Who Gets a Childhood? Race and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century Texas (review)

At first glance, the answer to William Bush's question "Who gets a childhood?" might seem self-evident: everyone, of course. People are born and then, in the period of time before they become adults, they are by definition children. To the casual reader, the question might even come across as naïve or disrespectful. "What do you mean, who gets a childhood?" someone might incredulously reply. But Bush is asking a leading question designed to spark a realization. In asking the question, Bush forces people to look for themselves and provide an answer that is either in conflict with reality or one that is horrifying. A more considered answer to his question confronts the hypocrisy of American childhood: black, Latino, and many poor white kids simply do not enjoy the putative protections of childhood, and the juvenile justice system itself deprives them of childhood. Neither social nor governmental institutions protect these children from poverty, violence, exploitation, or hunger. In fact, as Bush points out, harsh distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor in culture, politics, law, and economics have made childhood a privilege, not a fact.

Bush argues that the net effect of a century of occasionally well-intentioned experimentation and reform in Texas social policy has been to favor the lives of rich and middle-class adolescents and to exclude poor and non-white youths and, rather than protecting childhood, subject them to violence and exploitation. Non-whites were consistently and vastly overrepresented in the Texas juvenile justice system: by 1944 Mexicans or Mexican Americans comprised about only five percent of the population of Houston, but made up thirteen percent of known delinquents. In 1950, the percentage of African American inmates was twice as high as the state's general population; by the late 1960s, black youth comprised nearly one-third of the inmate population at Gatesville or Mountain View but only one-tenth of the high school-age population of Texas. In spite of the fact that juvenile crimes in America have always overwhelmingly consisted of non-violent or property offenses, this bottom line has been reached through a convoluted path of developing state welfare programs, the evolution of the legal status of children in courts, and the constantly changing politics of state legislatures. Bush demonstrates this path through an academic monograph based on his dissertation, describing the history of juvenile justice in Texas.

Texas has a depressingly familiar cycle of reform and scandal, a repetitive sequence of idealism and expediency in public approaches to caring for children. Regular creation of key institutions and agencies seem to indicate sustained commitment to juvenile justice: Gatesville State School for Boys (1889), Juvenile Delinquency Court Act (1907), Gainesville State School for Girls (1916), Texas Board of Control (1920), Texas Youth Development Act and Texas State Youth Development Council (1949), and the Texas Youth Council (1957). Despite this impressive list, the real story lay behind the doors of these institutions. The public's unwillingness to address the root causes of delinquent or indigent children and refusal to understand how families get caught up in the juvenile system does not change. What changed was the labeling of the population as alternately sympathetic—"at-risk" or part of a "youth crisis"—to dangerous—a "super-predator" or engaging in "teen-ager terrorism."

Bush uses institutional records including the annual reports and member files from the Board of Control, the State Juvenile Training School, and the Texas Youth Commission. He also uses legislation, legal cases, inmate court testimony, newspaper exposés, and summary statistics of case files. However, he does not seem to have internal narrative case files. Still, his sources illuminate the typical triangle of actors in juvenile justice and the shifting alliances among them: reformers and investigators, institutional representatives, and families. More specifically the key players in this story include Board of Control members, Hogg Foundation reformers, superintendents of the institutions, politicians and governors...