What Happens When We Lose the Fear?

Christian Science Monitor/ ROBERT HARBISON: An official puts shackles on Adam Pedroza to move him from one location to the next. At Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility, California's toughest youth facility, each correctional counselor wears a stab-proof vest and a belt with two types of Mace, handcuffs, and a personal alarm.

I recently toured two youth correctional facilities of the California Division of Juvenile Justice in Stockton, and I just don’t know what adjective to use to describe my experience. Intense? Eye-opening? Every one I think of seems applicable for some parts, and wildly inaccurate for others.

Intense: Seeing only the middle section of two young men’s faces in the N. A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility peering through their cell doors – and realizing that’s all they see 23 hours a day. How is our society enhanced by having youth view the world through a 4-inch slot?

Eye-opening: Listening to an OH Close Youth Correctional Facility warden, amid discussing how the young men benefit from their time inside the facility, let slip that soon, “They may have to interact with normal people.”

Needless to say, the experience had quite an impact on me.

Walking through the grounds of the “Chad” facility, I felt awkward thinking about what we must have looked like to the young men – as a group of mostly white professionals escorted by four or five correctional officials. Did anyone beside the administration know we were coming? Do the young people detained in these facilities know when strangers are going to get a glimpse into their current lives?

The answer became clear quickly as every young man we passed inquisitively looked in our direction, curious about who we were and why we were there. Unfortunately, all of them were just as much at the mercy of the invisible wall constructed between “us,” the visitors, and “them,” the incarcerated, as we were. I could feel this wall going up every time the tour guide of the moment referred to the youth as if they were an exhibit in a museum. There was rarely an attempt for eye contact by the tour guides, much less recognition that the individuals being discussed were in fact present in the cement boxes we were invading.

Soon, I realized it was fair game to stray from the group and talk to the young men. I no longer subjected myself to hearing language that suggested the facility was benefiting the young men by teaching them to reject what the tour guides seemed to view as some kind of pathological criminal tendency. The curiosity displayed on the faces of the young men we passed became a reality as the first question from every one I talked to was, “So what is this? Who are you guys?”

I was happy to explain that we were all from, as I chose to put it, down-for-the-cause organizations and law firms working to reform the mess we call the juvenile justice system. And from here on in my personal tour consisted of as many conversations with the youth as I could get. We talked about where we grew up, tattoos, piercings, plans after prison, the weather, the quality of the tour I was on… But one thing that remains with me is something a young man named Victor said, “This girl isn’t afraid to talk to us.” I mention this because I want to emphasize is the ubiquity of this apprehension in the first place. In my mind it comes from the binary our society has constructed that posits perpetrator and victim as not only opposites but also opponents. Both sides are restricted to either the bad guy or the good guy, a classification that, if you’ve ever seen a Wile E. Coyote cartoon, is nearly impossible to reconcile.

With no room for restorative justice, our retributive justice system relies on this dichotomy to rationalize our massive prison system and the heinous conditions therein. In order to keep this system legitimate, jails and prison facilities must prove that it is in the best interest of society to keep the “bad guys” locked up. How better to do this than to create a complex of fear relentlessly surrounding people who have been labeled “criminals?” At the Burns Institute it is well known that young people of color bear the unfair brunt of such labeling and scapegoating.

This fear begins with what is perceived as criminal nature and the so-called criminal’s ability to corrupt. However, because this is a constructed idea, what results is fear that these two things are not static to a personality or culture. Fear that if given any other resources beside being incarcerated the first two will prove untrue. Thus, fear of what would happen if this binary were to be uprooted. And lastly, fear of learning about the lives of the accused aside from their crime for fear of finding the person behind the crime is in fact a person, and that many of their missteps can be linked to other issues, from mental health and harsh school discipline, to police or probation officials who through subjective judgment calls perceive the risk they could pose for society, rather than the risk they actually pose.

For this reason I never asked anyone why they were there, understanding all the while that a majority of young people who are in juvenile facilities across the nation are there for nonviolent offenses or minor infractions such as violating probation or failing to appear in court. I don’t like the idea that their crimes automatically define their person, which is undoubtedly the idea that permeates the system that placed them there, a practice that results in mass incarceration numbers that are unconscionable and shameful for any civil society.

I found that by having a conversation with these young men about something other than their crimes, the reality of their humanity became inescapable. Maybe once we all recognize this, more of us will also recognize the dire state of our prisons and jails and realize that they are truly unfit for any human being, regardless of how their character is defined or labeled.

That said, what happens when we lose that fear? When we come to grips with the idea that no person is, or should be, defined by a single action or accusation? Perhaps we in the United States abandon the cages we use to house 25 percent of the world’s prisoners and instead embrace alternative tactics. Methods that promote a connection between victim and perpetrator in hopes of fostering an understanding and healing between the two parties.

In my opinion, it is only then that we can say our justice system contributes to the progress and prosperity of our society.

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Sarah True just finished her sophomore year at Barnard College (an affiliate of Columbia University) and is majoring in Africana Studies. She is a summer intern at the Burns Institute and among other things is assisting the BI in a joint project with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to develop a statewide assessment of Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) and its leading drivers for youth, adults, men and women in six California counties.