Product Review

Susan Madden Lankford, who explored homelessness and female incarceration in her two previous award-winning books, examines the plight of youngsters serving time in juvenile hall in BORN, NOT RAISED: VOICES FROM JUVENILE HALL.

For two years, Lankford interviewed more than 120 incarcerated teenagers, eight of them weekly, and features their voices, views, writing and drawings along with interviews with pediatric psychiatrists, neurobiologists, judges, probation officers and other professionals in BORN, NOT RAISED. In researching her book on women in jail, Lankford learned that a majority of inmates had at least two children in foster care, living with relatives or in detention. Many of them would end up in jail, too, because they lacked the basic parenting necessary to become productive individuals.