I briefly worked at Palmetto Youth Academy (PYA) in Palmetto, FL as a youth care worker. PYA is a maximum security juvenile detention facility for violent offenders. Not just drug-related offenses, for example, but drug-related (or unrelated) involving a firearm. The atmosphere was extremely negative, political, paranoid and hostile – and I’m talking about the staff and administration not the “violent juvenile offenders.” This entry and the next entry are two notes I wrote on my Facebook page about my experience at PYA.
After driving through the front gate of the complex, past two lines of razor wire and over a small bridge, Palmetto Youth Academy is inside yet another two razor wire fences.
April 6, 2009
Boys In Chains
Every day, my very, very, very claustrophobic wife asks how I can work behind so many locked doors, several fences topped with razor wire, etc. and I explain that sort of thing has never bothered me. If someone said I was going to be in solitary confinement for 13 months (and I’d done something to deserve it) I’d be fine with it. It’s like being trapped on a desert island except you get three meals a day and unlimited, undisturbed reading time. Yesterday, however, I had to transport a young man to a Department of Juvenile Justice place where he would be on his way home.
My nightmares involve being locked in places unable to get out – which is different. Small, confined places don’t bother me. If I were whisked away to Extraordinary Rendition somewhere and nobody knew where I was and I was being questioned for God Knows What … that would freak me out. Not the torture … the unknown factors … Remember Robert DeNiro in Awakenings? All he wanted to do was take a walk? THAT gave me nightmares. Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest? Threatened with a lobotomy if he didn’t behave? That scares me.
That’s why I didn’t like getting high 20-25 years ago. I can sober up from alcohol INSTANTANEOUSLY … my buzzes are very fragile … my wife nagging me, me needing to do something important … but getting high? You can’t stop that until the weed decides you’re done. I don’t like that. Drugs are B-A-D.
Anyway, I digress. I had to lock a young man up in leg chains, wrist chains, and handcuffs yesterday for the journey to a different facility. I could feel myself … my eyes watering up … not cool. Then we get to the Department of Juvenile Justice place which is not a warm & fuzzy rehab, caring/loving, bedtime snacks and ice cream parties with Xbox night type of place (like PYA). I may have mentioned the other night a young man was packed to be released the NEXT DAY and the judge changed his mind? That messed with me. And while we were at the DJJ there was a paperwork mixup that almost sent the kid back to our facility instead of home. The look in his eyes … he looked like I felt. It all worked out. He may be home this very moment. At worst, he’s in a group home on his way there.
I shared all this with the fellow staff member I drove with. He said it was great I cared and had sympathy, blah blah blah but not to forget why these kids are there. He reminded me why they’re in a maximum security facility. “These are not good kids that got caught with a bag of weed,” he said. Not even selling a bag of weed. “These kids committed violent crimes with guns.” Armed robberies, taking a shotgun into a shopping mall in a moment of rage, hardcore gang/drug warfare etc.
I know all that. I know. But when they knock on their cell door at night to call and ask, “Mr. Sprout, can I have a drink of water?” that’s not what I see. When they ask on a Saturday afternoon, “It’s so boring in here, Mr. Sprout can you ask [the shift supervisor] if we can go out and play?” it doesn’t seem that way. Can I have a glass of water? Can we go out and play? These are the same kids that will sometimes say, “Bitch, if I ever see you on the outside…” and hold their hand like they’re pointing a gun at my head … or, if I’m intervening in an argument, “Get your f***ing hands off me before I flip your ass.” But they’re still just boys … younger than my oldest daughter …
Surreal. That’s how I would describe my job. It’s always like a dream. Sometimes nice, like during a Bible study when they’re more excited than you EVER see people actually in church because it’s all new to these kids … sometimes it’s like a nightmare like when you catch them in an office that was accidentally left open and two of them are on the phone. “I don’t think it’s your time for a phone call” gets answered with “How ’bout we jump you right here?” and you’re all alone. But, I must say, I love it. And I’ll trade it for living in a cubicle any day for the rest of my life.
This isn't the basketball court for PYA - it's the men's jail next to it - but the view is pretty much the same: guys playing basketball behind razor wire.
