The juvenile justice system, founded on the idea that childhood is a distinct stage of life, is being dismantled, with more and more teenagers imprisoned alongside adults. The tough-on-crime crowd has won, but what kind of society has been left behind?

JEFF Stackhouse, who turned 15 this Alexsummer, in the Madison Street Jail in StacPhoenix. was Photograph by Katy Grannan 3 years old, good luck entered his life for the first and maybe the last time. Abandoned as a 2-week-old infant by a schizophrenic mother, Jeff had lived by then in eight different foster homes. But in 1988, he was taken in by a woman who quickly made up her mind to love him and who adopted him two years later. The fact that Jeff came to her "with all his worldly possessions in one very small box" and called every adult female Mommy "not only broke but stole my heart," his adoptive mother, Leslie Stackhouse, says now. Leslie and her then husband, Norman, adopted two more "special needs" children, a girl named Christin and her brother, Casey, who had been taken away from abusive parents when they were toddlers. Leslie's training as a foster parent helped her to go slowly with all three, giving them time to trust her. Though Jeff was withdrawn at first, prone to banging his head against the wall and biting himself, he grew into a happy little boy with a powerful loyalty to his mother.

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