. >> for 26 years lake county juvenile judge mary beth bonaventura has been making tough decisions that aim to get kids like aaron back on track. >> they're coming back into the community. i want to do everything i can do first before i send them to the dlc or department of corrections. >> because of aaron's age, his long history with the juvenile system, and the fact that he's still on probation for attempted car theft and battery, the stakes are much higher this time. aaron has already been warned that the prosecutor's office is looking at waiving him to the adult system. >> i've got a bad record. so i'll probably beg please don't let take my life away from me. to me that's taking my life away. that will be three adult felons instead of just one. i have three pending. >> aaron admits he has an unquenchable thirst for taking cars that aren't his own. his other vice, playing escape artist. >> my staff called me to let me know that he was trying to be a trickster and had a detention officer bring him up sunday night for the release for the weekenders. and our intake officer elizabeth not

. >> 30 miles south of chicago mary beth presides over a numbing juvenile docket. 3,200 cases in 2008 alone. it's her job to make sure the kids that come to this detention center and court complex leave here and forget there's an option of graduating to the adult prison system. >> i think some children are born into a situation that's a bad one. in some neighborhoods it's like do unto others before they do it to you. for those of us not raised in those types of neighborhoods it is difficult to understand. sometimes it's just the survival. they get out there and have to perpetrate before they're perpetrated against. >> for years msnbc has been documenting the tragic stories that unfold in america's juvenile justice system. with extraordinary access from the indiana supreme court, we're about to go inside a world where cameras are by law forbidden to go. >> you guys are the world's dumbest criminals -- we got you on video. >> 40 vehicles. we got it all together. they've been doing this over a three-month period. two of them ransacked the cars and broke in. two are each on the street cor

at the tennessee prison for women, we found that meeting personal needs had led to a dilemma for mary bethdone wrote me up. >> what? >> what for? >> look, it says that they found a glove in two trash cans and a tampon. they're trying to say i had -- a dildo. >> sexual activity of any sort is against prison rules. and even though she's allowed to have the individual items she was caught with, she was written up for how they were assembled, or at least partially assembled. >> i'm pleading not guilty because they have no evidence. when they found it, it was not intact, okay? >> what was you going to do with it? >> everything that they have is things that i was allowed to have. >> but she did tell us that if she were going to make what she's accused of making, she has a good idea of how to do it. >> you have to have your marker to make it hard and you have to put your pads over it to protect it. >> as mary beth began her how-to description, all i could think about is human nature and how when left without normal resources, want or need or desire will lead you to create something out of nothing

>>> if there's one thing senior judge mary beth bonaventura has learned in her 26 years in juvenile justiceat there's never a playbook when parents and kids face off in court. >> you can sentence someone to death. you can sentence someone for life imprisonment. but to try to figure out how to put a family back together in about 30 minutes after you read the report of a certain pattern of behavior that has probably gone on for years is a very tricky thing to do, very important thing to do, and wow, the impact we can have if we get it right. >> kymyada is charged with running away, and although she's told the judge her side of the story, her mother has yet to establish why she turned her daughter over to the police. >> she chose to go and be with her god mother. >> okay. so she didn't leave the house without your permission, did she? >> no, she didn't. because i gave her an option. i said you abide by the rules, or you can go. >> at some time you called the police and reported her as a runaway. >> she didn't call, she didn't check in. she didn't do anything. so the same pattern with me she di

mary beth from pennsylvania. attempting to educate students in an urban setting. most of us work tirelessly. >> i know. there are union ohs in places like new york city that are corrupt. they taint the rest. richard from beverly, massachusetts. i think what might bring you and stasel together on drugs is punishment. stoned driving and selling to minors should be punished severely. already legalizing marijuana is driving it as a nonviolent crime and nonviolent offenders rarely do tough time. nicholas from new hampshire. bill, you never mention what marijuana does to people. you just say it is wrong. i smoked pot and it made me stupid, lazy and forgetful. there are different effects as with with all drugs. but one fact t not in dispute, if a child smokes marijuana, his or her childhood is over. once you introduce intoxication to immature minds trouble always follows. the legalizers don't care. we'll have a segment on it tomorrow night. >>> scott from dallas, texas. for years i have watched you peddle your books sha

his attorney will fight to see that morris gets what he wants, to be released home but it is judge mary bethna venturea who gets to decide his faith. >> i think i understand your testimony to be because morris is not as available or participating with these services to the extent that you think appropriate, that he should just remain locked up? >> well, i'm basing that upon him running away from home. his mother not knowing where he is. and she was having a hard time controlling him and reasoning with him he has failed a couple of drug tests. morris has told me on several occasions that whatever i do it's not going to work. >> so had you previously recommended that he undergo anger management, and you had recommended family counseling and counseling services. why don't we let it work itself through some more. let this counseling before we say the answer is to keep him locked up. >> that would be fine but morris has tended to befriend some young men, one for instance who was shot the other day in a drive by shooting. young people he's been associating with. i believe it's safer for him to be

. >> michigan supreme court justice mary beth kelly, expert in family law, says she has seen too manyfe is something that these young people really don't have a sense of. there's no sense of boundaries when a relationship could be dangerous, could introduce them to a dangerous set of circumstances, and so the decision-making process that even a healthy adolescent could make in terms of what would be a good choice, a bad choice, is really not -- it's not even present in these young people. >> trapped in a downward spiral and estranged from her family, daisy says her darkest hour was when in a drug-induced rage, her boyfriend and now pimp choked her until she blacked out. >> all of a sudden, next thing you know, they're putting their hands on you, calling you a worthless [ muted ], telling you, you mean nothing to nobody. you don't get over things like that. >> a court granted a restraining order against daisy's boyfriend. he eventually went to jail, but at 16 with no income and no place to go, she fell into prostitution again. at a party, a woman told daisy she could make big money as