. >>> in 1998 senior judge mary beth bonaventure advocated for the detention and courthouse to replacethe original decaying facility. her demand, better facilities for kids and families. >> the family support in these hearings in general with the kids whether it's with the hearing or outside the hearing is monumental. i think if there was one single thing that i could point to to be able to predict the success or failure of a young person is the family involvement and support. >> it sounds like for about four years now the court's been involved not only with his life, but obviously your life as well. so he's turned 18 now. your family has had a lot of intervention and pretty quickly here there will be none. >> we are there to back him up 100%. i do have a lot of family support. everybody's pulling for him, you know? but he has to pull for himself. >> judge, i'm really torn. everybody's tab dancing around the shooting of devon. that wasn't a stray bullet that entered his arm. that was a purposeful act in response to something devon was doing of a criminal nature, but we also have proble

. >> 30 miles south of chicago, lake superior judge mary beth bonaventure presides over a numbing juvenile docket. 3,200 cases in 2008 alone. it's her job to make sure the kids at this detention center and court complex leave here and forget that there's even an option of graduating to the adult prison system. >> i think some children are just born special a situation that is a bad one. in some neighborhood, it's almost like do unto others before i do it to you. for those of us that weren't raised in those neighborhoods, it is difficult to understand. sometimes it's survival that they get out there and have to perpetrate before they're perpetrated against. >> for years, more than has been documenting the -- 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 by law are forbidden to go. >> you guys are the world's dumbest crooks -- >> 40 vehicles we counted altogether. and they've been doing this over a three-montonth period. two ransacked the