CHILDREN IN JAIL
Children in jail Cruel, mindless, unconstitutional --and widespread Three brothers — Billy, age twelve; Brian, age thirteen, and Dan, age fourteen — were suspected of stealing some coins from a...
...In 1965, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency estimated that some 87,900 boys and girls under juvenile court jurisdiction were held in county jails and "lock-ups...
...Almost four out of every five jailed children were male...
...1 didn't ask nothing...
...Most children who are charged with offenses and placed in jail are prosecuted by local authorities acting under state laws...
...James had not eaten for a day and a half after he was locked up...
...The rest were charged with property or minor offenses — or no offense at all...
...One boy, who had been found mentally ill, had, already spent more than six months in jail awaiting court-ordered admission to a state mental hospital...
...Just 'cause they say you're in the wrong place don't mean they're going to move you right away...
...The incarceration of juveniles in adult jails clearly does not satisfy the constitutional obligations which the states have assumed in creating the juvenile justice system...
...Special advocacy groups for mentally retarded children and other handicapped children have not challenged the broader abuse against all children subjected to adult jails, and such fragmented advocacy cannot muster sufficient support to stop this practice...
...These people are by far the worst-paid, most ill-trained and overextended personnel associated with corrections...
...Most do not provide inmates with such basic supplies as soap, toothpaste, and toilet paper...
...As Billy and Brian lay sleeping, the men placed matches between Billy's toes and in Brian's hands, lit them, and watched them burn, laughing as the boys awoke in pain and horror...
...I wonder a lot about why they put me in the wrong place...
...Two nights later the abuse was repeated: The men poured water on Dan's mattress, filled Billy's and Brian's mouths with shaving cream, stripped the boys naked, and raped them...
...One night you ain't got money or any place to go, and nobody in the world's got a job for you, and maybe you got a lot of people you owe money to, you know, and you'll get into a lot of trouble if you don't pay 'em back, you better believe you'll do something like break into some place or grab somebody's purse in the street...
...Like with me, they told me in February and I was still there in May...
...I never said nothing...
...Most jails are old, deteriorating, filthy, and unsafe — the most neglected and understaffed institutions in the entire correctional system...
...Some states at least appear to recognize that the longer a child is detained in jail the greater the possibility of harm, and their statutes establish time limitations on the period that children can be held in jail...
...Regardless of a state's laws, correctional policies, or administrative practices, children are found in its adult jails...
...Certain basic due-process protections such as trial by jury and public trial have been dispensed with in exchange for the commitment of the state to help rather than to punish the child in trouble...
...Historically used as depositories for the village drunkard, the vagrant, the insane, they are now used for traffic violators and transient offenders presumably on their way to other disposition...
...I was so lonely...
...Inch by inch...
...They don't care whether you eat or not...
...There are two tiers of authority and control for children in jail...
...The child, however, was put in jail for protective custody, Only seven jails out of 171 which reported holding children regularly had information about their length of stay...
...At night they wouldn't come in...
...Calling her "hopeless" and blaming her parents, and society, the judge sentenced her to a term of no less than one year in the state correctional institution for girls...
...In the first tier are the administrative officials in charge of the jails...
...According to the Bureau's records, during 1974 it contracted to have cells available in adult jails for the incarceration of juveniles in all but four states (Delaware, Illinois, New Hampshire, and Vermont...
...You can't run for office on a jail...
...Children are found in jails in cities, medium-size counties, and sparsely populated rural areas...
...The second night, the boys, too afraid to fall asleep, lay awake listening to the men talk about how they hadn't had a woman in a long time and how these boys would do just This article is adaptedfrom a report by the Children's Defense Fund, a national non-profit organization created in 1973 to provide systematic and long-range advocacy on behalf of children...
...Adolescents and children less than thirteen years old...
...The boys obeyed the command and were silent...
...The juvenile court system in the United States was created to supplant the adult criminal justice system...
...Those in charge of these jails did not know how long almost half the children in their custody had been in jail...
...Only 11.7 per cent were charged with serious offenses against other people...
...While the majority of these jailed children were white, a disproportionate number were blacks, Native Americans, or Chicanos...
...These funds make up only about 1.5 per cent of all Federal law-enforcement assistance to the states...
...More than 4 per cent of the children had committed no offense...
...You know, they weren't going to break me...
...Those tall walls coming in on me...
...I heard they put a lot of kids my age in these places...
...They, too, are victims of the indifference and neglect meted out to jails and their occupants...
...Another 42 per cent had only partial separation...
...But the LEAA, the Federal agency administering the program, has relaxed requirements and has cared more about the rhetoric of law and order than about appropriate treatment of children...
...White, black, Chicano, and Native American children are found in jails...
...First, one of the inmates told me...
...It was all right during the day, but at night there was no light...
...Some children were held because they were mentally ill or retarded and there were no appropriate mental facilities available...
...Nick went to jail for a week...
...For emphasis, he threw one end of the cord over the shower nozzle, wrapped the other around Billy's neck, and pulled hard...
...They often are not sympathetic: Fred's cell had a wooden bench and some chairs...
...He came back and told me not to be hollering in the jail...
...The deputy talked with the boys' father alone while the children waited in the police car...
...After the lights were out in the jail, the men ordered the boys to take off their clothes...
...The jailing of children is a problem that can be targeted, tackled, and remedied...
...He told me to shut up or he'd put me in the drunk tank...
...The overwhelming majority of children found in adult jails were not detained for violent crimes and could not be considered a threat to themselves or to the community...
...In 1974, author Rosemary Sarri estimated that up to half a million children are held in adult jails each year...
...When they refused, the men attacked, punching Brian when he struggled to fight back...
...But instead of being sent to the girls' correctional institution, Angela was mistakenly placed in the county jail for women...
...You can make every promise in the book, swear on your life, and it don't mean nothing...
...One quarter of the jails said they had no visiting facilities...
...Statistics or reports submitted by one government agency to another thus far have proved ineffective to end the jailing of children or to improve the conditions of jails...
...Seein' all these different prisons don't make a person decide whether they're going to break the law...
...Another boy was fingerprinted and held in jail because his mother had been hospitalized and there was no other adult at home...
...Like, maybe they thought that if I saw what the worst place was like I'd stay out of trouble...
...There was no sink and no toilet...
...But from then on — and in smaller jails from the start — overworked custodial staff on the lowest rung of the corrections ladder are the principal people to whom children can turn for help...
...The Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act (FJDA) regulates the conditions under which these children may be incarcerated, both prior to their trial and after disposition...
...Maybe a lawyer could figure this out for me, but it seems like with all the smart people they got walking around someone ought to be able to figure out a better way to help kids...
...In large jails, a child may be booked by a uniformed officer...
...Many jails lack toilet facilities in each cell...
...More than 375 jails had contracts to detain males under age eighteen charged with Federal offenses...
...Almost 18 per cent of jailed children had committed "status offenses" — such acts as running away or truancy which would not be crimes if performed by adults...
...Pointing to a long electric cord hanging in the cell, one of the men warned the boys that if they uttered a sound or told anyone what had happened, he would choke them to death...
...What starts as a well-intentioned effort to protect children in jail, however, frequently turns into a living nightmare for the children: The forty-eight hours during which Johnny was held in solitary still haunt him two years later: "I can barely think about those two days...
...Finally, after five days of terror in jail, the boys were brought before a judge...
...You know, if you let the kid see the worst punishment maybe he'll stay clean...
...Congress stipulated that to receive these funds, the states must improve conditions for juvenile offenders by removing status offenders from juvenile detention or correctional facilities and ensuring that juveniles are not "detained or confined in any institution in which they have regular contact with adult persons incarcerated because they have been convicted of a crime or are awaiting trial on criminal charges...
...Most were sixteen and seventeen years old, but 34 per cent were fourteen and fifteen years old, and more than 9 per cent were thirteen years old or younger...
...It is a cruel and mindless way of dealing with children, in violation of constitutional rights...
...In some states a time limit is tied to a detention hearing...
...In the second are those with direct authority and control over children, the adults responsible for monitoring the children's safety and for providing services while they are in jail...
...So you have to sit around and wait for someone to come...
...Even where time limitations exist, however, extensions of indefinite duration are often sanctioned by the courts...
...According to the Census, less than 10 per cent of the jails in the CDF survey states reported having any educational facilities, and 12 per cent reported having any recreational facilities...
...A lot of times I'd ask and they wouldn't let me...
...Yet there have been few favorable court decisions involving the constitutionality of the jailing of children, and these have provided only limited remedies...
...I kept thinking, somewhere in here I'm going to find a body of some kid just like me who they stuck in there once and never got out...
...And it was so wet in there...
...Child advocates will have to engage in hard and persistent efforts — unlike cyclical or occasional outcries in response to the suicide of a child held in jail — if they are to be effective...
...Sometimes the only way to separate juveniles from adults, in the absence of separate juvenile facilities, is to place the children far away in some closet, basement, or tiny cell reserved for solitary confinement...
...If you had to go to the bathroom, tough luck...
...The incest could not be proved, and the adult was not held...
...Intervention by the state in juvenile proceedings is based on the assumption that either by reason of the child's behavior or parental neglect, the state must step in to replace or sup-plement the parents' role...
...The judge allowed Dan to go home after the court hearing...
...Children held by police with no formal charges filed, awaiting a juvenile court hearing, pending a court disposition, waiting to be transferred to a juvenile facility to serve a sentence, or serving a sentence in jail...
...Brian, age thirteen, and Dan, age fourteen — were suspected of stealing some coins from a local store in South Carolina...
...One child was in jail because her father was suspected of raping her...
...I was going to ask him to make a phone call...
...One of the problems with jails and their inmates is that they have gotten the reputation of being unimportant," notes criminologist Hans Mattick, "and that unimportance rubs off on everything that is associated with the jail...
...She had broken into the same food store three times before to get groceries for which she couldn't pay, but this time she had stolen money from one of the registers as well as two shopping bags of food...
...When officials at the Bureau of Prisons were asked how many children charged with Federal offenses had actually been placed in jails, they said that there was no information at the Federal level on that question...
...You have to ask permission to go to the bathroom, but there's never anyone around...
...After a short time, the deputy came out and took the boys to the county jail...
...It will take hard work by all of us if the rights of children are to be honored...
...The report, "Children in Adult Jails, " is available for $4.40 from CDF, Publications Department, 1520 New Hampshire Avenue, N. W., Washington, D.C...
...like I was sweating, and there wasn't anywhere for the sweat to go, so it just stayed in there with me...
...The jailer was mean to everybody...
...Traditional ways of challenging violations of law and reliance on governmental agencies to fulfill their responsibilities are not enough...
...Jails have never commanded the attention or resources needed to provide even minimally decent environments...
...Another major barrier to effective implementation of the Act is that states found in noncompliance stand to lose only the funds provided under that specific program...
...If the harm it does to children is challenged at the community level, it can be ended...
...In some jails the regular staff is outnumbered four to one by trusties...
...In addition, 189 local jails had contracts to house juveniles serving Federal sentences of six months or less, and 49 jails had contracts to house Federal juvenile prisoners for more than six months...
...The people who are in the Jails, whether they are inmates or stall, are very easy to neglect...' In the majority of jails, children and adults are forced to stay in their cells or cellblocks without interruption — most of the time with nothing to do...
...I figured, they're giving me clean clothes, they're giving me food, I'm only getting raped once every couple of weeks, what I got to complain about...
...and that ceiling like it was going down on top of me real slow...
...Because of the supposedly benevolent purpose of juvenile proceedings, states have been permitted to relax some of the usual requirements of adult criminal procedure...
...They wouldn't put a sick dog in one of those and still they had no problems sticking me in there...
...Yet the number of children seventeen years of age and younger in jails almost doubled between 1950 and 1960, and increased an additional 23.5 per cent from 1960 to 1970...
...Billy and Brian shared one bunk...
...As the boys left their cell on their way to court, one of the men threatened menacingly, "You tell the judge or anyone about this and I'll kill you for sure...
...In one state, only eleven of sixty-two jails used for children could pass even minimal standards for sewage disposal, plumbing, and cleanliness...
...Legislative prohibitions against the confinement of children in adult jails have been circumvented by loopholes and will require amendments, regulations, and careful monitoring by citizens if they are to become effective...
...The only person Nick saw during the entire week was the inmate who brought his meals: "He was allowed to stay for about five minutes and he would talk to me...
...249 jails had contracts to detain juvenile females charged with Federal offenses...
...Children's Defense Fund (CDF) staff members visited 449 jails in nine states and found 350 children in jail on the day of the visits...
...Two hundred fifty-seven were detained while under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court...
...Upon their return, the boys begged not to be put in a cell with adults...
...But I wasn't going to cry — I was going to be strong...
...We had to holler in a loud voice to get him...
...The people who are in the jails, whether they are inmates or staff, are very easy to neglect since they have no political sex appeal...
...Then this one guard told me the same thing...
...No region of the country is immune from the practice...
...The three were placed in one of four cells on the top floor of the jail...
...Sixty-eight children had been in jail anywhere from four to thirty days or more...
...One boy was being held because "he had no place to go...
...Some jails do not have fire extinguishers...
...In the daytime, there are people from the outside who are around so they try to keep you quiet...
...There are still many judges throughout the legal system who believe in jailing children both as a deterrent and a suitable punishment: Soon after her fifteenth birthday, Angela was arrested for breaking and entering...
...When the American Medical Association subsequently sought information on the types of medical facilities available to jails, many of these facilities turned out to consist only of first-aid kits...
...But Billy and Brian, awaiting transfer to the Department of Youth Services, were sent back to the county jail...
...As amended in 1974, the FJDA requires, in part, that when a juvenile must be detained to ensure his or her appearance at trial or "to ensure his safety or that of others," whenever possible "detention shall be in a foster home or community-based facility located in or near his home community...
...But trusties, jailers, and police officers are not the sole villains...
...More than 21 per cent of the jails provided no separation of children from adults...
...I can still see that room, man...
...The deputy sheriff found the three boys at school, put them in his car, and drove to their father's place of employment to inform him that he was taking the three to jail...
...The National Jail Census, 1970, conducted by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), found that only 51 per cent of jails replying to its questionnaire reported having medical facilities...
...A little over half of the 151 children for whom records had been kept had been there seventy-two hours or less...
...fine...
...But their pleas were ignored, and the boys were led to the same cell they had been in before, where the same men waited to greet them...
...This doctrine is known as parens patriae, the state as parent...
...others have toilets but no privacy...
...You don't decide these things, you're forced to do 'em...
...The men tore off the boys' clothing and then raped the three brothers...
...He was the only prisoner up there...
...The first night the older prisoners decided to have a little fun...
...Tough-talking and helpless children...
...Other children are charged with offenses which violate Federal law...
...The only time they come is in the daytime...
...The Federal Government provides millions of dollars annually to states and local governments for their law enforcement programs and facilities for juveniles under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974...
...So are upper-middle-class children and dirt-poor children...
...While every state has statutes or a juvenile code and regulations defining how children should be treated, state legislatures have enacted an incredibly varied set of statutory approaches for controlling the placement of juveniles in jails and other adult correctional facilities...
...Even 'Just 'cause they say you're in the wrong place don't mean they're going to move you right away' when they told me it still didn't make a helluva lot of difference...
...It had four beds and three other prisoners: one older boy and two men...
...When custodial staff are in short supply, jail officials designate adult inmates to serve as trusties to help with the chores...
...You got to do it...
...20036...
...All they do is bring the tray back...
...About three months later, Angela found out that her assignment there had been a mistake...
...If I yelled for the cops and they didn't come, I'd just have to sit there...
...I figured in my case it was either a mistake or they were trying to tell me something...
...But I ain't going to stay clean...
...Angela told him she was glad to go, for at least there she would be warm during the winter...
...Unfortunately, the Bureau of Prisons' own practices contradict the intention of the FJDA to limit the use of jails for children...
...He was locked in a converted conference room on the third floor...
...Dan slept on a mattress on the floor...
...Although all the states CDF visited had laws requiring that children be kept separate from adult inmates, only slightly more than one third of the 139 jails for which information on separation was gathered were able to assure substantial separation of children from adults...
...Shocking revelations of the destruction and self-destruction of children lodged in jails have been published for decades...
...Academically motivated children and children failing in school...
Vol. 43 • April 1979 • No. 4
