Nyree was vulnerable, honest, and authentic in her story. She wants to be a voice for those who had the same struggles and for those who are still struggling today. This book is not written from a “got it all together” perspective. Nyree truly believes that struggles are created to make you and not break you. Sharing her story has helped her to become free in her identity. For every person that has had a rocky childhood, this book is for you. To every misfit and misunderstood person, Nyree desires for you to read this book because she wants you to know that you are not alone.
Humphries (sociology, anthropology, and criminal justice, Rutgers U.) analyzes reactions to crack cocaine use, particularly by women, and critiques the policies instituted to combat it. She argues that policies of zero tolerance, mandatory sentences, and interdiction have failed to reduce drug use, increased the sense of persecution among the urban poor, and contributed to court and prison overcrowding. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
"How 'Bout That For a Crack Baby" depicts the journey of a young man born in Detroit with drugs in his system, and engulfed in an environment with drug lords, poverty, thieves, death, loneliness, and a lack of guidance. Shawn's man- child journey against the odds led him to two degrees, accolades, awards, and recognition...but most of all, service to ensure that many with similar life circumstances would have a pathway to success. His book is at once descriptive and prescriptive as Shawn uses his amazing life trajectory to inject how to maximize the promise of mentorship - solutions that he has personally employed with great success impacting the lives of black and brown boys in Detroit and across the nation.
Based on on-site interviews with over 200 respondents in 12 metropolitan areas, including: child welfare administrators and caseworkers, hospital and social service staff, private agency representatives, foster parents, state and local officials, and national experts. Conclusion: "the use of cocaine and other illegal substances is pervasive in women of child-bearing age." Chilling!
Children of Addiction reports original research on the biological and psychological effects of addiction in children. The contributions reflect the larger social implications of the research undertaken.
A feminist historian and an adoptive parent, Laura Briggs gives an account of transracial and transnational adoption from the point of view of the mothers and communities that lose their children.
A team of veteran drug researchers in medicine, law, and the social sciences provides the most comprehensive, penetrating, and original analysis of the crack cocaine problem in America to date. Helps readers understand why the United States has the most repressive, expensive, yet least effective drug policy in the Western world.
During the Progressive Era, a rehabilitative agenda took hold of American juvenile justice, materializing as a citizen-and-state-building project and mirroring the unequal racial politics of American democracy itself. Alongside this liberal "manufactory of citizens,” a parallel structure was enacted: a Jim Crow juvenile justice system that endured across the nation for most of the twentieth century. In The Black Child Savers, the first study of the rise and fall of Jim Crow juvenile justice, Geoff Ward examines the origins and organization of this separate and unequal juvenile justice system. Ward explores how generations of “black child-savers” mobilized to challenge the threat to black youth and community interests and how this struggle grew aligned with a wider civil rights movement, eventually forcing the formal integration of American juvenile justice. Ward’s book reveals nearly a century of struggle to build a more democratic model of juvenile justice—an effort that succeeded in part, but ultimately failed to deliver black youth and community to liberal rehabilitative ideals. At once an inspiring story about the shifting boundaries of race, citizenship, and democracy in America and a crucial look at the nature of racial inequality, The Black Child Savers is a stirring account of the stakes and meaning of social justice.
A tiny African-American baby lies in a hospital incubator, tubes protruding from his nostrils, head, and limbs. "He couldn't take the hit," the caption warns. "If you're pregnant, don't take drugs." Ten years earlier, this billboard would have been largely unintelligible to many of us. But when it appeared in 1991, it immediately conjured up several powerful images: the helpless infant himself; his unseen environment, a newborn intensive care unit filled with babies crying inconsolably; and the mother who did this -- crack-addicted and unrepentant. Misconceiving Mothersis a case study of how public policy about reproduction and crime is made. Laura E. Goacute;mez uses secondary research and first-hand interviews with legislators and prosecutors to examine attitudes toward the criminalization and/or medicalization of drug use during pregnancy by the legislature and criminal justice system in California. She traces how an initial tendency toward criminalization gave way to a trend toward seeing the problem of "crack babies" as an issue of social welfare and public health. It is no surprise that in an atmosphere of mother-blaming, particularly targeted at poor women and women of color, "crack babies" so easily captured the American popular imagination in the late 1980s. What is surprising is the way prenatal drug exposure came to be institutionalized in the state apparatus. Goacute;mez attributes this circumstance to four interrelated causes: the gendered nature of the social problem; the recasting of the problem as fundamentally "medical" rather than "criminal"; the dynamic nature of the process of institutionalization; and the specific features of the legal institutions -- that is, the legislature and prosecutors' offices -- that became prominent in the case. At one levelMisconceiving Motherstells the story of a particular problem at a particular time and place how the California legislature and district attorneys grappled with pregnant women's drug use in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At another level, the book tells a more general story about the political nature of contemporary social problems. The story it tells is political not just because it deals with the character of political institutions but because the process itself and the nature of the claims-making concern the power to control the allocation of state resources. A number of studies have looked at how the initial criminalization of social problems takes place.Misconceiving Motherslooks at the process by which a criminalized social problem is institutionalized through the attitudes and policies of elite decision-makers. Author note: Laura E. Gomezis Acting Professor of Law and Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles.
