True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall

“I am lying in my room incarcerated at Central Juvenile Hall looking at the white painted walls in my room, and how my door is shut with a steel bolt lock to show that I am locked up. It's weird but this room relates to my life I once lived outside, over the walls laced with barbed wire. I was locked in a world where nothing would come in and nothing would go out. I was trapped in my gang life, that's all I knew and all I wanted to know. I chose to stay in my room and not let anybody control me. I had too much pride to open my door and let somebody in. I neglected the people who really cared about me, my family, and my loved ones.”

This passage, from an essay by a boy named Antonio, shows the emotional and reflective content of the writing Salzman hears during his time teaching. This passage in particular displays a thematic trend of the writing: in confinement, the boys often have the time and space to finally reflect on why they are there; separated from their lives in gangs, they start to see how the negative choices that brought them to their cells echo general feelings of limited options, and wasted opportunities.

“Duane showed up on time and crossed the parking lot with a knapsack slung over his shoulder. As we shook hands the alarm went off over the metal doors again. The concrete monster opened its mouth and spat the police cruiser out. The boy was gone; he, I presumed, needed to be digested for a while before being shit into the adult prison or puked back out onto the streets.”

The author's impression is of the prison as a "concrete monster," in which the boys are treated first as food, and eventually waste. In this description, the author wishes to illustrate the disregard with which their lives and potential represent to the penal system.

“‘Look at this place—it's awful! It's falling apart, it's depressing, it's unsafe. What message does that send to these kids? That they are garbage, that's what. It tells them that society simply wants to dispose of them. It's obscene, it's unconscionable that we aren't willing to do better than this! We have given up hope of rehabilitation. That says more about us than it does about these children.’”

This quotation, from Sister Janet, succinctly expresses the frustration with how the penal system treats juvenile offenders. Sister Janet argues that the poor facilities fall well short of the stated goals of rehabilitation. Instead, the juveniles internalize the idea that they (and their efforts) are without value.