Juvenile Justice and Juvenile Delinquency ─ Case Studies Workbook

This book is intended to remedy what is lacking in juvenile justice and juvenile delinquency textbooks by providing students with a workbook that allows them to make decisions and design court orders for typical juvenile court cases. This is a book for college students who are taking juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice courses. It is designed as a supplementary textbook and the intent is to give students a hands-on experience in order to help them better understand the kinds of court hearings that take place in juvenile and family courts. Students will have a greater appreciation for the cases and the decisions juvenile court judges and referees have to make on a daily basis.

James Windell, M.A., has been a juvenile court psychologist, an author, a newspaper columnist, an editor, and a criminal justice college instructor. He worked in the juvenile justice system for more than thirty-five years. Most recently, he was a psychologist in the Oakland County Circuit Court’s Family Division, in Oakland County, Michigan doing group therapy with delinquents. He developed a group training program for parents of delinquents which won a national award. Since 2000 he has been an adjunct instructor in the Criminal Justice Department at Wayne State University in Detroit. Since September, 2013, he has been a lecturer in criminal justice at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. In both universities he teaches juvenile justice classes.

He published his first book, Discipline: A Sourcebook of 50 Failsafe Techniques for Parents (Macmillan) in 1991. Since then he has written more than 20 other books which have been on a variety of subjects and published by publishers such as Bantam, Perseus, Impact Publishers, and John Wiley and Sons. His criminal justice books are The Student’s Guide to Writing a Criminal Justice Research Paper (Kendall Hunt, 2010) and The American Criminal Justice System (Cognella, 2013). In addition to this proposed book, Mr. Windell’s current projects include a book on wrongful conviction (with Professor Marvin Zalman) and a book on widowhood.

Furthermore, he has written a weekly column entitled Coping With Kids for the Oakland Press and the Staten Island Advance for the past 28 years. He has written a mental health column for the Detroit Free Press, the Coping With Kids column for Working Mother Magazine, and numerous booklets and journal articles related to psychology and parenting. He has appeared on more than 180 radio and television shows, including both local and national talk shows. His books and his work with parents have been highlighted in many newspapers, including the Chicago Sun Times, The Detroit News, The Detroit Free Press, and The New York Times. He has been featured in Jane Brody’s column in the New York Times on two occasions.

Nicole Bain has worked in the juvenile court and circuit court setting for over 24 years. She is currently a juvenile court probation officer and has worked previously as a juvenile diversion coordinator, victim’s advocate and paralegal for a prosecuting attorney’s office. She has managed caseloads of juvenile delinquents, conducted training and informative workshops for teen volunteers regarding the juvenile court and diversion programs, and counseled families and children through court processes and testifying. She has had daily, first-hand experience and involvement with juvenile offenders for the past 10 years; often maintaining month-long to several year-long relationships with them, their families, their school, the Court, and their specific group of support professionals. She has researched and recommended juvenile rehabilitative programming to the Court and supervised adjudicated youth throughout their treatment. She has maintained working relationships among the court bench, as well as with professionals in local mental health agencies and with agents from various state-wide juvenile residential programs. She has lectured in college classes regarding the juvenile justice system, delinquency, restorative justice, and the work of probation officers.