Juvenile crime doesn’t just happen—there is always a story behind it.
Before Their Crimes: What We’re Misunderstanding about Childhood Trauma, Youth Crime, and the Path to Healing is a ground-breaking book that sheds new light on the relationship of childhood trauma and juvenile crime. Wendy Smith uses the framework of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) to explain how the toxic stress of early childhood trauma can make children vulnerable to committing criminal acts. Smith draws from interviews with twenty men and women from across the racial and social divide who spent years in prison after committing serious crimes as children. Smith not only reveals the pernicious mechanisms that link early trauma to later crime, but also illuminates the potential for healing among even the most egregious offenders.

Author Biography

Wendy Smith, PhD, LCSW, is a Distinguished Continuing Scholar in Child Welfare and former professor and associate dean at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. After thirty-five years of practicing psychotherapy and university teaching, Dr. Smith turned her attention to working on change at a broader level through serving on the Los Angeles County Commission for Children and Families and providing leadership to non-profit organizations serving vulnerable youth in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. She chairs the Board of the National Foster Youth Institute, and serves on the Children’s Rights Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch and the Foundation Board of the Venice Family Clinic, among others.

Dr. Smith is the author of Youth Leaving Foster Care: A Developmental, Relationship-Based Approach to Practice (2011) and has published on current issues in child welfare and the justice system in The Chronicle of Social Change (now The Imprint), an online newsletter. A recognized expert in child abuse and child development, she has appeared in the Netflix series The Trials of Gabriel, provided expert testimony on early attachment in a probate court guardianship case, and is frequent speaker to both academic and community groups on trauma, child development, and foster care.

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