Michaela Soyer: Lost Childhoods: Poverty, Trauma, and Violent Crime in the Post-Welfare Era

Excerpt

In Lost Childhoods, Michaela Soyer analyzes the relationship between childhood poverty and criminal behavior. Over a three-month span, Soyer conducted a longitudinal study where she interviewed young adult offenders at the State Correction Institution, Pine Grove, in Pennsylvania. She portrays the problems of America’s poorest societies through the recollection of these young boy’s lives. All of the offenders discussed throughout the book were incarcerated for crimes committed while underage; that is an age when biologically and physically considered an adolescent, but viewed as an adult by the court system. The author argues how childhood poverty and trauma can lead to chronic criminal behaviors because of reductions in the welfare state and the expansions of the criminal and juvenile justice systems, especially in underprivileged communities. …