We hear so many stories—and we usually have cameras perched on our shoulders, or microphones in our hands, or we’re standing with the person who holds the keys to the handcuffs—so it would be naive to think we are always hearing something close to the truth.
I’m sitting in Unit 13 of the DOC Facility for Girls in Indianapolis, waiting for the interview to end. Tiny cell, six adults, so I wait outside in the general population area. I sit alone on the floor with only a camera battery with which to occupy myself. A girl walks up and asks me if I would like a chair. Her hair is deftly braided. She’s white. I say, no thank you. I’m fine, and I smile.
Bad choices. Let’s face it. Many of our choices are bad, and for a lot of us, on some days, we make more “bad choices” than we do good. What is a bad choice? One that has potential consequence of hurting yourself, someone else, or someone else’s or your own property? We are creatures of bad choice and I point that just in case we get lost in semantics.
Kenneth and Kentrell’s mother showed up to court in a T-shirt that read “Stop The Drama”. Her face said, “not this again”. Her short hair had the faint memory of a red dye job and she wore a tiny red piercing in her left brow. There was no mention of her health, her heart problems, her cancer. None of it exists.
1. One pair sits in the dull, residual pall that follows shock. Eyes rimmed red, surrounded by the umbra of sleeplessness, flicker with anger.
2. Others chat idly, smile and wave at passersby, familiar faces. This could be a church social.
3. Mother studies paperwork that explains procedures, status, rights, and consequences. She speaks to, listens to, a counselor who eyes her with kind determination, then leaves her alone. Mother fingers the stapled corner of the papers, lifts her head, eyes the room, frets.
4. Heavy-set woman occupies a toddler, a sibling to the one being shackled backstage for the walk to court. Little one giggles. Oblivious. This might be a physician’s office or the department of motor vehicles.
5. Attorneys milll about, dark suits, flip-phones and leather-bound portfolios bulging with yellow legal pads, paper, paper, paper. History. They seem direct, purposeful, confident.
6. The bailiff calls a family name over the PA. One family among the crowd rises, approaches the desk and is given the courtroom assignment for their child’s case. They pass through the metal detector, are cleared to face the judge, their children, themselves.
Ruby was sent to DOC, the department of corrections.
Juveniles end up in DOC three ways:
1—they turn 18, repeat offend and enter the adult system ‘across the street’,
2—a judge will elect to try them as an adult if the charge and their age warrants it, or
When I first saw Kenneth Gant in the intake area of LCJC two weeks ago, I was compelled by the structure of his face. He is too beautiful to be a repeat offender from the Midwestern capital of urban blight. He was handcuffed to a teenage runaway, and with them was another handcuffed pair, Kenneth’s 14-year-old brother Kentrell and a clownishly goofy looking accomplice. They were cuffed in pairs so that the four could be managed by a single police officer.
Kenneth and Kentrell were facing charges of vandalism and criminal mischief, having been picked up for breaking into cars at the Gary train station. A local resident snapped photographs of Kenneth and crew in action, called the police.
Although it turned into a visceral exploration of my own prejudices, my trip to Gary was motivated by a desire to understand more completely the kids that wind up in LCJC.
We see them come in—handcuffed, police escort, trapped—and we brand them DELINQUENT, TRUANT, RUNAWAY, MENACE. We see them first for the choices they’ve made, but not so much for the apartment they woke up in that morning, for the streets they walk everyday, for people that make up their neighborhood. All of these things shape who I think I am, and there have been times in my life when some may have branded me DELINQUENT, TRUANT, MENACE and I was living the good life in the California hills. Things are more complicated than they appear on the surface.
This morning I drove to Gary, Indiana, hometown of the Jackson 5.
I was scared. Make no mistake, as I crossed Interstate 80/94 on Broadway, the wasteland of Gary decaying before me, my left foot was grinding into the floorboard and my fingers were kneading the steering wheel.
Our call time got pushed back and I have two hours to kill, so I decided to drive up to one of the most affected communities, whence many of our offenders come, Gary Indiana.
I’m intimidated, a little scared, and would probably chicken out if I didn’t bind myself to the task with this public notice.
Photos to follow.
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