Related Guides
Databases
- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window Kanopy is a provider of documentaries, training films, and theatrical releases available as streaming video. Clips from the videos can be embedded in presentations or shown in class. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- Associated Press Images Collection This link opens in a new window Associated Press Images Collection is a searchable collection of recent and historical photos from the Associated Press, plus AP graphics, articles, and brief sound clips.
- ARTstor This link opens in a new window ARTstor is a database of images from museums, artists, libraries, colleges and universities, scholars, private collections, and photo archives available for teaching, education, and scholarship, with all images cleared for educational use.
Featured Films
- The Pushouts (streaming, Alexander Street Press) "I was in prison before I was even born.” So begins the story of Victor Rios - a high school dropout, gang member, and three time felon by 15. But when a teacher’s quiet persistence, a mentor’s moral conviction, and his best friend’s murder converge, Rios’ path takes an unlikely turn. Two decades later Rios - by then a 36 year-old tenured UC professor, author and national thought leader on the school-to-prison pipeline - gets a call.
- They Call Us Monsters (streaming, Kanopy) Juan, Jarad and Antonio, all young teens, face decades in prison. While the gravity of their crimes is great, these young men are still simply teenagers. Do they deserve a second chance? To some, they're kids. To others, they're monsters. THEY CALL US MONSTERS explores the complicated experience of juvenile offenders.
- G-Dog (streaming, Academic Video Online) G-Dog is a story about second changes - about the charismatic visionary Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who rescues kids from gangs by launching the nation's largest, most successful gang intervention and rehab program, Homeboy Industries, now an international model.
- Prison for Kids (streaming, Academic Video Online) In a Phoenix, Arizona penitentiary, Sheriff Joe Arpalo has initiated an extremely controversial deterrent for juvenile delinquency, called "Smart Tents." It involves incarcerating children who have broken the law in a real prison for two days, to show them what they could become as adults if they don't clean up their act.
- Second Chance Kids (streaming, Academic VideoOnline) The film examines the impact of the order to re-evaluate thousands of juvenile murder cases and follows two of the first convicts to be released.
- Motivational Interviewing in Juvenile Justice Settings (streaming, Kanopy) Without a strong alliance and clear boundaries, mandated clients will often shut down or act out—especially if they are teenagers. How do you work to meet both institutional and clinical goals? MI expert Ali Hall demonstrates how to use this collaborative approach in juvenile justice settings.
- Child's Play, Deadly Play (streaming, Academic Video Online) This is the story of Lionel Tate, the youngest person ever to be sentenced to life without parole. Lionel Tate was a 170-pound, 12-year-old boy who played rough one day with his friend, 48-pound, 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. When Tiffany died from injuries, Lionel claimed that he only used wrestling holds that he'd seen on TV.
- Old enough to do time : juvenile justice policies (streaming, Academic Video Online) "If you re old enough to do the crime, you re old enough to do the time." This documentary investigates the results of this stern policy, a departure from earlier attitudes when juvenile courts were established specifically to help young people reform. We see juveniles as young as thirteen being tried as adults and incarcerated with adult criminals.
- Locked Inside A Nightmare (streaming, Academic Video Online) Wackenhut is the leader of a trend in America putting prisons in the hands of private companies, which say they can offer better rehabilitation services and counseling. But 60 Minutes examines what is really happening at Wackenhut Corporation's various juvenile detention centers. Scott Pelley reports.
- Innocent until proven guilty (streaming, Academic Video Online) Follows Forman both in his role as public defender and as educator at an alternative high school for juvenile ex-offenders, which he co-founded. Using his knowledge of the judicial system, his understanding of the streets, and his commitment to the African-American community, he is trying to help at-risk youth get back on track.
- Invisible Revolution (streaming, Academic Video Online) Profiles a chilling subculture among American youth. For over a decade, the clash between racist and anti-racist youth has been virtually invisible, but now, ever younger members are taking control of the white supremacy movement. Rising against them are a group of anti- racist skinheads, punk rockers and mainstream kids who call themselves the Anti Racist Action (ARA). The filmmaker, Beverly Peterson, had extraordinary access to the hate-filled adolescents at war with each other.
- The Brutal Truth: A Violence Documentary (streaming, Academic Video Online) This documentary offers insights into the pandemic violence among teen-aged youth in America today. Juvenile offenders, both men and women, who have fallen prey to alcohol and drugs, domestic abuse, or committed gang violence or sexual abuse, tell their emotionally moving stories of what it is like to be the victim, or in some cases the predator.
- Juvenile Offenders (streaming, Academic Video Online) Discusses the problem of determining at what point criminals should be prosecuted as adults.
- Preventing Youth Crime (streaming, Academic Video Online) More and more children are being criminalised, but what can schools do to try and prevent children from getting involved in crime and entering the criminal justice system? Rod Morgan, former chair of the Youth Justice Board, says schools need to reconsider excluding children, as, if they're not in school, this can increase their likelihood of being involved in criminal behaviour. At Brislington Enterprise College in Bristol, they're trying to reduce the number of exclusions with a restorative justice approach, in which victims and offenders are brought together.
- Engaging Juvenile Offenders in a Therapeutic Relationship (streaming, Academic Video Online) This video addresses the unique challenges of engaging Juveniles who have been adjudicated and then mandated to treatment. Rick Cresta works with Trevor, a 16-year-old African American male who has been placed in the custody of the Department of Youth Services following a new assault charge and violation of his probation by not attending school and not following his curfew.
- Families and Crime (streaming, Academic Video Online) Discusses various methods of helping troubled children and their families in order to prevent the possibility of a life of crime for these children.
- Alice Goffman: How We're Priming Some Kids for College and Others for Prison (TED Talk) In the United States, two institutions guide teenagers on the journey to adulthood: college and prison. Sociologist Alice Goffman spent six years in a troubled Philadelphia neighborhood and saw first-hand how teenagers of African-American and Latino backgrounds are funneled down the path to prison — sometimes starting with relatively minor infractions. In an impassioned talk she asks, "Why are we offering only handcuffs and jail time?"
- Locked Up in America: Christel's Story (PBS) Christel Tribble says she wants to be on American Idol, or maybe even become a detective someday. But in her home of Beecher Terrace — a housing project in Louisville, Ky., where around one in six people cycle in and out of prison every year — the odds seem stacked against her.
- Bullied (streaming, Academic Video Online The film Bullied is a work that traces bullying and the effects of bullying, but also the methods and programs that have proven efficacious in reducing bullying in schools. From those people who live with the scars of having been bullied to those families who now grieve the loss of their child to suicide in the wake of brutal acts of bullying, the film examines the reasons why people bully and the fallout that occurs from that bullying.
- Youth Violence: Breaking the Cycle (streaming, Academic Video Online) Every day we hear gruesome stories of violent acts committed by young people: school shootings, gang wars, bullying. But why are so many kids turning to violence, and how do we stop it? Experts have begun to figure out some of the answers; other answers come from the kids who live through the violence.
- Juvenile Court: The Complex Cases at the Memphis Juvenile Court (streaming, Kanopy) Shows the complex variety of cases before the Memphis Juvenile Court: foster home placement, drug abuse, armed robbery, child abuse, and sexual offenses. The sequences illustrate such issues as community protection vs. the desire for rehabilitation, the range and the limits of the choices available to the court, the psychology of the offender, and the constitutional and procedural questions involved in administering a juvenile court.
DVDs
- 21 Jump Street. The complete series, seasons 1-5 (dvd) "Officer Tom Hanson leads his band of agents in the special Jump Street division by going undercover to infiltrate local schools to put a stop to crime and keep students safe from corrupt influences"-
- Juvies (dvd) This film explores the personal stories of twelve juveniles, male and female, who were at Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall and were prosecuted and incarcerated as adults. Based on the work of students in a video production class taught by Leslie Neale at the Juvenile Hall.
- Scared Straight! 20 Years Later (dvd) The Oscar and Emmy award-winning SCARED STRAIGHT! (1978) recounted a day seventeen teenage lawbreakers spent inside the Rahway maximum security prison with the most dangerous criminals New Jersey had to offer. Calling themselves "the Lifers," these convicts gave the youths an in-your-face, no-holds-barred account about life in prison, sharing every ugly detail. This follow-up documentary revisit SCARED STRAIGHT!, to see the lasting effects of the teenagers/convicts encounter, hosted by Danny Glover
- Sweet Sixteen (dvd) With his mother serving time for crimes committed by her drug-pushing boyfriend, a Glaswegian teen (Martin Compston) vows to make a better life for her after she's released from prison on his 16th birthday. In order to earn enough cash to set them up in a new place, Compston embarks on a crime spree that could land him in hotter water than his troubled mom. Ken Loach's gritty coming-of-age drama features subtitles due to the actors' thick Scottish accents.
- Thirteen (dvd) Director Catherine Hardwicke co-wrote with then 13-year-old Nikki Reed (who also co-stars) this semi-autobiographical portrait of teenage rebellion, which is about a young girl who falls into the world of drugs, petty crime and anonymous sex. Evan Rachel Wood plays the friend and Holly Hunt plays the distraught and concerned mother. DVD
Podcasts
- Caught Mass incarceration starts young. These kids say the system changes them forever.
- The Appeal: Justice in America: Juvenile Justice America has one of the harshest juvenile justice systems on the planet. It is the only country in the world that sentences children to life without parole. On this episode, we focus on America’s juvenile justice system: what it looks like, who it’s housing, and how we got here.
- Campaign for Youth Justice: Voices of Youth Justice The Campaign for Youth Justice is focused on ending the practice of prosecuting, sentencing, and incarcerating youth under the age of 18 in the adult criminal justice system. The Voices of Youth Justice podcast is intended to uplift the stories of youth who have been charged as adults or spent time in adult facilities and their families.
- Juvenile Justice Information Exchange: The Hubcast We are focusing on immigrant youth in the juvenile justice system. Over three episodes, we will discuss demographics, relief options, consequences that stem from system involvement, policy recommendations from experts in the field, and more.
- Criminal Injustice: Transforming Juvenile Probation When juveniles face criminal charges, most end up on probation. This should put their young lives on track. But too often, it’s just another set of rules, and kids fall into deeper trouble. Can we transform probation for juveniles, so more kids don’t become adult offenders?
- Criminal Injustice; Why We Don't Sentence Kids to Die Anymore Since they began in the early 20th century, juvenile courts always treated kids differently – as people who were young enough to change. This began to change in the 1980s and 1990s when crime really spiked and we began putting some kids in adult courts and prisons – even giving life without parole and death penalties. Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, explains what changed.
- Suave A podcast about the system that sentences juveniles to life in prison, a story of incarceration, redemption, and the unusual relationship between a journalist and a source.
