No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Book Review

Though this book was originally published over two decades ago, the stories in author Edward Humes’ No Matter How Loud I Shout (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2015, 374 p.) could be set in present day. As Humes explains in his forward to the 2015 reissue, “…so little has changed…juvenile court is still the unwanted stepchild of the justice system, still understaffed and underfunded, still struggling between opposing poles of rehabilitation and punishment, still deeply misunderstood by public and policymakers alike.” But, “even as the shortcomings of the system remain the same, so, too, do the occasional bits of magic that inhabit the halls of juvenile court: the child rescued, the family restored, the small victories that come just often enough to keep the judges, lawyers, and social workers from being crushed by despair, to allow them to return to fight another day” (pg. ix).

No Matter How Loud I Shout opens with a narrative of the crime, accusation, and “trial” behind the landmark 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Application of Gault, 387 U.S. 1. It serves as a starting place to demonstrate how juvenile court “used to be”. Juveniles had no right to a trial (Gerry Gault had a hearing), no transcript was taken, no right to an attorney or standards of evidence, and no right to an appeal. As a juvenile, he had no rights.

The book then chronicles the lives of several juveniles as they moved through the Juvenile Court Division of Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1994. This was a time of gang warfare, drugs, teen parents, and high profile murders. Grossly underfunded, the system overlooked low-level crime and misbehavior. Instead of redirecting youth to a better path, the system relied on waiting until the worst criminals were charged with the worst crimes, where they received long sentences or were charged as adults.

It’s heartbreaking to read these stories, because they aren’t a work of fiction. These are children whose circumstances and experiences have prematurely aged them in an environment that lacks consistency, stability, expectations, support, and love. Interwoven into these stories are the exhaustive efforts of the men and women working in the juvenile justice system and their differing views of how to fix the system.

Just when everyone is ready to throw up their hands in futility, they are reminded that there is “wisdom, after all, in maintaining a separate juvenile system, and in keeping all those onerous legal guarantees handed down of behalf of Gerry Gault.” There was the “proud young man who strolls into the courthouse four years after his case concludes so he can show the judge his college degree. The young woman who writes from the Midwest to say she has kept a steady job and has been off drugs for three years. The former gang member who now acts as a mediator between warring gangs” (p. 266).

There is hope.

As one gang member who goes by Little Criminal wrote in a Juvenile Hall education program:

Am I a criminal?

That’s what people say.

I don’t believe them, but

It’s on my mind day by day.

The thought of being a criminal

Scares me at night

Thinking of humanity, wanting

Me locked up at night.

If they can define criminal

To themselves, one day

I can say to them

Little Criminal’s no criminal.

It’s just what people say. (p. 287–288)

(JL)