Juvenile Detention Center

What do those words bring to your mind? Troubled and trouble-making youth probably. Today I took my class on a tour of the local JJC (Juvenile Justice Center) as they call it here. It is a small place, but striking nonetheless. It is a place where every little action and activity is controlled and monitored. It is a place where there is a a constant paranoia of the adolescents committing suicide (and it is not a misplaced one). It is a place that simultaneously dishes out discipline and safety. It is a sad place. It is one of the two worlds these children live in. The other world, the world out here is one that has no structure and no rules...or at least not rules that they understand. The world out here is one of drug-addict parents, missing parents, abusive parents, and alcoholic parents. It is a world that would rather forget these children.

So back and forth they swing from this world to the one in there...until they grow old enough to be put away somewhere else, somewhere more permanent.

Some of these children spoke to us. One fourteen year-old, who has been a meth addict and in and out of this institution told us, "I hate this place, but it is a safe place. I don't like being in here, but things are okay when I am here." I asked her if she would like to have the safety she feels in there on the outside. "That would be ideal," she replied. "But there isn't." Why? Because when she gets out, she does not receive the support she needs to keep her clean, to keep her out of trouble, to heal the mental illness she undoubtedly has; she does not get it from her parents, from her family, from the community, nor from society. Why? She should not be our responsibility. She should take responsibility for her own actions. A fourteen year-old going on thirty five.

Another girl was only twelve...twelve! And she already has been in and out a few times. She was first put in for threatening her teacher. "I did not know I could be put in here for that. But they did!" The children are in upto 30 days. When they get out, they are on probation. Any violation and back in they go. So once they get put in, their lives more often than not become a revolving door. As once girl put it, "Once you're in the hole, you might as well keep digging."

I must say, the staff were all great. They provide discipline, but also encouragement. There is a school teacher who engages the students without alienating them by pushing them to the point of frustration. Reading is encouraged and it is pursued as it is one of the few activities and vehichles of escape. The staff also recognize the artificiality of creating an evironment that is totally controlled. It is necessary, unfortunately.

The solution? As the staff told us, by the children make it there, the damage has been done. They are a bandaid on the bigger problem. More action needs to start at earlier ages. More Head Start, more early Head Start, more parent education and counseling. This is not happening, and in fact the way the political pendulum is moving right now, these things are getting cut.

Poor children - victims and criminals, all wrapped into one.