Even-mannered Judge Kenneth Turner presides over the local juvenile court in Memphis, Tennessee, in this exploration of troubled youth confronted by American justice. That particular brand of justice is often dispensed via backroom dealmaking, mediated by a formula of religious and psychological prescription. Judge Turner gets the most screen time, but the stars here are the children, adolescents, and parents, as the weight of the state bears down upon them. “They’re trapped by everything. Frederick Wiseman’s open-eyed approach to the stories of their lives is perhaps motivated less by reforming zeal than by his own sense of the mystery of those lives” (Pauline Kael, New Yorker).

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