maybe you can help other people understand.’ He was just trying to get me to shut up. But it’s what I hold onto as I do this work.”
Jeff Hobbs immerses himself in the country’s juvenile-detention network in his new book, “Children of the State.”
BY STUART MILLER
JAN. 23, 2023 6 AM
'Children of the State: Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System'
By Jeff Hobbs
Scribner: 384 pages, $29
“Children of the State,” Jeff Hobbs’ new book about children caught up in the juvenile justice system, includes some history. There are some telling statistics and discussions of public policy. But ultimately, all of those are bit players: For Hobbs, whose “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, storytelling is about the people. So above all, this sensitively written book offers finely wrought portraits of the teenagers in juvenile hall, as well as the educators and counselors trying to help them find safe passage back to — and through — the real world.
“When I’m doing the work, I focus on the small scale, on the individuals and the relationships,” Hobbs said by video from his home in Los Angeles. That was the approach he took with his book about Robert Peace, a bright young man from Newark, N.J., who managed to escape the streets and attend Yale but remained an outsider and was murdered at 30.
With “Children of the State,” Hobbs does zoom out to note that a quarter of a million kids serve in some form of detention each year: “The impact on their lives is deep and long term.” He knows some of these kids need to be locked up at least briefly — “if you pull a gun on someone there needs to be consequences” — but he believes passionately that their lives still have value, and he hopes to inspire readers to volunteer or advocate for or at least care about the children inside those closed-off buildings.
Hobbs’ narrative gets us inside the heads of his subjects in the depths of the night, when he clearly wasn’t there. “I always ask people about their emotions,” he explained. “I sometimes feel like overstepping, but if you want to get readers to care about them you have to go there and get those details.”
“Children of the State” is divided into three sections, with Hobbs immersing himself in different programs around the country for seven months. In the first, at the only youth residential detention facility in Delaware, Hobbs focuses on the story of Josiah Wright, serving a one-year sentence for a violent
The middle section, set in the Woodside Learning Center in San Francisco, emphasizes the educators, especially the principal, Chris Lanier, and one English language arts teacher, Megan Mercurio. Hobbs explores the ways the program strives to educate these children but also the toll it takes on the adults. “I was really surprised by the level of caring and investment in the classrooms, which causes a lot of burnout,” he said. “You really are close to tragedy in there.”
The final section focuses on the program Exalt Youth in New York, which keeps kids out of detention; they go to their own high school, then come to Exalt to learn life lessons and get paid internships that will help prepare them for the life available to them if they can stay out of trouble. Here, we are introduced to Ian Alvaro and the program’s teacher, Alex Griffith, who struggles to keep Ian moving forward.
Hobbs’ in-person research was interrupted by the pandemic; he continued following the stories but felt that the lockdown deprived him of the chance to focus as much as he’d planned to on the guards and counselors in all three facilities.
There is no sense of such limitations for the reader; we feel we are always in the room. There are scenes of heartbreak (a recent alum of one program is murdered soon after returning to the streets) and more everyday frustrations (given 30 minutes to write an essay, some students jot down a sentence or two while most leave their pages blank). But there are also just enough bright signs to justify the book’s subtitle, “Stories of Survival and Hope in the Juvenile Justice System.”
“Hope is a tricky word,” Hobbs acknowledged. “I certainly see it in these stories. Still, if you look at juvenile hall, it’s about the erasure of potential. I wanted to show how hard it is to come out the other side.”
For those teens who can respond, a good program with caring educators and counselors can be a “reset point,” Hobbs said. One teacher notes that for kids who attain their degrees in juvenile hall, or at least credits to finish high school afterward, even just doing OK by many societal standards amounts to a “spectacular” outcome.
Hobbs notes that nearly all the children who end up in juvenile hall are poor and from communities of color — and many of them are also weighed down by loss, violence and other traumas. As a result, Hobbs writes, they live in the present and are haunted by their pasts but can rarely envision their future.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Some of these traits — not being able to look down the road, being told what to do by adults who don’t take your ideas seriously — are fairly universal for teenagers,” he says. But for students with trauma and not much support at home, it risks becoming a permanent condition. “There’s often a deep hopelessness about, ‘What’s out there for me after this?’ Kids in class are constantly muttering about that, so they might as well fight somebody or give the teacher a hard time.”
While Hobbs is reluctant to presume enough expertise to make prescriptions, he says these schools are badly understaffed and need more counselors. “It really did feel like the moments of progress happened when it was just a kid and a caring adult sitting across from them, looking them in the eye and listening,” he said.
He believes state-funded programs that could guarantee vocational training and jobs for graduating students would help those kids envision that elusive future. That kind of support “is the major dream of many of the people I worked with for this book,” he said.
One reason he’s reluctant to prescribe is that he knows he’s an outsider, a privileged “white guy” whose children went to a preschool where even parents discussing timeouts prompted gasps. (“You’d get the stink eye for weeks,” he said.)
“I definitely cannot for a second say I am understanding anyone’s perspective here,” despite all the time he spent talking to his subjects, he said. He knows some readers may even insist these aren’t his stories to tell.
“I don’t have a clean answer to that because there isn’t one and I struggle with the question,” he said. He faced the same issue while writing the book about Robert Peace.
“One day I was driving around with a close friend of Rob’s nattering about this exact question,” Hobbs recalled. “We were at a stoplight and he said, ‘Jeff, I’m not going to give you permission, and I certainly can’t give you absolution. But if you’re listening, maybe I can help you understand. And then because you’re a white guy, maybe you can help other people understand.’ He was just trying to get me to shut up. But it’s what I hold onto as I do this work.”
February 5, 2021
August 24, 2020
Show Them You’re Good in The National Book Review
A very thoughtful reflection on the students of Show Them You're Good: A Portrait of Boys in the City of Angels the Year before College
The writer really sees these guys and it meant a lot.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.then...
The writer really sees these guys and it meant a lot.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.then...
August 17, 2020
Show Them You're Good 8/18
Show Them You're Good: Four Boys and the Quest for College
My new book, Show Them You're Good, is a work of nonfiction that follows a group of senior boys through their last year of high school at both Beverly Hills High School (in, clearly, Beverly Hills) and Animo Pat Brown High School (in South Los Angeles, 83rd and Beach St).
The braided narratives encompass challenges specific to each individual (a mother's chronic illness, applying for DACA, eviction, sports), others that are specific to this particular passage in life (applying to college and paying for it, over- and under-parenting, adult and societal hypocrisy, school days that are at once mundane and high stakes), and some challenges that are absolutely timeless (racism, classism, romance, family, resilience and its power and elusiveness).
But it's ultimately just these young people in very different spaces and circumstances working pretty hard, dealing with very real stuff at home, laughing a lot when they can, striving to figure out what sets their brains on fire and how to make their way forward while learning that the world is a hard, messy, wondrous, often absurd place that doesn't roll over for anyone.
It was a really meaningful project for me -- a hard but ultimately uplifting one. I'm grateful to know these kids, and I hope their stories might touch a few of you during this moment we're all in.
I'll be speaking with some pretty wonderful writers and thinkers about the work this week on Mon, Tues, and Thurs (it's confusing but do note the time zones):
West Coast: Monday, 8/17, 6:00 pm (PST) with LA Times columnist Steve Lopez, sponsored by Vromans. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/show-them-...
East Coast: Tuesday, 8/18, 7:00 pm (EST) with author Will Schwalbe, sponsored by Brookline Booksmith. https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/ev...
West Coast redux: Thursday, 8/20, 7:00 pm (PST) with author Helen Thorpe, sponsored by Third Place Books. https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event...
Regardless, I hope everyone is healthy and hanging in there. Thank you again. It means a lot.
Sincerely, Jeff
My new book, Show Them You're Good, is a work of nonfiction that follows a group of senior boys through their last year of high school at both Beverly Hills High School (in, clearly, Beverly Hills) and Animo Pat Brown High School (in South Los Angeles, 83rd and Beach St).
The braided narratives encompass challenges specific to each individual (a mother's chronic illness, applying for DACA, eviction, sports), others that are specific to this particular passage in life (applying to college and paying for it, over- and under-parenting, adult and societal hypocrisy, school days that are at once mundane and high stakes), and some challenges that are absolutely timeless (racism, classism, romance, family, resilience and its power and elusiveness).
But it's ultimately just these young people in very different spaces and circumstances working pretty hard, dealing with very real stuff at home, laughing a lot when they can, striving to figure out what sets their brains on fire and how to make their way forward while learning that the world is a hard, messy, wondrous, often absurd place that doesn't roll over for anyone.
It was a really meaningful project for me -- a hard but ultimately uplifting one. I'm grateful to know these kids, and I hope their stories might touch a few of you during this moment we're all in.
I'll be speaking with some pretty wonderful writers and thinkers about the work this week on Mon, Tues, and Thurs (it's confusing but do note the time zones):
West Coast: Monday, 8/17, 6:00 pm (PST) with LA Times columnist Steve Lopez, sponsored by Vromans. https://www.crowdcast.io/e/show-them-...
East Coast: Tuesday, 8/18, 7:00 pm (EST) with author Will Schwalbe, sponsored by Brookline Booksmith. https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/ev...
West Coast redux: Thursday, 8/20, 7:00 pm (PST) with author Helen Thorpe, sponsored by Third Place Books. https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event...
Regardless, I hope everyone is healthy and hanging in there. Thank you again. It means a lot.
Sincerely, Jeff
