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“Intake” and Prologue

• In the Old Wing of the Central Lockup in the Upper Sonoran Desert, the narrator describes officers at juvenile hall engaging in their usual intakes of juvenile delinquents.

• Edward Humes, the author, had Geri Vance, a would-be motel robber and Ronald Duncan, a murderer, in his group therapy session with other boys, one of whom was named Elias.

• Elias's best friend had died in his arms and he was separated from his baby girl and tried as an adult; he would probably be in jail his entire life.

• Gerald Francis Gault found himself at the Gila Country Detention Center in the Upper Sonoran Desert in the mid-1960s; Gault had made a lewd phone call and was declared a juvenile delinquent with no explanation of his rights, no evidence of his guilt and branded "habitually immoral" by the judge.

• Humes introduces the reader to Richard...

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