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children—murder, rape, assault, robbery—had risen 68 percent. 3 Los Angeles, with an estimated street gang force of 200,000, a majority of them under eighteen, has been especially hard hit by this epidemic. Given such figures—and the expert (and very mistaken) predictions that juvenile crime would continue to escalate for a decade or more—it should surprise no one that the Juvenile Court each year focuses less on children in danger, and more on dangerous children, locking more away, sending more to be tried as adults, imposing stiffer sentences. And still, the fear grows. You can see it in the courthouse hallway, in the furtive glances exchanged in the never-ending line at the two dented and sticky courthouse pay phones, in the way people rush through the gauntlet of silent, staring youth who sit on the steps and railings at the courthouse entry each day. One glimpse says it all: This is not a place to come for healing. It is a place to flee, as fast as you can.
    Confusion is the other principal state of mind here—and in the nine other juvenile courthouses serving Los Angeles County, with their forty-nine courtrooms and eighty thousand active cases, 4 a system that dwarfs adult courts in most jurisdictions, the largest juvenile justice system in the world. Sweaty hands wave crumpled subpoenas and court orders like pennants, dangled anxiously in front of anyone who remotely appears to be in authority, followed by this question: Where do I go? Because most of the people asked this question are not actually in authority, but merely happen to be walking the hallway in a business suit or policeman’s uniform, the most common reply is a shrug, and so dozens of people roam about aimlessly, unsure where to go.
    This is what they find as they wander the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, Thurgood Marshall Branch: a waiting room, a clerk’s office, and one courtroom downstairs, with one wide stairway leading to the second floor, scarred by graffiti, as are the other gray walls of this place. There is an arthritic elevator at the other end of the building, but it stinks of old urine and seems to take several minutes to pass between the two floors of this disheveled courthouse. The bathrooms are graffiti museums, the mirrors so thoroughly etched with gang insignias that the lawyers brave enough to enter cannot see enough of their own reflections to straighten their ties.The layout of the place mystifies all but the initiates: Superior Court Department 241 is on the first floor, and Departments 240 and 242 are on the second floor. There is no logic to this numbering scheme (other than judicial jockeying for the least shabby quarters), and there are no other room numbers for the courts—you have to figure out their locations on your own. There is no information counter, no posted court calendar, no map of the building, no guidance of any kind. Cryptic, hand-lettered signs, faded and yellowed with age, hang haphazardly from the walls, suspended by ancient, brittle pieces of Scotch tape, defaced by vandals and communicating nothing relevant to the day’s proceedings.
    The aged building, once a small municipal courthouse for adult offenders, outgrown, disused, and, finally, thrown like a gnawed bone to the space-hungry Juvenile Court, is brimming with children and their families today, their combined voices a riotous roar. The modest, casual clothes worn by most of the parents, and the bagged-out, gangster-chic clothes worn by many of the kids, make it easy to spot the lawyers in their suits and power ties, clustered together, cutting deals or interviewing witnesses three minutes before trial. These hurried mutterings in the hallway are what passes for trial preparation in this haphazard court of law, except for a rare few high-profile cases, “specials” in DA jargon. Snatches of conversations become intelligible as you push through the first-floor hallway, packed tight as a rush hour subway car, hot