Impossible not to try compassion in finding it
therefore, tiny physicist and hurt look, with the irons that block to the
ankles and the arms to it handcuffed behind the back. It is barbarisms,
cannot be defined otherwise. At least from a sure point of view.
Because it goes said
that, to the tender age of 12 years, Jamie already has to the various
shoulders car thefts, all store clerks together to accomplices little larger
than he. And who it asks it as never he is ended of new to the Dade County
Juvenile Assessment Center of Miami, the triage center of the stopped young,
it answers with the disinvoltura of who to courts and policemen it has
already made the callus: "they are found to Me to travel to edge of an car
that, to how much seems, has turned out stolen".
The responsibilities of
the center support that, when children like these move themselves, it must
take to all the precautions apt to prevent that if the svignino. According
to they, chaining them hands and feet one helps them to understand that they
have store clerk a mistake in the comparisons of the society. Once joints to
destination, but, the throttles come removed.
In the empty one it knows
it of admission of the institute are found, beyond to Jamie, one score of
the young, all more or less of its age. Many are rannicchiati on the chairs,
arranged to rows parallels like in a cinema to the open, and try to sleep in
waited for of their turn.
A trust to the wall
perceives: "Who comes been strange to the inside of the center in possession
of crews from fire is passibile of immediate arrest". The television
transmits one soap work: the violent programs are announced publicly.
Every year to the Dade
County Juvenile Assessment Center they parade, in meat and boneses or under
shape of rows, 60 mila delinquents from the 17 years in down, some of which
attend (or would have to still attend) the elementary ones.
A third party
approximately of they goes to end in the minorile house of detention that
rises to the periphery of Miami. Who, an objective system decides it the
responsibilities of the center second ", rations them and verifiable ". And
icy like a Siberian wind.
Every houses manager
(therefore call the persons people in charge of the management of the cases)
are closed in a gabbiotto of iper-functional glass with a young "customer",
a computer and a voluminoso questionnaire. "You have never tried the
suicide", it asks the intervistatrice.
The boy who seats before
them, more or less 13 years, ago sign not with the head. The sudden start of
the negation is such that the dreadlock they are opened around to the ace
like the corolla of a flower: not, not, never.
It does not know neither
to read neither to write; it has stopped to go to school six months ago and
is the third time that arrests it, but knows very well that to admit a try
suicide would be equivalent to dig the fossa alone, therefore as to confess
to make drug use, to hang fires or to amuse themselves to torture the
animals.
When on the questionnaire
figure an affirmative answer to one whichever of these questions, the
judgment is unquestionable: psicolabile, that preclude every possibility to
make return house. The child, to every way, has little hopes to pass smooths
down it: he has threatened one similar of school with the gun, has torn them
the catenina of gold from the neck and, not content, he has put it k.o. with
a fist.
According to the
questionnaire, we find ourselves of before to a "armed crime". That, based
on the appraisal system, it involves ten points of penalty. With a homicide
15 points remove you, if it talks nonsense and it projects them wandering
kills someone, 12. The two previous sentences make already four points in
less; therefore, with the aggression to the companion, the interviewed young
person has exceeded the magical threshold of the 12 points, beyond which the
doors of the jail are opened wide.
The tredicenne it listens
to the imperturbabile verdict. After hours of attended in the icy one it
knows it of aspect of the Assessment Center, to someone jump the nerves. In
this case it releases the transfer in the Time-out room, one very small
single cell where the rebellious young person has time of sbollire the
anger.
For the irreducible ones,
then, two special seats are ready that to look at itself, with all those
straps of leather and those it reinforces metallic, seem a crossing between
one chair electrical worker and the seat of the dentist. "But in the last
year, fortunately, we have had to resort to this extreme solution only or
two times", say the workers of the center, satisfied.
Outside it attends the
pulmino for the riformatorio. Before going up to edge, the boys come newly
chain to you, hands and feet. Three beauties of Latin origins greet to us
with a signal of the head: Olga, Judy and Vanessa are habituées of the small
crime. This time has taken the car of the mother of one of they in order to
go in tries of drug.
Tredicenne the Olga, for
more, also has gotten rid of the cicalino electronic that concurs with the
vigilance authorities to hold under control the movements of who has been
condemned to the domiciliari arrests. Therefore the mother, deprived of
hope, has decided to address to the police. The only comment of Olga has
been "Shit!", merda, but ce it seriously has it with its mother.
The jail is one mortal
trouble them. And then, "within", it is a Continuous Struggle with the gang
you avail again. In order not to speak about the common shower: the children
must wash themselves, obviously knots, under the assatanati looks of she
supports some and of the other prisoners. "there are po' too many lesbian
ones here in turn", sbotta Olga.
The Dade Regional
Juvenile Detention Center di Miami (the equivalent to stars and strisce of
our minorile jail) is not, like someone could expect, a decrepit building
with the slabs to the windows and the rats that go around themselves for the
corridors. In compensation it is aseptic as a hospital, and emanates the
heat of a obitorio.
It knows of isolation
unit, and in effects it is just to that it would have to serve, in the
intentions of its creators: to put in quarantine the difficult young people,
to isolate them so that the germs of the violence, the chaos and the
illegalità they do not contaminate the external world.
We cross steel doors with
keyboard lock and pass cabins of control in glass reinforced until to the
unit of the shorties, the small: that is, the prisoners under the 14 years.
The young host who never is passed here had seven years; at the moment "cucciolo"
of the institute it is Gabriel, of 11.
We find coiled up in the
uniform color rust of the jail, on the bed (a concrete block with over a
mattress), the look glue to the Bible. In the cell there are also one
blanket, water in steel and a small washbasin, on which they are puts down
soap, towels, small brush from teeth and tooth-paste to you. Nothing other.
Nothing closets, nothing chairs, nothing tables, not even one photo to the
wall. The poster they are not permissions, because the adhesive tape ruins
intonaco it. Tables and chairs could promote the vandalismo or serve in
order to commit suicide.
And the personal dresses,
which they have all the prisoners straight? "We do not want that, as an
example, a young pusher if of it he goes in turn sfoggiando signed necklaces
of gold and jackets", says the responsibles of the institute. They would
have hoped also in a beautiful cut of hats to the soldier for all, but the
resistance has been too much strong. What, instead, they are resolutions to
impose without problems they are ubbidienza and mouth sluice.
To the order: "Hands on
the shoulders!", the young inmates offer themselves ready in formation to
the center of the courtyard, in order then to head to march step towards the
catering.
The courtyard is, in
truth, an immense Prato very rasato with a vialetto in concrete that runs to
it round all. Not there are parkes bench, nothing flowers, of trees not even
the shadow. The only note of color is an enormous one walls them along the
town-walls wall that reproduces - you would believe to us? - the landing of
the small boat spaces (spacecraft) them Challenger.
On the road from and for
the catering and during the meal it goes observed most rigorous Hush, even
if here it is preferred to speak about "control of the acoustic levels". The
food is chosen and cooked the last ones second it dictates me of the
dietetic one. Calories, vitamins, oligoelements: all it is dosed in the just
amount, also thinking next to the young age of the "customers". And for cake
there are even the brownies.
To say true, for the many
backs greater part of the prisoners it is better here that to house. "the
cells have also the conditioned air!", entusiasmano the responsibles of the
structure. That, at the same time, they watch themselves well from
"vitiating" their hosts. "They must understand that, if is found here, there
is a reason". For who line straight is not the cell of isolation. If
necessary also in order more days, with one half hour of air under tightened
every surveillance 24 hours.
And the parents? In many
cases, they do not make that to get worse the situation. One of the more
famous history regards a child of 14 years who had smashed in the skull to
one contemporary with a punteruolo from ice. For jealousy. And the main
worry of the mother was that the daughter used, also in the cell of the
riformatorio, a soap adapted to the skin sand bank.
In the riformatorio of
Miami vige one rigid separation between the seies: the girls only exit in
courtyard after that the boys if they have gone some. Some are indeed
pretty, and tell laughing because they are ended here: there is ladra of
automobiles and the prostitute, the spacciatrice of crack and that one that
the stepfather has stabbed. To the commando of a gigantic secondina, ognuna
it supports the hands on the shoulders of that it precedes it then and
ahead, all in catering.
The stopped half
approximately of the 13 mila that they pass every year here is "customers"
accustoms them that, soon or late, they make return the institute. The guilt
goes also to the police, incapable to distinguish between criminal young
people and guilty children to have stolen, even, one merendina.
The only correlation that
the director is successful to establish, after many years to contact with
imprisons you of every age, is that one between illiteracy and frequency of
the recidivism: who does not know to read and to write has greater
probabilities to end (and to return) in jail. And good 80 for hundreds of
the boys who pass for the institute re-enter in the category.
It is for this reason
that, while they discount their pain, all the prisoners of the Dade Regional
Juvenile Detention Center di Miami are obligate to you to attend the school
prepared to the inside of the riformatorio. The problem is that the average
life of the detainment is of some week or little months: therefore, the
schooling forced hard too much little for sortire concrete effects.
To the wall of it knows
it common is a poster of Oprah Winfrey, the celebre moderatrice of
talk-show, one that ce has made it after the hardest infancy, similar to
that one of these boys. The faccione of Oprah exclaims: "Laws!", but they
are in little to follow its council. "
Some exception is",
declares the librarian of the riformatorio, that it counts some frequent
visitors accustoms them. And which are the books that they collect greater
happening? "The storys of the horror".