If you know that incarceration makes youth worse…

If you know that youth incarceration is ineffective, costly and counterproductive…

If you know that there is a better way to address the needs of youth in trouble with the law…

Then now is the time to WAKE UP and SHARE WHAT YOU KNOW TO BE TRUE.

On September 8th, Governor Pat Quinn announced that he would recommend closing IYC-Murphysboro this fiscal year. This will save the state $3.1 million in just FY12. This is a good start and we believe that many more youth prisons can and should be closed too. For specific information about IYC-Murphysboro, click here.

We have the opportunity in Illinois to mobilize to educate the public and push our legislators to close youth prisons. Betsy Clarke, director of the Juvenile Justice Initiative, put it best in a recent column:

Illinois currently runs eight separate far-flung juvenile facilities to house an average of less than 1,200 youth. These eight facilities are costly. The average annual cost per bed has rapidly risen from $70,915 five years ago to an estimate of more than $90,000 this year. The per bed cost at the Murphysboro youth prison, which the governor plans to close, is far above average and climbed to $142,342 per bed in FY10. Operation of each facility entails significant administrative costs as does collective oversight and management of the eight separate facilities.

If each of the eight facilities ran quality programming with successful results, there might be justification for continuing their operation. The facts, however, are dismally opposite. Reports document a juvenile prison system that is ineffective, with over half the youth returning to juvenile prisons within three years. Most facilities struggle to maintain minimal educational programming, let alone adequate mental health treatment, recreation or vocational classes.

According to an analysis of state records by the Juvenile Justice Initiative the average daily population for youth prisons in the state was 1,113 in fiscal year 2011, down from 1,603 in fiscal year 2005 and 1,192 in fiscal year 2011. The same analysis estimates operation costs for the facilities as $92,257 per bed for fiscal year 2011.

This is where we are in Illinois. On both humanitarian and fiscal grounds, the status quo is unsustainable. Just today, I read that the forces of the opposition are mobilizing to resist closing IYC-Murphysboro. I am extremely sympathetic to those who would lose their jobs with the closing of this facility. However, I agree strongly with Betsy Clarke who is quoted as saying: “Funding for juvenile justice is a limited amount of money, and we want to use it in the best way possible. Your jobs should not be built on the back of human misery. That should not be our job development plan.”

Here’s what you can do to add your voice in support of the Governor’s decision to close IYC-Murphysboro if you live in Illinois:

1. Sign this Change.org Petition telling Governor Pat Quinn to stand firm in closing Murphysboro Youth Prison.

2. Call Governor Quinn’s office and let him know that you support his decision to close IYC-Murphysboro. Let him also know that Illinois can afford to close even more youth prisons and that you would support that too. Call the Governor at 217-782-0244 or 312-814-2121. Tell all of your friends and family to call too. Locking young people up does not make us safer and in fact make us all less safe.

3. You can also write letters to the Governor. If you work with youth, have them write letters to the Governor telling him that they support his decision:

Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706

or

Office of the Governor
James R. Thompson Center
100 W. Randolph, 16-100
Chicago, IL 60601

4. If you live in Illinois, attend a Teach-In on Closing Illinois Youth Prisons scheduled for October 29th from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.

5. Visit the new "Closing Illinois Youth Prisons" which includes resources, information, and ways to take action.

Mariah and I arrived at juvenile court just before 11 am today. I had a meeting at 9 am so we couldn’t get there earlier. We walked right in to meet with Lizzie who is an attorney working for the Legal Assistance Foundation. Lizzie runs a juvenile expungement help desk at the Court on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to noon. This service is invaluable as she screens Rap sheets and tell people whether their “offense” is eligible for expungement. She also helps folks to complete the multi-page petition as well as the application for a fee waiver.

Let’s talk about how much it costs in Illinois to expunge a juvenile criminal record – $124. It costs $64 per petition that you file and then $60 per court order for the state police. So if you are expunging more than one arrest or conviction, you need to pay $64 per “offense.” You must file a petition for EACH OFFENSE you want to expunge. So imagine is a young person in Chicago has five juvenile mere arrests (no convictions or perhaps even no petitions filed) on his or her record, it would cost $380 to expunge those arrests ($64 per petition and then a fee of $60 per court order). That is a lot of money for anyone in this economic climate. The $380 are only the fees associated with the actual expungement process. In many cases, lawyers charge up to $1000 to help a young person to expunge their record(s). My advice to anyone is DON’T PAY A LAWYER to do this. It is tedious but you can and should file PRO-SE (do it yourself). Look for the FREE RESOURCES that are available to help you through the process.

After Mariah completed the petition for expungement as well as the application for a fee waiver, Lizzie accompanied us to the Clerk of the Court’s office to submit the petition. If you have the cash, you can pay at the office. If you do not, you should hold on to your application for a fee waiver until your hearing in front of the judge. The young woman at the front desk checked to make sure that all relevant information was included on the petition and on the fee waiver. The Clerk’s office then assigns a hearing date. Initially, they said that Mariah could see a judge in 45 days (that would have been late October). I insisted that she needed an EXPEDITED hearing. They asked why and I told them. She was assigned a hearing date in two weeks – September 30th. It helps to have an advocate with you who knows the system and can push back.

I will update everyone about what happens at the Hearing on September 30th. In the meantime for more information about the Juvenile Expungement process in Illinois as well as a copy of the petition forms, you can click HERE. If you are a resident of Illinois, I encourage you to join our UN-marked Campaign which is an effort to change the juvenile expungement laws and practices in the state.

We walked into 3510 S. Michigan Avenue (which is our Chicago Police Headquarters) at around 10:50 am this morning. We walked through metal detectors over to the central information kiosk. We were greeted by a police officer. We told him that we needed to get a copy of Mariah’s juvenile RAP sheet. He asked her if she had been arrested before her 17th birthday and for her name. He asked if she had a government issued ID and she gave him her state ID card. He then called someone and passed the phone over to Mariah. She was asked again for her name and also for her date of birth. She was then told to have a seat in the lobby.

We were the only two people sitting in a large lobby area. It was empty. Mariah leaned over to me and said: “It’s a police station but I don’t feel safe here.” She was nervous. I passed her the journal that I was writing in and told her to jot down her thoughts. I said that it sometimes helps to write down how one feels as a way to move past those feelings. With her permission, I will share her stream of consciousness musings with you.

I didn’t really have a bad experience but of course it wasn’t a good one. They all seem so uptight. This is taking too long or maybe time is going really slow. What is a rap sheet anyway? The elevator dings but it’s still not for me. I’m feeling uneasy seeing all the folders and guns. Shorts? it’s pretty cold for that. I wonder what they’re doing. I’m the only one here waiting for my file. My stomach is feeling weird. I wonder if that’s an FBI agent with the microphone in his ear. It isn’t very discreet. There’s a police officer/soldier. Interesting. So does the army have their own police but they all have guns? At least 20 min! What are they really doing. It takes longer to get my rap sheet than for the guy to get his gun registered. I just knew MK was gonna get up. And I just knew that police officer at the front desk was going to say something. I hope they don’t take longer on purpose.

Mariah is referring to me when she mentions that she “just knew MK was gonna get up.” After 30 minutes without service, I went back to the information desk to ask if they could call upstairs to see what the hold up was. He dialed and handed me the phone. I was promptly told by the person handling juvenile investigations: “When we’re ready, we’ll bring it down.” It took us 45 minutes from the time we arrived until we got the rap sheet. If you’ve never seen a juvenile rap sheet, here’s a copy below:

The disposition listed for Mariah is “Informal Adjustment (Released to Parent).” That’s right boys and girls, the supposed incident that has led Mariah to receive a letter saying that she cannot practice nursing involves an informal station adjustment that she received at 13 years old.

We weren’t done yet. We got into my car and drove over to juvenile court. Our goal there was to get the Clerk of the Court to write a letter stating that there was a negative record of court proceedings. When we arrived, Mariah explained what she needed. The young woman at the front desk was very pleasant and asked to see a government-issued ID. We sat and waited for about 20 minutes while the letter was being written. We were given juvenile expungement information packets and encouraged to have the record erased. I will have more more say about that process tomorrow. I will be accompanying Mariah back to court to talk with a pro-bono lawyer who will help her to file a petition to have her record expunged. Below is a copy of the letter that the Clerk of the Court provided:

All in all we spent 4.5 hours today getting the necessary paperwork to send a letter to the Department of Professional Regulation requesting that they proceed to reviewing Mariah’s application for licensure. Tomorrow, we will spend more hours beginning the costly and tedious process of expunging her juvenile “criminal” record. Stay tuned…

I woke up this morning with a plan for how my day would go. Then as is often the case, my plans had to change. Let me tell you a story.

Early this morning, I got a call from a young woman who I have known since she was a freshman in high school. She was a member of a youth-led social change project that I co-founded with a group of young women of color. She has been an anti-violence activist and is a budding anti-prison organizer. The young woman who I will call Mariah just turned 21 in June. In that same month, she graduated as a registered nurse from a local community college. We were all so excited and are so proud of her accomplishment. This summer, Mariah successfully passed her nursing boards. She then officially applied for her nursing license. She needs a license in order to practice as a nurse in Illinois. This morning, she received this letter from the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation:

The key sections of the letter read:
AT THIS TIME YOU ARE PROHIBITED FROM PRACTICING.

Why you might ask?

Your FBI fingerprint results indicate that you were arrested 5/10/2004 in Chicago, IL and charged with BATTERY/BODILY HARM.

Mariah’s so-called arrest occurred when she was in the 8th grade. She and a friend got into a physical fight at school. The police were called and both young women were taken to the local precinct. They stayed there for less than an hour until their parents could pick them up. They were promptly released. Mariah had forgotten about this incident until she received the letter from the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation today. The case never went to juvenile court and Mariah didn’t even know that she had been actually arrested. Mariah’s situation is by no means unique. Thousands of young people in Chicago face a similar circumstance.

As a way to document the difficult, costly, and tedious process of expunging Mariah’s juvenile criminal record, I will be posting regular updates on this blog. Tomorrow, her journey to expunge her juvenile criminal record begins with a trip to 3510 S. Michigan Avenue to get a copy of her juvenile RAP sheet. I will be accompanying her and will report back on how it went.

When I write about the school to prison pipeline and other such issues, I worry that people think that it is just an abstraction. It isn’t. Real young people are being caught up in this process. Real young people’s lives are being impacted by juvenile criminal records that they don’t even know they have. This is not an abstraction.

Georgia Death Row prisoner Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday, September 21 despite overwhelming doubts about his guilt.

In light of this imminent execution date, Educators for Troy—a Chicago-based ad hoc group of educators, activists and artists—is calling on all educators to interrupt their regular teaching schedules this week to dedicate a class period to “Teach Troy.”

Please use this emergency “Teach Troy” curriculum to educate your students about the case of Troy Davis. We are providing links to readings and videos about Troy’s case and suggestions for student projects and assignments. We have also included a page that allows your students to take some simple independent actions to help save Troy’s life.

Important dates:
Friday, September 16 – International Day of Solidarity for Troy Davis

Monday, September 19 – Troy Davis’ clemency hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole

Wednesday, September 21 – Troy Davis’ execution date

You can find the emergency curriculum “Teach Troy” HERE. Please interrupt your regular teaching schedule to take one class period to “Teach Troy” this week.

So you treat me like a modern slave, Mr. Jailer…
I’m in chains
You are in chains too!
I wear uniforms
You wear uniforms too!
I’m a prisoner
You’re a prisoner too, Mr. Jailer

Asa basically illustrates the truth that our liberation is bound together. It’s something to remember on this anniversary of September 11th and on the anniversary of the Attica rebellion.

Today is officially the 40th Anniversary of the start of the Attica Prison Uprising. You can read some background about the Uprising in a post that I co-wrote at Daily Kos a couple of weeks ago.

Last night, we hosted a terrific event that included reflections about Attica by Michael Deutsch who was one of the lawyers for the Attica Brothers as well as readings from poetry and prose by Attica prisoners and witnesses. For this event, we created a zine that represents an abbreviated version of the Attica 101 Primer that we released last month.

You can download the zine HERE. I hope that you enjoy it.

Special thanks to my partners in creating the zine including Lewis Wallace, Micah Bazant and Katy Groves.

By Chris Stain

Max (not his real name) is sitting with his head down and I think that he is clasping his hands on his thighs. I can’t tell. I am beside his mother and we are both sitting silently and stoically. We are waiting for the judge to give her disposition on the case.

This is Max’s second time in juvenile court this year. He has violated the terms of his probation. I am there this morning to offer some support to his mother. She is worn out. She is tired of Max and wants him out of her house. I think that she is hoping that the judge will sentence him to the Department of Juvenile Justice (our youth prison system). I think that she would be relieved. I am seething inside and I have no right. He isn’t my son. I have not had to “put up with his mess” (her words) for 16 years. She is really tired and I have sympathy. I met Max just this February and I am already feeling a sense of weariness.

Max needs money. His mother is working as a night nurse. She is single and has four children to raise. She is doing her best but it is really hard. Max needs money. He tells me that he can’t find a legit job. He needs money. I have no good answers for a 16 year old black boy who is barely in school about where to find a job in this climate. I am exhausted today. Depleted.

Juvenile court feels to me like the saddest place on earth. I am not in touch with my emotions today. All I feel is numb. What are we going to do for the Maxes of the world? They need concrete help and soon. They can’t afford to wait for a year, a month, a week. At 16, a week is a lifetime. The President is giving a “jobs” speech tonight. It turns out that I am going to have to miss it since I am hosting an Attica-related event. I don’t have to hear it though to know that it will offer no solace for Max. There will be no proposals to spend even $100 million dollars on young people like Max.

Is it time to get discouraged yet? I feel I have no choice but to push forward. There was another call today from a young woman asking for some help. She wants to come by to talk with me tomorrow. She says that she was referred by another young woman who I helped last year. So I have to push through my despair again. I have to buck up because there is more work to be done. Honestly though, I want to go to bed, pull the covers over my head, and just weep. There is no time for that…

P.S. Max was given another chance. The judge heard our pleas to allow him to return to a community-based intervention. I hold out hope for Max.

i am lonely.
all the people i know
i know too well – Carolyn Rogers

Yesterday I received an extraordinary e-mail from a woman whose partner is incarcerated. I’ll call her Tina. I haven’t asked for permission to quote the e-mail so I won’t do so here. I want to talk instead about Tina’s general argument. She was responding to my latest post about loss being a critical component of the incarceration experience. She suggested that I was correct but that I should couple loss with loneliness. As I read her words, I thought “yes, that’s right LONELINESS.” Loss and Loneliness – for those on the inside but also for those on the outside too.

Michael Smith, a guard at Attica prison who was held as a hostage in 1971 during the rebellion, offered these words recently:

“I think that prison not only locks inmates away from society but also locks society away from inmates. People don’t pay attention to what’s going on in prisons. We think it’s not an issue if it’s locked away. They don’t think about how much its costing society in other terms.”

The costs of incarceration are in fact high. But in some ways, they are immeasurable, incalculable… How does one quantify grief, anger, and loneliness? We cannot.

I want to offer some words of support to Tina. I want to tell her that I sympathize with her plight. But I am finding that the words won’t come. The ones I have seem inadequate, too small somehow to convey the depth of my feelings. When I have a difficult time finding the words that I need, I often turn to poetry.

I have not had a partner who has been incarcerated. I have however been lonely, I have felt alone. I have felt misunderstood. I have felt not understood. Those aren’t the same things… I opened this post with lines from Carolyn Rodgers’ “Poem for Some Black Women.” Rogers is one of my very favorite poets and “Poem for Some Black Women” illustrates loneliness in a way that I cannot:

“when we laugh,
we are so happy to laugh
we cry when we laugh
we are lonely.
we are busy people
always doing things
fearing getting trapped in rooms
loud with empty…
yet
knowing the music of silence/hating it/hoarding it/loving it/treasuring it
it often birthing our creativity
we are lonely”

Tina, you see, other people understand being lonely too. I have been there. Shrinking myself to try to conform to others’ expectations of me, for me. So many of us have felt alone in a crowd too. Here again Rogers is instructive:

“we grow tired of tears we grow tired of fear
we grow tired but must al-ways be soft and not too serious…”

You are told to be “strong” for your daughters. How annoying that must be. Considering you ARE being “strong.” You are working. Working hard to keep it together. You feel invisible in your accomplishment.

Michelle Clinton wrote a poem called “For Strong Women” which has a lot of resonance for me and I hope for you too. Here’s a section of the poem:

“I have needed some one to be kind to me,
like a sad, sad, misty & gray dream,
my hand outreached, waiting,
yet not believing I deserve anything…
For those simple times,
when I cannot take care of myself…
What?
What do we do?
What do you do?
WHAT CAN BE DONE
to ease the fear
& growing self-pity
(LIGHT A CANDLE/READ A BOOK/TAKE A LONG HOT BATH MASTURBATE OR SMOKE A DOOBEE/TAKE A LONG HOT BATH)

Wait.
And tomorrow when there are people to comfort you,
or you find those damned keys,
Return to the same well versed competent woman you are.
Hold your head up.
Breathe deeply.
Return to your life unmarred, recovered and complete.”

Tina, thank you for your e-mail, for your outstretched hand. I reach back to you and offer mine and Carolyn Rogers’ too.

“we know too much
we learn to understand everything
to make too much sense out
of the world,
of pain
of lonely…”

I hope that you learn to make less sense of the world, of pain, and of lonely. I hope that you heal. Peace to you.

About three weeks ago, I was privileged to keep a circle for the family of a young man who is serving a recently-imposed sentence of 7 years in prison. I am friendly with the young man’s sister and she was the one who asked me to organize a healing circle for the family. I was really blessed that a friend of mine who is a wonderful circle keeper partnered with me. The key to keeping a good circle is preparation and it took us almost a month to set this one up. We had to talk to everyone who was going to participate before we could actually keep the circle.

After speaking to everyone involved, it became clear to us that the main emotions that folks wanted to process were grief and anger. I want to talk a bit about both.

I haven’t written about this particular circle because I needed time to process it for myself. Also, I had to get permission to write about this circle (even though none of its participants would be named). I received permission from everyone involved last week.

There were so many tears shed.

The emotions almost could not be contained in the circle. Family members and friends of the young man shared the anger that they felt towards him. They were furious that he would do something “to get himself locked up.” Sobbing, his best friend raged: “He knew that they were out to get us. They want to put all black men in the pen. Why help them do it?” So there was anger.

However this anger was rooted in a deep sense of hurt and of grieving. The incarcerated young man is locked up far from home. It won’t be easy for his family members to visit. There was so much sadness about this. Sadness about the disconnection that would be experienced. Fear that this lack of connection would deeply alter the family. How would he be able to reintegrate once he is released? Would he come back home a “hardened criminal?” his mother asked. His younger sister worried that prison would “take his heart.”

Part of what we discussed towards the end of the circle was how family members might constructively and simply support each other and the incarcerated young man through this ordeal. A decision was made that two people from the circle would arrange to visit him once a month at minimum. We made a plan for this together.

We also strategized about how his younger siblings could talk about their brother’s incarceration. His younger siblings are 9, 12. and 15 years old. Everyone offered their ideas for how they might address their brother’s situation with their peers and others. We practiced talking about what had happened and encouraged them to use their own voices to describe this circumstance.

Finally, I want to say a few words about shame and incarceration. As we debriefed the circle, my co-keeper mentioned that she felt that we had dropped the ball in not introducing the idea of “shame” in the healing circle. I have thought a lot about this over the past few weeks and I am very ambivalent about this criticism. Michelle Alexander often discusses the concept of “shame” in her presentations about mass incarceration as the new Jim Crow. I agree that incarceration is indeed often enmeshed with shame. However, in the case of the family that I was working with, I don’t know that our particular healing circle could have really properly addressed shame. Frankly, I don’t think that the family was feeling particularly ashamed. I think that they just needed space to vocalize their fears, hurt, anger, and grief. And perhaps even more importantly, I think that they needed a place to start making concrete plans to help lessen those fears, that anger, and hurt. So I am still mulling over my friend’s constructive criticism.

I am writing about this experience here on the blog because I think that these are stories about incarceration that are obscured in debates about policy, systemic change, and social justice. These “small” stories of individual people who are struggling daily to repair their families which have been ravaged by the “plague of mass incarceration” are central to the experience oof incarceration in our communities. Yet we think of them as “collateral damage” if we think of them at all. Here in Chicago, these people are our neighbors, co-workers, family members. They are us… It seems important to point out within a landscape that can appear bleak and hopeless that we can all still be “keepers” for each other.