I went to jail when I was 15, based on nothing but my dad telling police I hit him. Truth was, he slammed me up against a wall and threatened me, and I pushed him off of me. He ran up and called the police, voila, a couple hours later I was in a dirty Baltimore juvenile center butt naked in front of some security guards squatting and coughing. See, the juvenile court system doesn't work like it does for adults. At least back then, they didn't even need to give you a sentence, once you were in custody they could hold you until you were an adult. My dad realized he fucked up bad and tried to get me out, and admitted he instigated the whole thing, but once I was in they kept me.
I saw a lot of kids get beaten up pretty bad. I beat a few up myself, because frankly you don't have much of a choice in jail, at least not in Baltimore. The last thing you want is for people to think you won't fight. Heard about some rapes. I heard about a few soap parties too, but never saw one. Soap parties were when kids would hold your blankets down on the bed to keep you from moving, while the rest of the block would hit you with bars of soap stuffed in socks.
The food we got was all stuff from the local homeless shelter that was past its shelf life. The little milk cartons were usually chunky.
I ran into some kids in there that had been locked up half their lives already. The youngest guy in our unit was only 11 years old. A couple of them from the city had already been shot, a few came in with bruises they said they got from the cops. I lucked out in that even though I was white, I was already 6'1 280lbs at 15, and I knew well enough to mind my own business so people generally didn't mess with me. Some of the smaller white kids had a real rough time, especially one that came in with the mistake of having long hair past his shoulders. That poor kid was fucked with relentlessly.
While I was in there, we had to do a Scared Straight style program in Patuxent State Penitentiary. We were escorted by a group of inmates, several of which were in for murder, all of whom were convicted of violent felonies. They were decent enough guys that genuinely wanted to keep us out of there, but they didn't really do much to intervene when we went on our tour of the prison and in each block the inmates were allowed to get in our face and scream, spit, tell us how bad they wanted to beat us or rape us. The 11 year old I mentioned earlier was in hysterics by the time we were done.
I ended up getting out after 30 days when I had my day in court. I still ended up with 90 days on house arrest, and spent the next 2 years on probation peeing in a cup in front of a strange man who really seemed to get his jollies out of bullying kids. I never got locked up again though, because I knew damn well from what I saw there that I didn't want to go back. That certainly doesn't mean I stopped doing crimea though, I just got smarter and did what it took to keep out of trouble. I couldn't get a job, since I had an assault on my record, so I just sold drugs until I was an adult and my record was sealed.
If you think the American justice system is fucked, you really can't understand until you've seen it firsthand. It's not designed to rehabilitate you; it's designed so that once you're in it, it's damn near impossible to get out.
I highly recommend getting sucked into the rabbit hole of post prison YouTube. It's fucking insane. I highly recommend End of Sentence, Fresh Out, 23 and 1, and GP with Wes Watson. Seriously the most insane stories I've ever heard in my life.
End of Sentence is about juvenile prisons in Florida and is next level fucked up.
Wes Watson is a hard dude for sure but the stuff he talks about is very real, and it really helped me realize where my lifestyle could take me if I didnβt straighten myself out.
Yeah, if I ever saw him in person I'd love to thank him for showing us on the outside how messed up things in prison can be, but frankly Wes scares the living fuck outta me.
Edit: idk why the downvotes, he seems like a great dude and I have the upmost respect for him, he's just like super intense and I wouldn't want to upset him.
I was in juvy for making a verbal threat to my teacher 6 months after Columbine. She read my personal journal in front of the class, so I told her if she read any more I would kill her. Stupid thing to say in a school months after columbine.
The unit I was suppose to be in was full, so they put me in unit 1k temporarily. The thing is they lost me, when my mom came and visited, they had no record of me being in there. Fortunately that's what made my parents get a good attorney, who got me out when I went to court.
Unit 1k was for violent offenses, one kid had held his girlfriends parents hostage at gunpoint cause they wouldn't let her see him. Most of them were gang members though. My roommate "joked" the whole night before my court date that he could give me more time. He said all he had to do was punch the metal bed frame and claim I jumped off the bed on to his hand while he was doing push ups. On the second day we were all put on lockdown, during recreation/basketball one of the kids chose the wrong person for his team, the other team leader's friend, so 5 guys just started jumping this kid for what appeared to be no reason. It was later explained to me by my cellmate why the kid was jumped. "Every action has consequences, that's why you think before you do anything in here." he told me.
That was also the first time and only time I got pepper sprayed. When a fight breaks out or for any reason the guards pull the alarm, every inmate has to drop to the floor, cross their legs and put their arms on their head. Well this was never explained to me by anyone. I just remember thinking why is everyone on the ground, and then my eyes burning and I can't see, and all I can hear is guards yelling. Next thing I know I'm in medical trying to explain I wasn't a part of the fight and I didn't see who was.
On the third night one of the kids switched wrist bands with someone. 10 minutes after the lights went out, everyone started singing, until the guards told everyone to shut up. I made a comment like, damn do they let us have any fun. My cellmate then informs me they were singing to cover up any noise/screams from one of the other cells. I assumed the victim was either beaten or raped that night. On the way to court the next morning my wrist band was double or triple checked by every guard who called upon me while I was moved to the waiting tank for court and upon entering the court room and going back to my cell to roll up my mattress and gather my stuff.
I spent 4 days in juvy, 3 months on house arrest. I could only go to court and court mandated therapy. I was then put on a year long probation with a cerfew of 6pm, or 10pm on weekends if I had a signed note from my parents. They also made me go to a teen rehab place 2x's a week for 6 months. My drug test were clean and I had never done any drug outside of alcohol. My lawyer, parents and I have no clue why the Judge and the DA felt I needed rehab, but I had to go and my parents had to pay.
Ironically I met a kid named Dusty at the teen rehab. He gave me my first joint and we both tripped on shrooms the last night we had to attend.
I never spoke to the teacher after I was arrested. I was put on independent study and stayed on it until I graduated. They had an off campus site for IS students, which is where I went to turn in/pick up my work and take tests. I was allowed back on the official school campus to take my final SATs though.
I was allowed to walk at my graduation with the rest of the school. I saw her at the graduation, but I never approached her and she never attempted to talk to me.
Because your average Dick and Jane are so far removed from actuality that they cannot truly comprehend it. The entire system to most Americans is what they see on TV or movies.
I was the same until I was pulled over with a friend in Jersey, mind you I was wearing a cutoff jean shorts and beat up sneaks cause I was swimming just before, thats it. He had warrants and a shitload of coke on his person. He was 17, I was 20.
A year later when I finally got my court date, they made me wear my shorts,sneaks and a white prison issue "wifebeater" saying it was too much of a risk to have clothes brought in by my lawyer (who btw used my attire as part of my "defense" asking where the officer found roughly a kilo on my person)
I spent 364 in a state pen waiting to go to court for being old enough to do real time all because my boys girlfriend was mad and told police where he was and what he was driving.
The problem is that this isn't a secret, and what /u/fatticussfinch experienced isn't outside of the norm at all. I've had several family members go to prison, and none of them were "rehabilitated" after leaving. All came out worse than they went in, all prison taught them was: don't get caught, and how not to get caught again in the future.
And the 13th amendment literally says slavery is legal in the form of prison labor! So itβs no secret what the motivation is either to keep people in the system...
The Shawshank Redemption is one of the best known and highly rated films of all time, especially amongst ones focused on prison. A huge part of the plot revolves around this. Came out 27 years ago; people know about the situation, it's just that nobody who can change it wants to - because of the constant, rampant corruption that's also shown in the film.
My understanding is that while the broad themes are the same, the film diverges quite a bit. It's like that with most King films I think, but I haven't actually read the book.
You gotta organize. You alone can't do anything. But there are groups that when together they can. Things have always changed when masses of people demanded it.
Not really though. Governments in the last 40-60 years have learned how to withstand mass protest incredibly well. Notice any big changes from Occupy Wall Street? The anti Iraq War protests? How about the anti-brutality protests?
There's also the fact that not a single revolution (forced change of government) in history has ever succeeded without the backing of the military (lack of intervention counts as tacit support).
If you want a full revolution then yeah its an uphill battle. If you want to reduce the mass incarceration system then organizing is your best bet. Sure beats "just go vote" when just about no serious candidate you could vote for will do anthing extremely meaningful until a mass of people demand it.
Also, getting support of the military doesn't come from no where.
None of those were a general strike. Americans really don't protest all that well. Guaranteed shit changes if half the working population is on the streets for months.
Because the system is set up to deny you that option. Put people in debt from they are barely adults and they do not have the funds to go on strike. Unions not really existing also makes it incredibly difficult to do a strike. Generally all members of a union pays a fee that goes into its coffers. This 'treasury' is used to pay the workers who go on strike.
It's both that and the fact that Americans by and large are just kinda cucked. Most people don't even vote, let alone politically organize, there is no shared identity with their fellow Americans like other western countries have. Our hyper fixation on individualism castrates organization on any large scale.
And America contains a bunch of groups that barely tolerate each other: whites, blacks, Latino, Native Americans - they all live very different lives, and they're not even monoliths. Ask Cubans and Mexicans about socialist policies and you'll get very different answers, or Mormons and Catholics.
Hyper-individualism also means that Americans generally don't want to do anything that would disproportionately help a group they aren't a member of. The best way to kill a protest is to tell one group that it would help the other group more.
However, the only divide that really matters is rich and poor.
They're very spread out, and there are 300+ million of them. I think a more realistic goal would be major cities or states, I can't think of any precedent for a nation of 300 million people being united in protest
I said working people, and half of them. Which is 77 million or so, really doable, plenty of other countries manage those kinds of numbers relative to their population. America just doesn't have a protestor culture anymore.
I live in Seattle we have one of the furthest left city councils in the country. One of our council members is an independent socialist who wanted to eminent domain the Boeing factories if they try to leave the state. It hasn't changed the SPD at all
Throwback! I love that video and the book is really informative. Understanding "real polikic" is helpful for understand why such things such as "just vote" dont work and for interpersonal politics. Your boss isnt just going to give you a raise, your land lord isnt just going to lower your rent. You need leverage and power
Yep. Though I hadn't heard that one about Sawant... lol The answer is to form our own communities who look out for and protect each other who have sane methods of conflict resolution and escalation, and who don't invoke authority at the first sign of slight... But good luck with that. Half the people in Seattle insta-judge you for making eye contact with them. You'll never be able to cultivate an atmosphere where someone calls their neighbor instead of the cops for a noise complaint. Not when such "progressive" places are freaking out because people don't agree with them enough.
Dont forget voting is the absolute lowest form of political participation.if you believe in somthing you have to organize. Get in touch with local groups that are working on change is where real change happens. A step between that of to donate to one of those orgs
How come republicans manage to get their reps in line on their single voter issues like abortion and gun rights? Because they primary and punish their own.
Make justice reform a similar issue. Refuse to vote for a person that isn't aligned.
Most Americans want it this way. They want criminals punished to the point of allowing that type of treatment. Trust me they know and thi k its what others deserve.
What kind of crack are you smoking? I've met like maybe one or two people who think this way and they were deadbeats who didn't vote. I'd be even surprised to find that more than 3/4ths of the 74 million who voted for Trump though that way (so like 56 million people out of 330 million).
Ask them what they think a pedophile downloading child porn deserves. Usually involves castration (violently as in cut it off), being raped by Bubba or a big black guy, having his ass kicked daily, being hung, shot, or killed.
Usually the people that are cool with that, think the same way as anyone else that does something that pisses them off. A lot of people around me say the same things. Guy caught looking at cp, guy that took something out of their car, guy that still something at work, all the same punishment. Getting fucked in jail.
The pedo part is usually the fasted way at to figure that out. Start talking about jail, and what should happen. Mention pedophiles, and watch it go off the rails, everything else will mesh with it afterwards.
The only thing they will go easy on is stuff they do. No man they shouldn't lock people up for some weed. He only stole something from Walmart, fuck them.
I work with a lot of juveniles, our office represents them as Attorney ad litem in CPS cases. We also do juvenile criminal court appointments. If I have learned one thing, it's that so many parents call the cops on their kids to " scare" them straight... or whatever. They wind up fucking the kid over so hard. The typical story goes, mom calls cops on kid, kid gets sent away, mom decides she wants kid back, CPS has been called in to intervene at which time mom can't pass a piss test, doesn't have acceptable housing, isn't able to monitor the child 24/7, lives with someone with a criminal or CPS record... etc. The kid is sent from facility to facility while mom " works her services" or doesn't... it's a nightmare.
Not great, and it wasn't great before that obviously.
He got cancer when I was in my early 20's, and that was kind of my turning point. I was doing and selling Oxycontin around that time, but had recently quit when the doctor I was going to for my scripts got popped by the DEA got popped by the DEA. My dad getting sick motivated me to lose weight and get a job, and 10 years later I'm doing a lot better and he's still here and kicking, albeit in a wheelchair and missing both his legs. For whatever reason, I didn't want his last memories of me to be an unemployed, drug addicted piece of shit.
Our relationship is still strained. I forgave him for all the crap from when I was a kid, but we never really salvaged a great relationship from it. I hated him from as early as I can remember, and I vividly recall being terrified as a small kid of when he'd get home from work every night. It's difficult to go from 20 years of that to anything really positive. But we did reconcile, and I don't really wish him any ill will now.
I'm so glad people are seeing your comment. I went to juvenile detention 3 times for drinking underage. Straight A student, college bound, and those arrests nearly wrecked my life. Made it out doing good now, but what I saw in juvy was terrible. Some kids were there just because their parents didn't want them. While other kids were seriously violent. Then me. I'm not sure what they think this accomplishes for anyone placed in that situation. Kids for Cash was a big scandal in some town in Pennsylvania, but I feel like it was happening all over. Including where I grew up in Indiana. And most people in the US don't know this unless it happened to them, and they happened to get out. You won't be hearing from the ones still locked up or severely disenfranchised by the system.
Agree. My parents often threatened to call the cops on me or send me to juvie or military school whenever we argued and I disagreed with anything they said. Looking back now, as their adopted kid, itβs really fucked up they always threatened to send me away.
Really late to this but just want to say my mom did this to me too. I was 13, they took me away in handcuffs based on her word alone. I was so lucky to get released into the custody of my father instead of going to juvenile. So sorry this happened to you.
As a former public defender I can corroborate virtually everything this person stated. Though in the state I practiced law the juvenile centers were a bit better off.
Without doxing myself, a law school classmate of mine has a similar story about being locked up in GA for a crime he didnβt commit. It took YEARS of constant letter writing to get his record fixed, then it took YEARS after that to get some of his rights restored. Even then, virtually no state bar would allow him to sit for the bar exam and many hundreds of potential employers would not hire him. Yes hundreds.
Unfortunately after a successful start to his law career he suffered a major personal setback which was eerily similar to his first prison experience, and it looked like there was a possibility he could lose pretty much everything he worked for based on some allegedly false testimony. He sadly took his own life rather than go back down that dark path.
Fight like hell to help change our system. Abolish for profit prisons and prison pipelines. Eliminate mandatory minimums and 3 strike laws. Vote for legislation for better funding for alternative programs to avoid jail/prison. Treat drug addiction as it should be, a disease. And especially vote for and support legislation which eliminates petty drug crimes like possession of small βpersonalβ amounts of drugs, and removal of marijuana from the DEA schedule.
That sounds really rough man, unfortunately thatβs the sad reality of the situation. Iβm happy to hear you got through it at the very least, stay blessed!
I called the cops as my dad was beating my 13 year old brother. They took my brother out in handcuffs and smiled and shook hands with my dad. Fuck the cops.
I feel you man. I spent my 16th birthday in a group home. Got put on probation at 14 for having weed, and just basically being a smart-ass. Parents just couldnβt take it I guess.
The probation escalated to being put in a group home run by the county at 15 for nearly a year, and not long after I got out of there was sent to the juvenile detention center for 90 days because of breaking some probation rule, staying out past curfew I think.
I pretty much lost my teenage years... All for stupid shit.
At nearly 40 I am way past that part of my life but as it turned out, it seems that all of that happened to me because I simply had undiagnosed ADHD and no one bothered to test for it.
I can 100% attest to the fact that the juvenile justice system was not designed to rehabilitate, but perpetuate back in the 90βs, and Iβm damn sure itβs got to be worse off today.
The corner is not a documentary, and the wire is not βbasedβ off of it.
The corner was the show produced by David Simon before the wire. It has some of the same actors the wire, and the stories are based on real peopleβs lives who some characters in βthe wireβ are based on, but it in no was is a documentary. They are separate shows using some of the same source material, with some of the same actors, produced by the same man.
as a die hard fan of the show, i have never really known how true it is, i suspected it had a great base on reality as simon took a lot from being a journalist there, but couldn't imagine its WORSE that that
Not a juvenile, but while we were married my ex- husband ended up in prison. He went to Indiana State Prison, a maximum security prison, for multiple DUIs. Driving drunk is NEVER ok, but this guy? Never caused an accident, never hurt anyone, no property damage... the idiot was always stopped for something dumb, like not using a turn signal, etc. The thing is? He was literally the sweetest man... but he had some serious issues stemming from growing up in an evangelical household, getting his high school girlfriend pregnant, and "the church" forcing the families to adopt the child out to a family within the church to "save his, his girlfriends, and the baby's souls". He was kind, but sad. In all of his run ins with the law, no one ever thought to get him into counseling, or recommend a program of some sort. I tried, but he believed he was damaged goods and couldn't be 'redeemed'.
He really was such a good husband and father, except when he would randomly leave work on a Friday with buddies, and maybe not come home until the next day. Or days, because he was in the drunk tank. It could be years between offenses, and I was so sick and tired of it. But I didn't expect sheriff's deputies to show up one night at 1 am, on a bench warrant, and arrest him. I didn't see him again for years, as I was in the Army and I had to keep going for our kids, and he didn't want us to visit him there...
He was very different when he came home. I refused to divorce him while he was in prison, but he knew the deal. We were on the verge of divorce before prison, it was inevitable. I just wasn't prepared for the broken man that I saw when he was released to live with his parents while on parole. A quiet, gentle, shy man, his presence in the prison world as a 6'8" behemoth did him no favors. He wouldn't speak of his 3 years in that place, but would quietly cry instead and beg me not to ask about it.
The justice system did him wrong, as so many others have experienced. When a judge decides to "throw the book" at someone, without trying any other recourse to help an individual who has caused no harm to anyone but themselves (fortunately, in this case) it just seems cruel and vengeful. Judges and prosecutors should be able to balance empathy and humanity against votes, without always coming out on the side of just lining their pockets.
That's because it is and this is by design. The aim of the US "justice" system is vengeance. This is why stuff like this isn't as prevalent in Europe, most criminal justice systems in Europe are designed to rehab offenders instead of just breaking them.
I got wrongfully locked up in a very similar situation as a kid too. But mine was only 5 days and everybody in there seemed to get along well enough. Baltimore sounds fucked up.
My wife got involved in a "fight you after school" situation. Cops showed up at school a couple days later and arrested her for "assault with deadly weapon" (it was a fist fight) "conspiracy to overthrow the United States" (she was Asian? no idea...) there were a couple other equally ridiculous charges.
Well, it ruined any chance of us salvaging our relationship for over a decade until he got cancer.
But he made a mistake. He's not a bad person, he just did a very stupid thing with no idea what the consequences would be. It's all been forgiven a long time ago.
This almost happened to me. When I was 13 my parents had just gotten divorced and my mom started fights with me every night. Shed get in my face, screaming and pushing me as an outlet for her frustrations with my dad or with her life. Unlike you, I wasn't 6 feet tall. I never made it past 5'5". But one day, I pushed her back to get her out of my face. She kicked me out of the house within minutes.
I heard from my brother that she was telling all of her friends a sob story about how I was hitting her, and they were advising her to call the cops. I'm lucky she didn't. She felt guilty later and tried to get me to move back, but by then I was already living with my dad by then. I never went back.
That's tought to hear, I knew from movies and some documentaries that the prison system in America is fucked up, but reading you, is eyeopening, that's something wouldn't happen in Spain at least
Much love, to you, sir. I fear for my kiddos when I hear stories like this. My dad was abusive as well. You're not alone, either in being abused, or in being falsely incriminated.
There's an organization called Mirror Image Arts that works with incarcerated youth and youth who are at risk of falling into the School-to-Prison pipeline. Posting here in case anyone feels like donating.
Their work is amazing, but it's tragic that it's needed at all. Youth recidivism rates are through the roof.
My dad realized he fucked up bad and tried to get me out, and admitted he instigated the whole thing, but once I was in they kept me.
Out of curiosity, how's your relationship with your dad now? I dunno if I could mend or ever really go back to trusting someone that did that to me, especially a parent. Sorry you had to go through that, what a complete bullshit situation.
And your country bombed mine. I'm sorry i know that's not the topic, it's just I can't understand how a 11year can be in JAIL. How, in what scenario? Even if he killed a person he's 11. He needs help, maybe a doctor or therapist but certainly not JAIL. HE'S 11 FUCK
I only shared this to begin with as a reply to someone else about the juvenile system, and figured no one but him would read it. So rather than argue whether or not this all really happened or not, I'll post some articles about the abuses in the Maryland Juvenile system from that time to facilitate the original purpose of my comment - to educate about the reality of what these facilities are like:
"The youths at the Baltimore facility tried to escape Feb. 15 by squeezing through a loosely chained door and were placed in seclusion after they were caught. Initially, the state Department of Juvenile Services stated that the youths were not held in isolation for more than three days, the limit under the law, but the monitor's office found they had been held for five consecutive days.
During their isolation, the youths were not allowed to shower regularly or attend school. One was forced to sleep on a bare mattress and he was not given anything to wear but underwear, the monitor's office stated in a report. Two of the youths expressed an intent to commit suicide. One youth banged his head against a wall; another smeared human feces on his shirt.
...
"I look at these two reports, and I see that after years of complaints and documented abuses, there continue to be very serious problems at Department of Juvenile Services facilities," said Sharon Rubinstein, communications director for Advocates for Children and Youth. "It seems like there was disarray and chaos. I was really very, very disappointed."
The monitor's office began investigating the Noyes facility last month after its interviews with several youths revealed complaints about abusive practices. Apparently a guard in one of the units started a group called "the family," members of which were known as "soldiers," according to yesterday's report.
To join the group, juveniles had to stand with their hands over their heads while other youths stripped them of their clothing. Once an inductee was naked, members of the family, including the guard, would punch them in the groin, according to the monitor's report. Even after initiation, the guard encouraged family members to continue to hit inductees in the groin "on a random basis."
Once in the family, the report said, youths "enjoyed preferential treatment from the staff member" and were able to "use the staff member's cell phone, eat pizza ordered by the staff member, and stay up past bedtime to have water fights and watch movies."
Youths who were not members of the family were locked in their rooms by the guard without justification, the report stated. Even when supervisors ordered the guard to release juveniles, he failed to do so. Members of the family were often told to act as lookouts to warn the guard when a supervisor was near.
The guard who headed up the family also instructed his loyal detainees to beat up other juveniles at his discretion, the report stated. Once, he instructed his soldiers to search a youth's room. During the process, one of them slapped the victim in the face, causing redness and swelling.
The monitor's office also found that two other guards encouraged juveniles at the Noyes Center to engage in fights and use physical abuse to control weaker detainees. Both were disciplined.
Youths interviewed for the report said they didn't know how they could report cases of abuse and other violations. Department of Juvenile Services records for 2003 show 26 grievances filed by juveniles at the Noyes facility. The monitor's staff stated that records for last year "show zero grievances were filed."
"Robert told of nightmarish conditions at the 131-year-old institution that houses youths awaiting trial. He wrote that if youths complain, staff members punish them by locking them in their cells, getting other residents to beat them up or otherwise denying privileges. Fearing for his life, Robert no longer wants to come out of his cell, a dismal prospect given it's the size of a broom closet.
...
In 1995, after extensively investigating the facility, juvenile justice expert Mark Soler of the Youth Law Center said, "Some of the cottages were the worst I had seen in 20 years of inspecting juvenile facilities."
Since then, a girl housed at Cheltenham was impregnated by a staff member; a 13-year-old boy was repeatedly raped by several youths; Maryland's fire inspector called for Cheltenham to be closed because of hazardous conditions; The Sun published a series on abusive conditions in Maryland's youth institutions, including Cheltenham; and staff members arranged for "fight clubs" between inmates."
"Of particular concern to federal investigators, the report said, was the "deeply disturbing degree of physical abuse" by staff members over the past two years. The investigation found many occasions when the staff "beat and punched" young offenders, and many other times when youths accosted each other, usually without intervention from staff members, resulting in serious injuries.
...
Many of those working at the facilities, the report said, were found to have criminal histories, and some female employees engaged in inappropriate sexual relationships with the youths.
...
The report said youths often had to wait weeks to see a doctor, citing a case in which a boy who complained of a sore throat developed a severe infection and had to be hospitalized because staff members waited two weeks before they sent him to a health facility."
"The description reads like a riot scene from a prison movie: inmates on a rampage, attacking each other with chairs and mop handles. A guard fuels the chaos by opening a locked door to let one side attack the other. Another guard kicks through two doors in pursuit of an inmate, who repels him with a fire extinguisher.
Substitute the word students for inmates and you've got reality, as depicted in a report on Incident 11473 at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School for juveniles, in Baltimore County. The fight was Aug. 3, and one youth suffered a broken jaw, one had a skull fracture, and one incurred serious eye and facial injuries. Two staff members were fired."
I went to jail when I was 15, based on nothing but my dad telling police I hit him. Truth was, he slammed me up against a wall and threatened me, and I pushed him off of me. He ran up and called the police, voila, a couple hours later I was in a dirty Baltimore juvenile center butt naked in front of some security guards squatting and coughing. See, the juvenile court system doesn't work like it does for adults. At least back then, they didn't even need to give you a sentence, once you were in custody they could hold you until you were an adult. My dad realized he fucked up bad and tried to get me out, and admitted he instigated the whole thing, but once I was in they kept me.
I saw a lot of kids get beaten up pretty bad. I beat a few up myself, because frankly you don't have much of a choice in jail, at least not in Baltimore. The last thing you want is for people to think you won't fight. Heard about some rapes. I heard about a few soap parties too, but never saw one. Soap parties were when kids would hold your blankets down on the bed to keep you from moving, while the rest of the block would hit you with bars of soap stuffed in socks.
The food we got was all stuff from the local homeless shelter that was past its shelf life. The little milk cartons were usually chunky.
I ran into some kids in there that had been locked up half their lives already. The youngest guy in our unit was only 11 years old. A couple of them from the city had already been shot, a few came in with bruises they said they got from the cops. I lucked out in that even though I was white, I was already 6'1 280lbs at 15, and I knew well enough to mind my own business so people generally didn't mess with me. Some of the smaller white kids had a real rough time, especially one that came in with the mistake of having long hair past his shoulders. That poor kid was fucked with relentlessly.
While I was in there, we had to do a Scared Straight style program in Patuxent State Penitentiary. We were escorted by a group of inmates, several of which were in for murder, all of whom were convicted of violent felonies. They were decent enough guys that genuinely wanted to keep us out of there, but they didn't really do much to intervene when we went on our tour of the prison and in each block the inmates were allowed to get in our face and scream, spit, tell us how bad they wanted to beat us or rape us. The 11 year old I mentioned earlier was in hysterics by the time we were done.
I ended up getting out after 30 days when I had my day in court. I still ended up with 90 days on house arrest, and spent the next 2 years on probation peeing in a cup in front of a strange man who really seemed to get his jollies out of bullying kids. I never got locked up again though, because I knew damn well from what I saw there that I didn't want to go back. That certainly doesn't mean I stopped doing crimea though, I just got smarter and did what it took to keep out of trouble. I couldn't get a job, since I had an assault on my record, so I just sold drugs until I was an adult and my record was sealed.
If you think the American justice system is fucked, you really can't understand until you've seen it firsthand. It's not designed to rehabilitate you; it's designed so that once you're in it, it's damn near impossible to get out.
Find a subreddit to post this on as its own post. People need to see this, they need to realize just how fucked the American justice system is.
I highly recommend getting sucked into the rabbit hole of post prison YouTube. It's fucking insane. I highly recommend End of Sentence, Fresh Out, 23 and 1, and GP with Wes Watson. Seriously the most insane stories I've ever heard in my life.
End of Sentence is about juvenile prisons in Florida and is next level fucked up.
Ear Hustle podcast is really great too. Really honest and everyday stuff, not only the sensational.
Seconding Ear Hustle - really damn humanising look at the emotional/social lives of incarcerated people
Wes Watson is a hard dude for sure but the stuff he talks about is very real, and it really helped me realize where my lifestyle could take me if I didnβt straighten myself out.
Yeah, if I ever saw him in person I'd love to thank him for showing us on the outside how messed up things in prison can be, but frankly Wes scares the living fuck outta me.
Edit: idk why the downvotes, he seems like a great dude and I have the upmost respect for him, he's just like super intense and I wouldn't want to upset him.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pceh7v7N09I
I was in juvy for making a verbal threat to my teacher 6 months after Columbine. She read my personal journal in front of the class, so I told her if she read any more I would kill her. Stupid thing to say in a school months after columbine.
The unit I was suppose to be in was full, so they put me in unit 1k temporarily. The thing is they lost me, when my mom came and visited, they had no record of me being in there. Fortunately that's what made my parents get a good attorney, who got me out when I went to court.
Unit 1k was for violent offenses, one kid had held his girlfriends parents hostage at gunpoint cause they wouldn't let her see him. Most of them were gang members though. My roommate "joked" the whole night before my court date that he could give me more time. He said all he had to do was punch the metal bed frame and claim I jumped off the bed on to his hand while he was doing push ups. On the second day we were all put on lockdown, during recreation/basketball one of the kids chose the wrong person for his team, the other team leader's friend, so 5 guys just started jumping this kid for what appeared to be no reason. It was later explained to me by my cellmate why the kid was jumped. "Every action has consequences, that's why you think before you do anything in here." he told me.
That was also the first time and only time I got pepper sprayed. When a fight breaks out or for any reason the guards pull the alarm, every inmate has to drop to the floor, cross their legs and put their arms on their head. Well this was never explained to me by anyone. I just remember thinking why is everyone on the ground, and then my eyes burning and I can't see, and all I can hear is guards yelling. Next thing I know I'm in medical trying to explain I wasn't a part of the fight and I didn't see who was.
On the third night one of the kids switched wrist bands with someone. 10 minutes after the lights went out, everyone started singing, until the guards told everyone to shut up. I made a comment like, damn do they let us have any fun. My cellmate then informs me they were singing to cover up any noise/screams from one of the other cells. I assumed the victim was either beaten or raped that night. On the way to court the next morning my wrist band was double or triple checked by every guard who called upon me while I was moved to the waiting tank for court and upon entering the court room and going back to my cell to roll up my mattress and gather my stuff.
I spent 4 days in juvy, 3 months on house arrest. I could only go to court and court mandated therapy. I was then put on a year long probation with a cerfew of 6pm, or 10pm on weekends if I had a signed note from my parents. They also made me go to a teen rehab place 2x's a week for 6 months. My drug test were clean and I had never done any drug outside of alcohol. My lawyer, parents and I have no clue why the Judge and the DA felt I needed rehab, but I had to go and my parents had to pay.
Ironically I met a kid named Dusty at the teen rehab. He gave me my first joint and we both tripped on shrooms the last night we had to attend.
Did you discuss this with the teacher? Did you go back to that school?
Insanity.
I never spoke to the teacher after I was arrested. I was put on independent study and stayed on it until I graduated. They had an off campus site for IS students, which is where I went to turn in/pick up my work and take tests. I was allowed back on the official school campus to take my final SATs though.
I was allowed to walk at my graduation with the rest of the school. I saw her at the graduation, but I never approached her and she never attempted to talk to me.
Links:
Honestly, I've mentioned it on reddit before and people either didn't care or thought I was lying.
Because your average Dick and Jane are so far removed from actuality that they cannot truly comprehend it. The entire system to most Americans is what they see on TV or movies.
I was the same until I was pulled over with a friend in Jersey, mind you I was wearing a cutoff jean shorts and beat up sneaks cause I was swimming just before, thats it. He had warrants and a shitload of coke on his person. He was 17, I was 20. A year later when I finally got my court date, they made me wear my shorts,sneaks and a white prison issue "wifebeater" saying it was too much of a risk to have clothes brought in by my lawyer (who btw used my attire as part of my "defense" asking where the officer found roughly a kilo on my person) I spent 364 in a state pen waiting to go to court for being old enough to do real time all because my boys girlfriend was mad and told police where he was and what he was driving.
I'm a white dude in Canada so maybe not your average dick or Jane but I know these stories are real. People lie to themselves.
I think you are the group he was specifying then
Jesus Christ. Thatβs nauseating
For real, would be a true civil service to post this up. There has to be a few subs that would be perfect for it.
The problem is that this isn't a secret, and what /u/fatticussfinch experienced isn't outside of the norm at all. I've had several family members go to prison, and none of them were "rehabilitated" after leaving. All came out worse than they went in, all prison taught them was: don't get caught, and how not to get caught again in the future.
Yup, even large tv shows like Atlanta, the Wire and OZ cover the fucked up prison system in detail
And the 13th amendment literally says slavery is legal in the form of prison labor! So itβs no secret what the motivation is either to keep people in the system...
The Shawshank Redemption is one of the best known and highly rated films of all time, especially amongst ones focused on prison. A huge part of the plot revolves around this. Came out 27 years ago; people know about the situation, it's just that nobody who can change it wants to - because of the constant, rampant corruption that's also shown in the film.
People know but they think criminals deserve to suffer. No one deserves to be raped or be a slave though.
.gt655555
It was a Stephen King novella before it was a movie - no better writer to write life in the US prison system than a horror writer IMO lol
My understanding is that while the broad themes are the same, the film diverges quite a bit. It's like that with most King films I think, but I haven't actually read the book.
Prison is just crime college
We know how fucked up it is. It is common knowledge. Literally anyone who pays attention knows how fucking insane it is.
But what can you do? Go shoot up a police station? The average middle-class-or-below citizen has essentially no power to change anything.
didn't the burning of that one police station have a higher approval rating than biden or trump combined?
You gotta organize. You alone can't do anything. But there are groups that when together they can. Things have always changed when masses of people demanded it.
Not really though. Governments in the last 40-60 years have learned how to withstand mass protest incredibly well. Notice any big changes from Occupy Wall Street? The anti Iraq War protests? How about the anti-brutality protests?
There's also the fact that not a single revolution (forced change of government) in history has ever succeeded without the backing of the military (lack of intervention counts as tacit support).
If you want a full revolution then yeah its an uphill battle. If you want to reduce the mass incarceration system then organizing is your best bet. Sure beats "just go vote" when just about no serious candidate you could vote for will do anthing extremely meaningful until a mass of people demand it.
Also, getting support of the military doesn't come from no where.
None of those were a general strike. Americans really don't protest all that well. Guaranteed shit changes if half the working population is on the streets for months.
Because the system is set up to deny you that option. Put people in debt from they are barely adults and they do not have the funds to go on strike. Unions not really existing also makes it incredibly difficult to do a strike. Generally all members of a union pays a fee that goes into its coffers. This 'treasury' is used to pay the workers who go on strike.
It's both that and the fact that Americans by and large are just kinda cucked. Most people don't even vote, let alone politically organize, there is no shared identity with their fellow Americans like other western countries have. Our hyper fixation on individualism castrates organization on any large scale.
And America contains a bunch of groups that barely tolerate each other: whites, blacks, Latino, Native Americans - they all live very different lives, and they're not even monoliths. Ask Cubans and Mexicans about socialist policies and you'll get very different answers, or Mormons and Catholics.
Hyper-individualism also means that Americans generally don't want to do anything that would disproportionately help a group they aren't a member of. The best way to kill a protest is to tell one group that it would help the other group more.
However, the only divide that really matters is rich and poor.
There is no war but the class war π
They're very spread out, and there are 300+ million of them. I think a more realistic goal would be major cities or states, I can't think of any precedent for a nation of 300 million people being united in protest
I said working people, and half of them. Which is 77 million or so, really doable, plenty of other countries manage those kinds of numbers relative to their population. America just doesn't have a protestor culture anymore.
Vote. You live in a democracy - vote for politicians that will change things. And if they donβt, vote them out
lol
vote for who.
I live in Seattle we have one of the furthest left city councils in the country. One of our council members is an independent socialist who wanted to eminent domain the Boeing factories if they try to leave the state. It hasn't changed the SPD at all
Looks like they read the rules and figured out their keys
Throwback! I love that video and the book is really informative. Understanding "real polikic" is helpful for understand why such things such as "just vote" dont work and for interpersonal politics. Your boss isnt just going to give you a raise, your land lord isnt just going to lower your rent. You need leverage and power
SPD is terrible. All they ever do is complain too. They showed their true colors during the BLM protests. Seattle PD doesn't give a fuck.
Yep. Though I hadn't heard that one about Sawant... lol The answer is to form our own communities who look out for and protect each other who have sane methods of conflict resolution and escalation, and who don't invoke authority at the first sign of slight... But good luck with that. Half the people in Seattle insta-judge you for making eye contact with them. You'll never be able to cultivate an atmosphere where someone calls their neighbor instead of the cops for a noise complaint. Not when such "progressive" places are freaking out because people don't agree with them enough.
Couldn't agree more
Yeah thats super useful advice for the >1% of the population that lives in districts which aren't clearly red or blue
Dont forget voting is the absolute lowest form of political participation.if you believe in somthing you have to organize. Get in touch with local groups that are working on change is where real change happens. A step between that of to donate to one of those orgs
[deleted]
How come republicans manage to get their reps in line on their single voter issues like abortion and gun rights? Because they primary and punish their own.
Make justice reform a similar issue. Refuse to vote for a person that isn't aligned.
Lol
Murica has a 2 part system and neither party is fixing this. Now what?
I had no idea it didn't require a sentence. Is that even true?!
Most Americans want it this way. They want criminals punished to the point of allowing that type of treatment. Trust me they know and thi k its what others deserve.
What kind of crack are you smoking? I've met like maybe one or two people who think this way and they were deadbeats who didn't vote. I'd be even surprised to find that more than 3/4ths of the 74 million who voted for Trump though that way (so like 56 million people out of 330 million).
Ask them what they think a pedophile downloading child porn deserves. Usually involves castration (violently as in cut it off), being raped by Bubba or a big black guy, having his ass kicked daily, being hung, shot, or killed.
Yeah I'm cool with that, chimos can get fucked, but anyone else deserves rehabilitation.
For downloading?
Yep, you're supporting people who rape kids. I'll give a pass to jerkin it to hand drawn images and that's it.
Usually the people that are cool with that, think the same way as anyone else that does something that pisses them off. A lot of people around me say the same things. Guy caught looking at cp, guy that took something out of their car, guy that still something at work, all the same punishment. Getting fucked in jail.
The pedo part is usually the fasted way at to figure that out. Start talking about jail, and what should happen. Mention pedophiles, and watch it go off the rails, everything else will mesh with it afterwards.
The only thing they will go easy on is stuff they do. No man they shouldn't lock people up for some weed. He only stole something from Walmart, fuck them.
No sense on calling it a justice system. Mass incarceration system perhaps would be a better term, but there's no justice.
Gee, who'd a thought a primarily for profit prison system would have issues? /s
Yeah.
But... what you really need to do is figure out whether you're going to do something about it. Are you ever going to do anything about any of it?
People know. They just don't care.
I work with a lot of juveniles, our office represents them as Attorney ad litem in CPS cases. We also do juvenile criminal court appointments. If I have learned one thing, it's that so many parents call the cops on their kids to " scare" them straight... or whatever. They wind up fucking the kid over so hard. The typical story goes, mom calls cops on kid, kid gets sent away, mom decides she wants kid back, CPS has been called in to intervene at which time mom can't pass a piss test, doesn't have acceptable housing, isn't able to monitor the child 24/7, lives with someone with a criminal or CPS record... etc. The kid is sent from facility to facility while mom " works her services" or doesn't... it's a nightmare.
What was your relationship like with your father after you got out?
Not great, and it wasn't great before that obviously.
He got cancer when I was in my early 20's, and that was kind of my turning point. I was doing and selling Oxycontin around that time, but had recently quit when the doctor I was going to for my scripts got popped by the DEA got popped by the DEA. My dad getting sick motivated me to lose weight and get a job, and 10 years later I'm doing a lot better and he's still here and kicking, albeit in a wheelchair and missing both his legs. For whatever reason, I didn't want his last memories of me to be an unemployed, drug addicted piece of shit.
Our relationship is still strained. I forgave him for all the crap from when I was a kid, but we never really salvaged a great relationship from it. I hated him from as early as I can remember, and I vividly recall being terrified as a small kid of when he'd get home from work every night. It's difficult to go from 20 years of that to anything really positive. But we did reconcile, and I don't really wish him any ill will now.
Good on ya. I'm proud of you, kid.
You've got a good heart and are making an excellent choice that I'm not certain I'd have the strength to make myself.
I presume nonexistent since he had to turn to selling drugs to support himself.
I'm so glad people are seeing your comment. I went to juvenile detention 3 times for drinking underage. Straight A student, college bound, and those arrests nearly wrecked my life. Made it out doing good now, but what I saw in juvy was terrible. Some kids were there just because their parents didn't want them. While other kids were seriously violent. Then me. I'm not sure what they think this accomplishes for anyone placed in that situation. Kids for Cash was a big scandal in some town in Pennsylvania, but I feel like it was happening all over. Including where I grew up in Indiana. And most people in the US don't know this unless it happened to them, and they happened to get out. You won't be hearing from the ones still locked up or severely disenfranchised by the system.
Agree. My parents often threatened to call the cops on me or send me to juvie or military school whenever we argued and I disagreed with anything they said. Looking back now, as their adopted kid, itβs really fucked up they always threatened to send me away.
I can't even fathom how awful that must have been. And not to diminish your experience, but that 11 YO kid.... Just awful.
Thanks for sharing, and I hope things are better for you.
Really late to this but just want to say my mom did this to me too. I was 13, they took me away in handcuffs based on her word alone. I was so lucky to get released into the custody of my father instead of going to juvenile. So sorry this happened to you.
As a former public defender I can corroborate virtually everything this person stated. Though in the state I practiced law the juvenile centers were a bit better off.
Without doxing myself, a law school classmate of mine has a similar story about being locked up in GA for a crime he didnβt commit. It took YEARS of constant letter writing to get his record fixed, then it took YEARS after that to get some of his rights restored. Even then, virtually no state bar would allow him to sit for the bar exam and many hundreds of potential employers would not hire him. Yes hundreds.
Unfortunately after a successful start to his law career he suffered a major personal setback which was eerily similar to his first prison experience, and it looked like there was a possibility he could lose pretty much everything he worked for based on some allegedly false testimony. He sadly took his own life rather than go back down that dark path.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.twincities.com/2016/08/12/rosario-an-underdog-who-finally-had-everything-or-so-it-seemed/amp/
Fight like hell to help change our system. Abolish for profit prisons and prison pipelines. Eliminate mandatory minimums and 3 strike laws. Vote for legislation for better funding for alternative programs to avoid jail/prison. Treat drug addiction as it should be, a disease. And especially vote for and support legislation which eliminates petty drug crimes like possession of small βpersonalβ amounts of drugs, and removal of marijuana from the DEA schedule.
Non-AMP Link: https://www.twincities.com/2016/08/12/rosario-an-underdog-who-finally-had-everything-or-so-it-seemed/
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Is r/bestofreddit still a thing?
Thanks for sharing that. People need to know.
That sounds really rough man, unfortunately thatβs the sad reality of the situation. Iβm happy to hear you got through it at the very least, stay blessed!
Anyone reading this should also watch the documentary "13th" on the US prison system.
I called the cops as my dad was beating my 13 year old brother. They took my brother out in handcuffs and smiled and shook hands with my dad. Fuck the cops.
Did you ever forgive your father? I wouldnβt.
I feel you man. I spent my 16th birthday in a group home. Got put on probation at 14 for having weed, and just basically being a smart-ass. Parents just couldnβt take it I guess. The probation escalated to being put in a group home run by the county at 15 for nearly a year, and not long after I got out of there was sent to the juvenile detention center for 90 days because of breaking some probation rule, staying out past curfew I think.
I pretty much lost my teenage years... All for stupid shit.
At nearly 40 I am way past that part of my life but as it turned out, it seems that all of that happened to me because I simply had undiagnosed ADHD and no one bothered to test for it.
I can 100% attest to the fact that the juvenile justice system was not designed to rehabilitate, but perpetuate back in the 90βs, and Iβm damn sure itβs got to be worse off today.
Baby bookings?
The Wire was more of a documentary than a lot of people understand.
Baltimore is a profoundly fucked up place, and it's only gotten worse in the years since it went off the air.
All ready. Im from South florida/north Cuba been in Park heights for about 7 years now. I never watched the wire but yes profoundly fucked up place...
The Corner is the actual documentary that it's based on...
The corner is not a documentary, and the wire is not βbasedβ off of it.
The corner was the show produced by David Simon before the wire. It has some of the same actors the wire, and the stories are based on real peopleβs lives who some characters in βthe wireβ are based on, but it in no was is a documentary. They are separate shows using some of the same source material, with some of the same actors, produced by the same man.
Sorry, yes there was a book which documented the lives of real people in Baltimore, and the Corner was based on it.
as a die hard fan of the show, i have never really known how true it is, i suspected it had a great base on reality as simon took a lot from being a journalist there, but couldn't imagine its WORSE that that
thanks for your comments, hope the best for you
Best username ever...
what the fuuuck.
Not a juvenile, but while we were married my ex- husband ended up in prison. He went to Indiana State Prison, a maximum security prison, for multiple DUIs. Driving drunk is NEVER ok, but this guy? Never caused an accident, never hurt anyone, no property damage... the idiot was always stopped for something dumb, like not using a turn signal, etc. The thing is? He was literally the sweetest man... but he had some serious issues stemming from growing up in an evangelical household, getting his high school girlfriend pregnant, and "the church" forcing the families to adopt the child out to a family within the church to "save his, his girlfriends, and the baby's souls". He was kind, but sad. In all of his run ins with the law, no one ever thought to get him into counseling, or recommend a program of some sort. I tried, but he believed he was damaged goods and couldn't be 'redeemed'.
He really was such a good husband and father, except when he would randomly leave work on a Friday with buddies, and maybe not come home until the next day. Or days, because he was in the drunk tank. It could be years between offenses, and I was so sick and tired of it. But I didn't expect sheriff's deputies to show up one night at 1 am, on a bench warrant, and arrest him. I didn't see him again for years, as I was in the Army and I had to keep going for our kids, and he didn't want us to visit him there...
He was very different when he came home. I refused to divorce him while he was in prison, but he knew the deal. We were on the verge of divorce before prison, it was inevitable. I just wasn't prepared for the broken man that I saw when he was released to live with his parents while on parole. A quiet, gentle, shy man, his presence in the prison world as a 6'8" behemoth did him no favors. He wouldn't speak of his 3 years in that place, but would quietly cry instead and beg me not to ask about it.
The justice system did him wrong, as so many others have experienced. When a judge decides to "throw the book" at someone, without trying any other recourse to help an individual who has caused no harm to anyone but themselves (fortunately, in this case) it just seems cruel and vengeful. Judges and prosecutors should be able to balance empathy and humanity against votes, without always coming out on the side of just lining their pockets.
That's because it is and this is by design. The aim of the US "justice" system is vengeance. This is why stuff like this isn't as prevalent in Europe, most criminal justice systems in Europe are designed to rehab offenders instead of just breaking them.
"corrections officer" is one of the biggest doublespeak in history. Nothing gets corrected there. Just punishment and relegation.
I got wrongfully locked up in a very similar situation as a kid too. But mine was only 5 days and everybody in there seemed to get along well enough. Baltimore sounds fucked up.
My wife got involved in a "fight you after school" situation. Cops showed up at school a couple days later and arrested her for "assault with deadly weapon" (it was a fist fight) "conspiracy to overthrow the United States" (she was Asian? no idea...) there were a couple other equally ridiculous charges.
I hope your dad got what was coming to him
Well, it ruined any chance of us salvaging our relationship for over a decade until he got cancer.
But he made a mistake. He's not a bad person, he just did a very stupid thing with no idea what the consequences would be. It's all been forgiven a long time ago.
Fair enough. Really rubs me the wrong way when parents call the cops on their kids. Never a good idea. Glad you're still in touch w him
Why did you make up this story
This almost happened to me. When I was 13 my parents had just gotten divorced and my mom started fights with me every night. Shed get in my face, screaming and pushing me as an outlet for her frustrations with my dad or with her life. Unlike you, I wasn't 6 feet tall. I never made it past 5'5". But one day, I pushed her back to get her out of my face. She kicked me out of the house within minutes.
I heard from my brother that she was telling all of her friends a sob story about how I was hitting her, and they were advising her to call the cops. I'm lucky she didn't. She felt guilty later and tried to get me to move back, but by then I was already living with my dad by then. I never went back.
Wtf.
You were a 280 pound 15 year old?
I might have been closer to 260 at that time, I don't know, but yeah, I was a biiig kid. This is a post about the american justice system, after all.
you saw his username, didnt you?
That's tought to hear, I knew from movies and some documentaries that the prison system in America is fucked up, but reading you, is eyeopening, that's something wouldn't happen in Spain at least
Much love, to you, sir. I fear for my kiddos when I hear stories like this. My dad was abusive as well. You're not alone, either in being abused, or in being falsely incriminated.
This is some r/bestof stuff here
There's an organization called Mirror Image Arts that works with incarcerated youth and youth who are at risk of falling into the School-to-Prison pipeline. Posting here in case anyone feels like donating.
Their work is amazing, but it's tragic that it's needed at all. Youth recidivism rates are through the roof.
Out of curiosity, how's your relationship with your dad now? I dunno if I could mend or ever really go back to trusting someone that did that to me, especially a parent. Sorry you had to go through that, what a complete bullshit situation.
I answered this a couple times on other replies, but we're fine now.
We didn't really patch things up until I was in my 20's, and our relationship isn't what I'd call great, but we're fine.
So is he gonna clap them cheeks?
Free country?
This shit would never happen in a million years in Canada.
And your country bombed mine. I'm sorry i know that's not the topic, it's just I can't understand how a 11year can be in JAIL. How, in what scenario? Even if he killed a person he's 11. He needs help, maybe a doctor or therapist but certainly not JAIL. HE'S 11 FUCK
Yeah I call bullshit
Privileged white man, is that you?
This story is bullshit
I only shared this to begin with as a reply to someone else about the juvenile system, and figured no one but him would read it. So rather than argue whether or not this all really happened or not, I'll post some articles about the abuses in the Maryland Juvenile system from that time to facilitate the original purpose of my comment - to educate about the reality of what these facilities are like:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/bal-te.md.juvenile30mar30-story.html%3foutputType=amp
"The youths at the Baltimore facility tried to escape Feb. 15 by squeezing through a loosely chained door and were placed in seclusion after they were caught. Initially, the state Department of Juvenile Services stated that the youths were not held in isolation for more than three days, the limit under the law, but the monitor's office found they had been held for five consecutive days.
During their isolation, the youths were not allowed to shower regularly or attend school. One was forced to sleep on a bare mattress and he was not given anything to wear but underwear, the monitor's office stated in a report. Two of the youths expressed an intent to commit suicide. One youth banged his head against a wall; another smeared human feces on his shirt.
...
"I look at these two reports, and I see that after years of complaints and documented abuses, there continue to be very serious problems at Department of Juvenile Services facilities," said Sharon Rubinstein, communications director for Advocates for Children and Youth. "It seems like there was disarray and chaos. I was really very, very disappointed."
The monitor's office began investigating the Noyes facility last month after its interviews with several youths revealed complaints about abusive practices. Apparently a guard in one of the units started a group called "the family," members of which were known as "soldiers," according to yesterday's report.
To join the group, juveniles had to stand with their hands over their heads while other youths stripped them of their clothing. Once an inductee was naked, members of the family, including the guard, would punch them in the groin, according to the monitor's report. Even after initiation, the guard encouraged family members to continue to hit inductees in the groin "on a random basis."
Once in the family, the report said, youths "enjoyed preferential treatment from the staff member" and were able to "use the staff member's cell phone, eat pizza ordered by the staff member, and stay up past bedtime to have water fights and watch movies."
Youths who were not members of the family were locked in their rooms by the guard without justification, the report stated. Even when supervisors ordered the guard to release juveniles, he failed to do so. Members of the family were often told to act as lookouts to warn the guard when a supervisor was near.
The guard who headed up the family also instructed his loyal detainees to beat up other juveniles at his discretion, the report stated. Once, he instructed his soldiers to search a youth's room. During the process, one of them slapped the victim in the face, causing redness and swelling.
The monitor's office also found that two other guards encouraged juveniles at the Noyes Center to engage in fights and use physical abuse to control weaker detainees. Both were disciplined.
Youths interviewed for the report said they didn't know how they could report cases of abuse and other violations. Department of Juvenile Services records for 2003 show 26 grievances filed by juveniles at the Noyes facility. The monitor's staff stated that records for last year "show zero grievances were filed."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2003-03-31-0303310138-story,amp.html
"Robert told of nightmarish conditions at the 131-year-old institution that houses youths awaiting trial. He wrote that if youths complain, staff members punish them by locking them in their cells, getting other residents to beat them up or otherwise denying privileges. Fearing for his life, Robert no longer wants to come out of his cell, a dismal prospect given it's the size of a broom closet.
...
In 1995, after extensively investigating the facility, juvenile justice expert Mark Soler of the Youth Law Center said, "Some of the cottages were the worst I had seen in 20 years of inspecting juvenile facilities."
Since then, a girl housed at Cheltenham was impregnated by a staff member; a 13-year-old boy was repeatedly raped by several youths; Maryland's fire inspector called for Cheltenham to be closed because of hazardous conditions; The Sun published a series on abusive conditions in Maryland's youth institutions, including Cheltenham; and staff members arranged for "fight clubs" between inmates."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/04/17/beatings-abuse-assailed-at-md-juvenile-facilities/73695b84-4018-4d38-a85a-69ea23b33f4b/
"Of particular concern to federal investigators, the report said, was the "deeply disturbing degree of physical abuse" by staff members over the past two years. The investigation found many occasions when the staff "beat and punched" young offenders, and many other times when youths accosted each other, usually without intervention from staff members, resulting in serious injuries.
...
Many of those working at the facilities, the report said, were found to have criminal histories, and some female employees engaged in inappropriate sexual relationships with the youths.
...
The report said youths often had to wait weeks to see a doctor, citing a case in which a boy who complained of a sore throat developed a severe infection and had to be hospitalized because staff members waited two weeks before they sent him to a health facility."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/bal-hickey0330-story.html%3foutputType=amp
"The description reads like a riot scene from a prison movie: inmates on a rampage, attacking each other with chairs and mop handles. A guard fuels the chaos by opening a locked door to let one side attack the other. Another guard kicks through two doors in pursuit of an inmate, who repels him with a fire extinguisher.
Substitute the word students for inmates and you've got reality, as depicted in a report on Incident 11473 at the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School for juveniles, in Baltimore County. The fight was Aug. 3, and one youth suffered a broken jaw, one had a skull fracture, and one incurred serious eye and facial injuries. Two staff members were fired."
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Really sad to hear about that, especially to a white kid.
why especially?
Because it sounds like a very asshole thing to say and i like downvotes.