burning down the house book summary

If Newt Gingrich hadn’t pursued no-holds-barred partisan warfare, according to this line of thinking, someone else would have. As an award-winning journalist and author, Bernstein has spent years interviewing hundreds of kids swept up into the American juvenile justice system and exploring what she calls “modern-day dungeons,” also known as juvenile prisons, training schools. -Even though actions for reform have been taken, delinquents are still treated in dehumanizing ways. In fact there were times I almost felt I couldn't read any more (very graphic explanation of physical and sexual abuse, the cruel treatment of solitary confinement, etc), but I'm glad I pushed through. Zelizer sees Gingrich’s “masterstroke” as the co-option of reform-oriented institutions that, in Watergate’s wake, were supposed to make government more accountable and progressive. Much like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, I went into the book curious and eager to learn, and came out of the book with furor in my belly. And she has done her homework. It is a call - a plea - to do better by all children so that all of society will not continue to suffer. Bernstein also cites compelling studies that suggest that juvenile detention does not reduce crime rates - if anything, it scars developing personalities and encourages criminal behavior. This book is brutally honest in its portrayal of exactly where we stand as a society in our treatment of the youth who were already suffering before they were locked away and motivates the reader to do something about it, “Young people who are involved in delinquent acts, it goes without saying, need to make better choices. There is no "reform" -- only institutional recidivism lies down that path, in which kids are attempted to be protected from the harm the system does to them, then are let down again and again. This piece is incomprehensibly heartbreaking, but also resolutely hopeful. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Bernstein intersperses Department of Justice reports and grim statistics with moving stories of kids who are or have been incarcerated -- many of whom she worked with at a youth newspaper in the Bay Area. As an award-winning journalist and author, Bernstein has spent years interviewing hundreds of kids swept up into the American juvenile justice system and exploring what she calls “modern-day dungeons,” also known as juvenile prisons, training schools, reform schools, and the like. This is a very important book. Calling this book, "The New Jim Crow" but for juveniles, would not be an unfair comparison. I understand that she is coming from a place of frustration and anger at the system. Nick has declined to add such decorations as a Star of David or a pink triangle to represent his Jewish faith and his gay lifestyle. And despite the Watergate babies’ desire to remove money from politics, the Democrats did little to halt the stream of funds from lobbyists, private money and special interests that flowed principally to the majority party. For instance, recent campaigns against psychological "bullying" would criminalize a great deal of nonviolent but threatening or humiliating behavior. This book is very well-written: clear, well researched, both emotional and logical. Bernstein presents them all as fully realized people, not victims. This is an eye-opening but VERY disturbing book about the abuses of the juvenile justice system in America. But the novel is more than worth reading for itself, if only for one brilliant long scene of a departmental faculty meeting and for Lev Raphael’s usual witty and biting depiction of academe. Learn more. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. An incredibly important book. This is an eye-opening but VERY disturbing book about the abuses of the juvenile justice system in America. An impassioned, factual read about the deeply troubling problems in our juvenile corrections system and the USA as a whole. Having lived in the U.S. for the past ten years, I have become somewhat ingrained in the culture of punishment and the so-called law and order. This book is disturbing, emotional, and eye opening. “The number-one fact about the news media,” Gingrich observed, “is they love fights.” By provoking confrontations with the Democrats, Gingrich would gain media attention — even more so when he succeeded in goading the Democrats into retaliation, which he portrayed as further evidence of their tyranny. The author proposes not only reform, but an end to juvenile incarceration altogether. Annoying! Nell Bernstein is the author of All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated, a Newsweek “Book of the Week,” and Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison (both published by The New Press). She concludes the system is so broken it cannot be reformed -- and illuminates some places (Red Wing, Minnesota, Missouri) where juvenile prisons have been replaced with more humane -- and more effective -- settings to deal with children in trouble with the law. He acidly observes that while Republican gatekeepers of the early 1950s used McCarthy to attack their opponents, they never made the renegade senator their leader. From then it was just a matter of time until Wright was forced out. We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day. If bullies are removed from schools and criminally prosecuted, many will go to juvenile detention, where they may well become victims of much more severe bullying at the hands of hardened fellow inmates and, too often, predatory adults. Nell Bernstein offers an undeniable case against the abuses and immorality of juvenile detention. When did American politics take the … As her title indicates, Bernstein allows for no good version of juvenile incarceration and holds out no hope of making the system much better. Burning Down the House is a clarion call to shut down our nation’s brutal and counterproductive juvenile prisons and bring our children home. (Critical Survey of Contemporary Fiction), Associate Professor Nick Hoffman’s Department of English, American Studies, and Rhetoric (EAR) at the State University of Michigan is in even more disarray than usual. She concludes the system is so broken it cannot be reformed -- and illuminates some places (Red Wing, Minnes. The disruptive child who refuses to confess his guilt and open up about his emotions has "failed" his therapy and may be denied release despite otherwise good behavior or put in solitary confinement - a routine punishment at many juvenile prisons that Bernstein notes is condemned as torture under international human rights standards. Zelizer doesn’t quite spell this out, but while Wright clearly was not a racist of the old stripe, neither was he a dealmaker of the same caliber as they were. Additionally, with that belief in mind, Bernstein uses her book to illustrate that two, correcting our children does not require containing them. As Nick comments, “The lunacy here is atmospheric and institutional.”. A review of all fifty states found only eight where there was not conclusive evidence of system-wide mistreatment.”. Zelizer reserves some of his harshest verdicts for the Republican Party leaders who naïvely believed they could harness Gingrich’s insurgency. The statistics and points made throughout the book were shocking to read. But the odds of their doing so will be vastly increased if we make some effort to ensure that they have better choices.”. But we could dramatically reduce the amount of abuse and injustice simply by keeping the number of people imprisoned as small as possible. But when Will got into it on the court, he and his rival were sprayed in the face at close range by a chemical similar to Mace, denied a shower for twenty-four hours, and then locked in solitary confinement for a month. Alarming look inside juvenile correctional facilities. But scandal-seeking journalists served Gingrich’s cause by churning out so many thinly sourced stories about Wright’s supposedly shady involvement with Texas oil executives and bankers that the leading good-government organization, Common Cause, felt compelled to call upon the House Ethics Committee to investigate him. As they describe in their own voices their fight to maintain their humanity and protect their individuality in environments that would deny both, the young people offer a hopeful alternative to the doomed effort to reform a system that should only be dismantled.Burning Down the House is a clarion call to shut down our nation’s brutal and counterproductive juvenile prisons and bring our children home. They would seek to persuade the public that Congress had become “morally, intellectually and spiritually corrupt,” in Gingrich’s words, and to overthrow Speaker Wright as the embodiment of that illegitimate establishment. The statistics Bernstein cites in the book about recidivism, costs, and abuse in prison are astonishing. The extent of the brutal treatment that so many receive in the juvenile facilities, and the lengthy history of abuses unco. Nell Bernstein's new book, "Burning Down the House," offers a long, uncomfortable look inside juvenile hall. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. This has to be one of the most depressing and saddest books I have ever read. Bernstein, a Bay Area journalist, makes it clear that abuse is the norm in juvenile incarceration, as it is in jails and prisons generally. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Read this for a class in my doctorate program.

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