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Before Their Crimes: What We're Misunderstanding about Childhood Trauma, Youth Crime, and the Path to Healing Audiobook
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Publisher Description
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 audiobook 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.
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“Through interviews with multiple juvenile offenders who had been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, including life sentences, Dr. Wendy Smith has written a primer on the impact of trauma, including physical and sexual abuse, substance abuse, loss of loved ones, and abandonment…Dr. Smith illustrates how healing can occur and ultimately lead to a rebirth of hope for a meaningful life.”
— Michael Nash, Executive Director, Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection; former Presiding Judge, Los Angeles County Juvenile Court
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“Through compelling real-life cases, Before Their Crimes illustrates that the human capacity to heal and transform can survive against all odds. Dr. Wendy Smith’s passion for her work is obvious throughout as she urges and practices compassion for even the most serious offenders.”
— Anthony Romero, Executive Director, ACLU -
“The key to improving public safety is understanding what led to criminal behavior in the first place and addressing the issues during incarceration. Before Their Crimes makes a notable contribution toward the understanding and insight needed to bring about constructive change.”
— Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles and former member of congress -
“Wendy Smith has written a powerful and deeply moving book. It is that rare combination of emotion, factual insights, and inspiration. Read it and savor it and encourage others to read it.”
— Robert Greenwald, Brave New Films -
“With profound insight into science and theory, Dr. Wendy Smith invites us to discover compassion in the roots of human experience, revealing that chance shapes our destinies as powerfully as choice—a truth made starkly visible in the lives of those impacted by incarceration.”
— Dorian Traube, PhD, LCSW, Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean and professor, Brown School, Washington University, St. Louis -
“Before Their Crimes uncovers an epidemic of childhood trauma, the redemptive qualities of everyone, and the true path towards healing.”
— Xavier McElrath-Bey, MA, Executive Director, Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth
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About Wendy Smith
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.
About the Narrators
Adenrele Ojo is an actress, dancer, and audiobook narrator, winner of over a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2018. She made her on-screen debut in My Little Girl, starring Jennifer Lopez, and has since starred in several other films. She has also performed extensively with the Philadelphia Dance Company. As the daughter of John E. Allen, Jr., founder and artistic director of Freedom Theatre, the oldest African American theater in Pennsylvania, is no stranger to the stage. In 2010 she performed in the Fountain Theatre’s production of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which won the 2010 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Ensemble. Other plays include August Wilson’s Jitney and Freedom Theatre’s own Black Nativity, where she played Mary.
Hillary Huber, a Los Angeles–based voice talent, in 2025 was named a Golden Voice, AudioFile magazine’s lifetime achievement honor for audiobook narrators. She has won Voice Arts Awards and more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards for narration. She has with hundreds of commercials and promos under her belt. She has a BA degree in English Literature.
Kirsten Potter has won several awards, including more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and been a three-time finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. Her work has been recognized by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and by AudioFile magazine, among many others. She graduated with highest honors from Boston University and has performed on stage and in film and television, including roles on Medium, Bones, and Judging Amy.
Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.
Mark Bramhall has won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration, more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has repeatedly been named by AudioFile magazine and Publishers Weekly among their “Best Voices of the Year.” He is also an award-winning actor whose acting credits include off-Broadway, regional, and many Los Angeles venues as well as television, animation, and feature films. He has taught and directed at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.
Michael Crouch is an actor based in New York City. His audiobook narration has won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, and Best of the Year accolades from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. He can also be heard on national commercials, cartoons, video games, and the animé series Pokémon XY and Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V.
Alex Boyles has been acting pretty much his entire life. He got his BA in theater–acting/directing performance from CSU Long Beach and his MFA in acting performance from Ohio State University. He started narrating audiobooks in 2019 and hasn’t looked back!
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Jaime Lincoln Smith is an audiobook narrator who has won AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as the prestigious Audie Award in 2022. An actor based in New York City, he has been featured on Broadway and Off-Broadway as well as on network television and in films. A first-generation Jamaican American, raised in Bloomfield, Connecticut, he is an actor, writer, producer, and educator.