"I'll be a new person" /  by richard ross

When I was younger, my stepdad would abuse me and throw me at my mother, and my mother would choke me until I was about to pass out. My mother is a regular substance abuser and disappears for days at a time and both my parents do drugs -- it is not a good situation at home. When I get there, it will be my first time in South Dakota… so technically I will be a new person there. - C., 13

"I experienced things that no kid should ever have to go through" /  by richard ross

I immigrated when I was 6 years old with my mom, for you know, the same reason every immigrant comes to this country. We see this country as the land of opportunity. We see hope, where we see jobs, we see success, you know the American dream. That’s what we came for. But the reality is, it’s not like that for immigrants. It’s hard as an immigrant to be good at school, you know, because you can’t really speak English. And my mom couldn’t help me. I became a bad kid to the school system because I never did my homework. And it’s not that I didn’t want to do it I just couldn’t do it. I felt like I was dumb, stupid, and I was always trying to find some type of membership somewhere. Some type of community.

I had three uncles that were living with me and they were all drug dealers for the Cartel. They never encouraged me to do that but I saw it. I saw drugs in my house, I saw gang members on my block, and it was normal to me to see violence. Ever since I joined that gang, everything went downhill in my life. I seen and experienced things that no kid should ever have to go through at 13 and 14.

Ever since I got out I’ve committed myself to being an activist, an organizer, and to keep fighting to change policies that are not working. Because even though I was one of those fortunate individuals who did not get a life sentence, I left a lot of people behind. I left a lot of young kids who need someone to be representing them. - Kent, 24 

Today is the one-year anniversary /  by richard ross

“Today is the one-year anniversary of me being here, in this cell. I like to read. I learned how to read in here. My favorite books are Dr. Seuss. My dad had diabetes and he lost his leg. Then something came loose and he died. My sister has diabetes too and my older brother is Down’s syndrome and was trached (tracheotomy.) We moved from Florida but we weren’t able to get the help and medications we needed for everybody.”

The director of this institution explains that the other 15 kids in the unit have intuitively become aware of his special needs and don’t taunt him, rather they help him.

The director is a retired school-teacher. Detention is often viewed as deterrence, rehabilitation and punishment. We often lean too much on the punishment side. This is an unusual site where the focus is on nurturing. The tone is set by the director. Many sites have directors that come from Adult corrections or are ex-police and military. The director also explains they are trying to boost moral of the staff and recently have raised the base salary from $8.25/hour to $10/hour and given the staff new badges.

The day his father died, N.P. ran away with his older brother who had a gun. He was apprehended and detained.

“I had a whole lotta anger built up in me. A whole lot. And we had to get counseling for that and stuff. A person come see us at the house and take us out and stuff like that. But to me it ain’t working. The only person could fix this is my daddy.”

-N.P., age 14

Literacy and Resistance to the School-To-Prison Pipeline /  by richard ross

11132017.jpg

"Teaching writing to students of high need in an urban school is simultaneously pedagogical, curricular, and political. Students labeled “at-risk” for school failure often have lowered expectations placed upon them from without that impact how they feel within. Compounding this problem of perception is the real issue of heightened surveillance on these students, including the disturbing trend of involving the police when students break the rules of the school; in addition, their own history of juvenile incarceration often exacerbates their school failure. This article addresses these issues in an urban context, as well as provides insight into literacy teaching that assists students in the acquisition of knowledge, literacy, and expression. "

Abstract: Martin, Jennifer L. and Jane A. Beese. "Talking Back at School: Using the Literacy Classroom as a Site for Resistance to the School-To-Prison Pipeline and Recognition of Students Labeled “At-Risk”." Urban Education, vol. 52, no. 10, Dec. 2017, pp. 1204-1232.

Photo Credit: Richard Ross, Juvenile-in-Justice. The Multnomah County Department of Community Justice Detention Facility, Multnomah County, Oregon.

Graham v. Florida (revisited) /  by richard ross

[aesop_audio src="https://www.juvenile-in-justice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/compilation-terrence.wav" loop="on" viewstart="on" viewend="on" hidden="on"]

Terrance Graham beams with his radiant smile and perfect teeth. That’s the memory I hold of visiting him last year. Today, a year later, I think of Terrance on the anniversary of Graham v. Florida—the Supreme Court Ruling that said you cannot sentence kids to die in prison for non-capitol crimes.

Terrence grew up in Jacksonville. In spite of “The Sunshine State” license plate motto, Florida can be brutal. It is a balkanized population of wealthy retirees, sophisticated yet hedonistic tourists, a northern part of the state, which thinks very southern, and a southern portion of the state with somewhat northern values. Amidst this place that is very urban, very rural, very Cuban, very Dominican, very Haitian are pockets of extreme poverty primarily populated by people of color.

Jacksonville—the hub of northeast Florida—has a major locus of poverty: it is here that Terrence lived with his Mother Mary. Mary and her husband would host crack parties on the regular. “I would put down a plate of food and feed the youngest, then it would go up to the next child, then Terrance, then Michael the oldest. If there was anything left on the plate, I would eat it. Yeah, we weren’t the Brady Bunch.”

The geography of poverty within this environment may be useful in understanding why a 17-year old boy was arrested outside a convenience store with three friends. Terrence hit the owner with a small baseball bat as they were fleeing the store with loot in hands. Although no one was knocked unconscious, and no one was killed, a young boy, barely a teen, committed a non-capitol offense and he received a life sentence.

May 17th 2010—(seven years past) The Supreme Court said this practice would stop.

May 21, 2026 is the tentative release date for Terrence who was incarcerated in 2004. After twenty-two years for a mistake he made as a teenager, he will be 41. His incarceration will have cost the State of Florida more than a million dollars.

His last disciplinary report was coincidentally right after I visited a year ago. He was put in the hole for two months where he lost 20 pounds. This is Florida State Prison in Starke.

Relieving Terrance from the hopelessness of life without parole is a first step. Offering rehabilitation, better resources for family, schools, and children to prevent these environments from breeding little more than despair still remains a dream.

Brian Gowdy argued his first Supreme Court case seven years ago and succeeded. Bryan Stevenson made the second big step with Miller v Alabama and juvenile Capitol cases. We have so much farther to go on this road to treat people fairly—to simply treat them as human beings. But take a moment and remember this is the seventh anniversary of Graham v. Florida, an important step toward treating all people, especially children, with a degree of common sense.

-May 23rd, 2017 "I'm just trying to tell somebody, everybody, INMATES LIVES MATTER"

"I pray I live long enough to have kids and grandkids..." /  by richard ross

Dear Richard 5-16-17

Hello, how are you doing? I pray that this letter finds your family doing well and in the best of health. I received your note and picture today. I enjoy looking at the pictures they look so real! Thank you for checking up on me. It’s always nice to hear from a friend every now and then. I have been OK. Just trying to stay positive through my time of incarceration. I can get out before nine years as long as I stay out of trouble. My earliest release date is 3-2-2025. My lawyer, Bran Gowdy is putting in a motion for me to go back in front of the judge to get resentenced or get a parole date. I will keep you informed on how that turns out for me. I know you are excited about your grandchild=) I pray I live long enough to have kids and grandkids. Well, it was good hearing from you. Take care until pen meets paper again.

Your friend, Terrence Graham

"In the south, it was nothing for a black man robbing a white establishment to get life." /  by richard ross

“My name is Lee Albert Ansley and I’m sixty-five years old. I’m from Jacksonville Florida. I’ve been around the block a few times. I’ve been an addict; I’ve been a fool. I’m here for a parole violation, but I’ve done a total of 38 years.

I was raised by my mom and my big momma-my Grandmomma. There were only two adults in the house. The only time I saw my father was when he came to beat me. My momma would call my daddy when I would do something wrong and I would see him then. Basically that is all I saw of him at a very young age. My mother was fifteen years old when she had me. She already had a son before me—my oldest brother who is a year older than I am. Then she had two more. Three boys and one girl. She was a child with children.

Growing up I lived in a predominantly segregated neighborhood. All my friends were black because I lived in a black neighborhood. The only interaction I had with people outside my neighborhood was school, and it was totally black. Everything was black. The first encounter I had with people of a different origin was a negative experience. Some white guys jumped on me for walking down the street. That was shocking. Other than I was in the segregated south in 1950.

I don’t know when my grandmomma had my momma. She only had two kids, my uncle and my mom. I would assume that she was in her twenties. She came from a large family. Her family was a large family. Her daddy, Mr. Mathis, had about 13 or 14 kids. They were out there in the country and I don’t know exactly how that impacted her relationships with guys—I don’t know too much about my big mommas upbringing.

My mommma had me, my oldest brother, and my younger brother, but she gave him up to go and list with his grandmomma, and so my grandmomma raised him. Then she had my sister, who was baby girl—now that I think of it, my sister had her first kid when she was in high school. There goes that aspect of them being children raising children again.

When I first got charged I was seventeen years old. I was influenced by my peers who said, “Let’s go rob somebody.” I said, “OK.” As simple as that. I got arrested a day after my eighteenth birthday, but all the crimes I committed were when I was 17 years old. All of the crimes were robbery, but on one of the incidents, the guy in the store got shot. He stayed in the hospital for three hours and then released him because it was just a flesh wound. On one of the other charges, although I did not molest her, there was a girl and I looked down her dress. So…there were aggravating factors that resulted in me getting a life sentence.

The night I got arrested, the police officers interrogated me. I didn’t know that juveniles in custody have the right to refrain from talking until they contact our peoples, attorney and all that stuff. Anyways, the guy that I had caught the robbery charge with, said that I was with him during other robberies. They fooled me into saying that yea we did it. I stayed in jailed nine months, then my momma convinced me to plead guilty to the robbery charges. She had gotten a long distance attorney, who years later became known as a “hanging judge” because he was hard on crime in Jacksonville, and he had told her to tell me to plead guilty. Anyway, I listened to my momma, she said, “go ahead and plead guilty. Let’s get out of this fighting…give me some kind of relief.” So I plead guilty for those two robbery charges—they gave me life. I have the documents to prove it.

In the south, it was nothing for a black man robbing a white establishment to get life. As far as I was concerned, I saw a lot of that going on. It was 1969, the judge was white, the prosecutor was white, my attorney was white.

I was eligible for parole, after ten years, and was released in ’79. In 1983 I got 75 years for a robbery, in ’85 I went back to court and got exonerated. In 85’ they reinstated my parole. I caught a new charge and went back in in 1990. I was released again in ’99, and came back in 2001. I’ve been back ever since. “

Everglades Correctional Institution

Date of Receipt: August 1969

SENTENCED TO LIFE

"Societies has to give opportunities" /  by richard ross

“ I’m 40 years old.

I didn’t know what was going on. I was never there at the scene of the crime, but for some particular reason, they used an eyewitness and believed her testimony. I accumulated over 5000 days for good behavior, with the amount of time that I have already served, which is 22 years. Anything that’s available, or anybody wouldn’t give me a chance...

I believe that society has to be forgiving.

Societies has to give opportunities”

Dade Correctional Institution. Florida City, Florida

Date of Receipt: August 1996

SENTENCED TO LIFE

"It was never easy being a kid and going straight to prison..." /  by richard ross

"My age is 41. I was charged in 1990. I was fifteen years old when I got charged with murder. I did not have anything around me, any support system, anything to look up to. It is very easy to get into things and not know the consequences to things. At fifteen I did not know the consequences of a murder.

I grew up in Florida city. My mother was a single mother. She was a drug addict (god bless her soul). She had been to prison already something like three times. My grandparents tried to raise me and do things for me that my parents could not do for me. They had already raised their kids, so they were of older age.

I lost so much. I lost my mom. I have never seen my father in my life. I don’t even know what he looks like. Everybody has a story to tell. I lost everything. I lost everybody that I have ever had in my life, except my grandparents. They are 87 years old and they still stick with me. That’s who I have in my life. That’s my support system.

I am way better now than when I came in. I had to grow up in here because of all the violence that takes place in here. It was never easy being a kid and going straight to prison, having never been inside of juvenile facility. I felt like I was sent here to die. I was so young. I didn’t know anything about this other side of life..."

Dade Correctional Institution. Dade, Florida

Date of Receipt: November 1991

SENTENCED TO LIFE

"It goes on and on and on until somebody stands up.." /  by richard ross

"Right now I’m forty-five…

My mom worked all the time and she was unconcerned with me. Then crack epidemic came and blew the doors off of our whole house. My real father wasn’t around and I did not meet him until I was much older. For some reason, I think I was just pissed off because I did not have my biological father there. I wanted him to be there, I wanted to be like everybody else who had their father’s there. I wanted attention and I couldn’t get it, so I started doing things that most kids wouldn’t do. It started with fighting in school and then I graduated to crime. First it was petty crime and then as time went on I progressed.

Being poor, and being around your classmates when you don’t have much, when they have parents, and they have clothes, and they are clean, and they’re this and they’re that, and you don’t have that, you have to resort to the only thing that’s there—and there aint a lot there. When you are young like that, you are limited to what you can and can’t do.

While I’m sitting here my children have suffered years of neglect and they are making some really really poor choices. My daughter has been incarcerated. She was fifteen when she got incarcerated. She’s off of it now, but she went to prison for a violent crime. Actually, she got kids and she got out. They are just babies right now. My grandchildren will probably suffer as well. It’s generational. It goes on and on and on until somebody stands up and stops it.

When you are poor, you can’t afford lawyers or expert witnesses. They tend to trump up charges against you and throw you away. I wrote to every innocence project in the united states, but most of the time what I get is that they are limited in what they can do. Their funds are short. They’ll put you on a waiting list—I’ve been on a waiting list for at least four years. But I aint giving up hope though, by a long shot. I’m not giving up at all. I’ve been fighting all these years and I’m not going to stop. I have to do half of the fifty years, and once I do half, then ill come up for parole. But in 25 years there’s no guarantee that I'll make parole"

Stiles Unit. Beaumont, TX

Date of Receipt: January 1991

SENTENCED TO 50 YEARS

"This is slavery." /  by richard ross

I went to Juvie when I was 12-13 for 11 months. Since then, I’ve been incarcerated for 43 years. I was incarcerated on my 16th Birthday. I was given Life and 20. I was convicted of a Rape and Abduction when I was 15 years old. Since 1971 I have been on the street for a total of 11 months. (on the outside)  

My last visitor was in 1989. I was from a good family. No abuse. I never wanted for anything.

FORTY THREE YEARS that I have never seen my family.

Parole-- The parole board interviews me by phone.

They said I had a history of violence and I was a risk to the community and they had new evidence. It has been 43 years and I have been convicted. What new evidence could exist and what could that mean? I’m not coming back to that community so how am I a risk to that community?

I have a parole release date but it means nothing.

They ask what programs I have taken. They say I need programs to be released. They offer no programs. How does this make sense?

This is Florida. Florida is a slave state. This is slavery

Just give me the death penalty.

I am never getting out of prison.

I am going to die here in prison.

Columbia Correctional Institution

Date of Receipt: May 1996

SENTENCED TO LIFE

I was taught the game. /  by richard ross

“I been her three months now. This is my second time. My moms an X-ray technician, she visits. My dad’s not in the picture. My girlfriend braided my hair. I’m from BPS. Black Peace Stone. Where’s that? It’s the Jungles. What’s that? The apartments. Where are the apartments? Western LA over near La Salle. I live there with my homies when I’m on the run. My mother lives in Sun Valley. When people ask me where I’m from and I’m pissed off, the words that I spit out are BPS. People know BPS. I came here when I was 14. I was going through things. My best friend was shot in front of me. I’ve been shot at. I’m a Blood. I pimp girls. I was taught the game. It's a way of life; it's a way of getting money. I really never went to school. I always ditched. Yea I’m 16, but instead of going to school I would pick up my hoes. They’re all 23, 25. Age isn’t a problem. It’s how you carry yourself. You gotta know the game. You gotta have that mind.

I came here when I was 14. I was going through things. My best friend was shot in front of me. I’ve been shot at.

Barry J Nidorf Juvenile Hall, 16350 Filbert St, Sylmar, CA 91342

Barry J Nidorf Juvenile Hall, 16350 Filbert St, Sylmar, CA 91342

I may be 16, but I dress like a guy and I act like a guy. I shoot steroids to make myself buff. I been gay since I been here. I don't do drugs. I only smoke weed and shoot steroids. Being gay? When it’s guy on guy you get judged a lot more. When it’s girl with girl nobody really cares. While I’m in here, I still make bank. I keep control over my whores. They get nothing from me. Yea they get a little present here and there, once in a while I give em a compliment. My mom got pissed ‘cause she didn't know where all the money was coming from. I work with BPS and we all don't come together unless everybody needs a big solution, when there are enemies in the hood. But kids are gang members when they’re five years old. You’ll hear em say, “I’m Hoover.” That's a crip. The Jungle is over by Crenshaw mall, but Crenshaw mall is enemy territory. I went to school in Tajunga, but there are a whole bunch of Naps there. Naps are the enemy. Yea I read the bible, but I’m no holy roller spirit. But I read it. After this I’ll go to camp for six months.”

-U.N., age 16

**Interviews with youth are recorded to the best of our ability. All personal histories and anecdotes are self-reported by the children. To protect confidentiality of the youth, identities have been obscured, initials have been changed, and identifying details have been removed. Interviews have not been edited for content.

"Now the center is my home." /  by richard ross

I've been here for 3 months and I'll be here for another 3 months. They say I have some anger problems like yelling and destroying stuff. I grew up close to the Canadian border. I flunked out of the state hospital and all the other facilities in the area. I was 13 when my parents lost parental rights, so now the center is my home. I have ten brothers and one sister—she's the only sibling I see anymore.

—G., age 15

MG_9307.jpg

"There isn't a sober person in the family." /  by richard ross

We have the same mother. Haven't seen dad since I was three, when he died drinking. I'm in here for drugs, pills, weed, and some harder stuff. I've been at this facility for 11 months. I went through the Drugs and Alcohol Program, but I got drunk the same day I finished. —T.P., age 17

I'm in the 9th grade, I flunked out of my first school. We grew up on the reservation. Everywhere on the res, you can find alcohol, pills, meth—the men drink and the women do pills. There isn't a sober person in the family.

—I.P., age 15

_mg_9279

_mg_9279

Graham v. Florida /  by richard ross

By Richard Ross “I miss you like a prison mom.”

Mary Graham has missed her son for the past thirteen years. Since he was sixteen, Terrence has been incarcerated. He was sentenced to die in prison. Terrence grew up with two crack-addicted parents. School was a series of sixteen different institutions as evictions created dislocation and disruption. Classes were special ed for Terrence and his three brothers. School represented food and nutrition. Without the breakfasts and lunches, one brother, Tavaris would get a bag of Doritos and parse it out as a meal to the four boys.

Mary remembers the fridge being adequate. “We grew up country. My Mama used to say if you had bread and potatoes in the house you could always make a meal. It was hard. My kids might have some bread and jelly, but they never went to bed hungry.” Terrence remembers other parts of that narrative. “There would be spoiled milk or government cheese in the refrigerator.”

“We were poor. I would cook one plate of food and put it in front of Diante. He would eat his fill and move the plate to Terrence. Terrence would eat and then move it to Michael, and then to Tavaris. After all the boys ate from the same plate…if there was anything left over I would eat. It was hard. We weren’t the Brady Bunch.”

[aesop_parallax img="https://www.juvenile-in-justice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/AO9A0362.jpg" parallaxbg="off" captionposition="bottom-left" lightbox="on" floater="on" floaterposition="left" floaterdirection="up"]

Mary has met God.

AO9A0385

AO9A0385

It happened on day on December 14th. She had smoked crack incessantly in the six years prior. On the 14th, she prayed and stopped completely.

The six years of parties and a house full of addicts stopped. Prayer had replaced the emptiness and silence of the apartment. Mary apologized to her four boys, the youngest of which still kicked in her womb at the time, and she began her life again. “Mom has been sick for a long time,” she would tell them. But the lives of her boys were already in tatters. All had been incarcerated. Sixteen schools, sometimes no food, crack cocaine parties with an endless parade of strangers for more than six years.

This narrative is an American story. Not the Norman Rockwell, but the alternative, yet no less true. Mary grew up with her grandmother in rural Jacksonville. There were sixteen children served by pigs, chickens and goats. The family went well beyond the sixteen children and two adults—there were cousins and aunts—and the house kept on being built out to shelter them all. Mary and her sister slept in the bed with her grandmother. “Lots of people. Lots of kids. It was hard but we made it. Drugs were not in fashion back then.”

“Then we moved into central Jacksonville and my parents separated. My mother got a job at Milligan’s and tried to take care of the four of us. She was making $2.35/hour. It was hard. It got too hard for my mom so she let my dad take us. When I was 15 I started to party. I was new to the game but I enjoyed the life of the city. I met Harry when I was 20. He was a Vietnam vet 11 years older than me.”

Three children later, they were in a whirlwind of crack and abuse—“we were kicked out of the house and we weren’t let in. We stayed in the street while the party went on.”

Section 8 evictions, drugs, violence—where was Family Services? Mary explains, “there are two kinds of addicts…I was an ‘in-control’ addict. When they would come because of complaints, I would be able to put on a controlled face. They would come, because Michael was out of control a lot. He was what you call ADD. He would do things like try to set an apartment building on fire. They came to look at my apartment and I would always have it neat. I kept a neat house.”

_____

Bryan Gowdy doesn’t like the reference to Atticus Finch, although he is tall, lanky, soft-spoken, and works out of a modest two story building in Jacksonville. “I was working a lot of appellate corporate law and I thought this would be an interesting, individual case. I certainly didn’t expect to be arguing in front of the Supreme Court.”

AO9A0304.jpg

"There was a surprise ruling by the Florida Supreme Court last week. They overturned sentences of life with the possibility of parole that had been doled out, citing that they were counter to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Graham v. Florida. The majority argument was that because a defunct Florida parole system had not granted parole to a single person sentenced to life in prison, the state could not continue to sentence juveniles to life with the possibility of parole. In fact, as the state evaluates parole, the fact that the inmate was a juvenile at the time of a crime counts against them.

This is counter to Supreme Court decisions that have determined the adolescent brain to be still developing, giving children the unique possibility of reform and rehabilitation. The practice of the parole system in Florida is so counter to this information, that the Supreme Court here has ruled life with parole effectively is still a death sentence for a child in Florida.”

“Effectively I am a small business with my partner. I have a family to support so I can’t take all the cases I would like to take. But I am going to take a new case that relates to this. Too much is a stake for these kids.”

“When Terrence was first sentenced, the authorities had somehow painted the family as being nuclear, well cared for with nurtured, loved children. The judge was influenced by the discordant actions of a teen who would turn his back on this perfect home. When the case was returned from the Supreme Court for resentencing, the judge looked at a more detailed, revealing and demining picture of Terrence’s environment and the mitigating factors contributing to his delinquency. It was the polar opposite of what was presented in the original sentencing. Realistically when you argue for them you have to prepare as if each case is a death penalty case…effectively they are. When there are determinate sentences that are 50, 60, 70 years and the parole system is so hostile, they are death sentences.”

Meanwhile in Starke, Florida, Terrence is in the Main Unit West. He helps clean and cook for the Close Managed section that houses the behavioral problems and the sixty-six inmates of death row. Soft-spoken, Terrence explains ‘When I came into the system and looked at my EOS (End of Sentence) date it said ’99-99-9999.’ That meant I was never getting out. Now I look at it and I figure I served 13 years now and have a 25 year sentence. I have some time earned for behavior so I have about eight years left. I get out sometime around 2025. It’s a real date.’”

AO9A0173

AO9A0173