and nephews and my brother and they all have no man of the house to look up to, to teach them what's right and what's wrong, so it's been hard. >> 30 miles south of chicago mary beth presides over a numbing juvenile docket. 30,000 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 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 -- >> 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