jnv512
08-20-2002, 09:43 AM
Growing Up in Jail
Law requires juveniles to face adult penalties and prisons
By Tina Susman
Staff Correspondent
August 20, 2002
Alto, Ga. -- Shakedowns and body searches were nothing new to the inmates at Lee Arrendale State Prison, home to hundreds of murderers, rapists, molesters and robbers. They were used to being patted down and to having their cells swept for weapons, liquor, needles and other smuggled goods. They'd all experienced the indignity of having prison guards scrutinize their naked bodies for possible contraband hidden in their mouths or between their legs.
Even by their hard-bitten standards, though, the search that took place on a hot, sticky summer afternoon one year ago was particularly degrading.
At about 3 p.m., dozens were herded from their cells at Arrendale, a sprawling, grim-looking complex of concrete slabs, razor wire and watch towers, and led to an outdoor recreation yard. They were split into two groups: minors on one side, adults on the other.
As other inmates ogled them from their cell windows, some masturbating and others hollering obscene comments, and as cars passed along a road near the yard, visible to the outside world through chain-link fencing, the prisoners were ordered to strip under the blazing sun, face the fence, and grab on to it.
Then, "One by one, we were told to open our mouths, lift our scrota, and spread our butt cheeks and cough, during which time cars were driving by with people yelling, other inmates in another building yelling, and female officers in the tower observing," an inmate wrote in a letter to the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. It was one of several received from inmates after the public strip search, which a Department of Corrections spokesman confirms took place last Aug. 2.
Most of the letters said 15 to 20 minors sentenced as adults and at least 20 adults were stripped. Some put the total closer to 50. Most of the prisoners were black and most of the guards overseeing the event were white, a reflection of the prison's racial makeup. A Corrections Department spokesman, Mike Light, said "a few" juveniles were among those marched into the sun and subjected to the search. "It wasn't a good decision," he said, adding that the captain in charge was suspended without pay for one month. Few dispute the details described in the hand-written letters -- some in scrawling manuscript, some in careful print -- that were mailed to human rights groups afterward.
"These other inmates were actually looking out their windows yelling, jeering and masturbating as they watched. Cars were going by. There were women officers on duty," said Charlene Morriseau, a lawyer who interviewed several prisoners after the incident as part of an investigation into conditions at the facility, where all boys convicted as adults in Georgia are housed. "I think the most pernicious part of this is that you had juveniles being stripped naked in front of adult inmates. It was particularly traumatizing to them, because they fear sexual assault the most."
For good reason. According to studies of juveniles in adult prisons, they are several times more likely to be raped or otherwise assaulted. That's why Georgia, like other states, has laws requiring that juveniles be separated from adult inmates. But according to Morriseau and others familiar with prison culture, including inmates, the rules are enforced haphazardly at best. Arrendale Prison, they say, is a prime example.
Better known as Alto for the northeastern Georgia town of 870 in which it is located, the prison houses about 1,200 young men and boys, among them some of Georgia's most dangerous criminals. Of those, 506 are between 13 and 23, the oldest of inmates who could have been convicted while teens. Of those, 384 are black. Most were convicted of crimes covered by Georgia's Senate Bill 440, which passed in May 1994 after a nationwide upsurge in juvenile violent crime and took effect the following year. SB440 requires that 13- to 16-year-olds accused of certain crimes -- dubbed the "seven deadly sins" -- be charged as adults. If convicted, they must spend at least 10 years behind bars. The average SB440 sentence is 16 years, and the law does not allow early release on parole, an option available to some adults. That means adults convicted of violent crimes may serve less time than teens charged under SB440 with the same offenses.
Since it took effect, more than 75 percent of the more than 3,800 teenagers charged under SB440 have been black, although they comprise 34 percent of the state's teenage population. According to a random sample of black juveniles' cases studied by the Georgia Indigent Defense Council, a state agency that tracks SB440 cases, 19 percent were waived back to juvenile court, an option open to prosecutors. A random sample of white juveniles' cases showed 38 percent were sent back to juvenile court.
The statistics are not unique to Georgia. By the end of the past decade, 29 states had laws such as SB440 requiring juveniles be charged as adults for selected crimes ranging from arson to murder. Even without such laws, in many states defendants younger than 18 are considered adults for the purpose of prosecution and trial. Thirteen states, including Georgia, begin adult prosecution for all crimes at 17. Three states, including New York, start adult prosecution at 16. While there are variations in state laws governing juvenile defendants, the states share one characteristic: black teenagers have a far greater risk of ending up jailed as adults than white teenagers.
Though the net may be wider in Georgia because of the seven crimes requiring adult treatment of juvenile offenders -- murder, voluntary manslaughter, rape, armed robbery, aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation and aggravated sexual battery -- the situation is not unique. Across the country, where all states now allow juveniles to be tried as adults under certain circumstances, an overwhelming majority of those convicted as adults are black and are saddled with consequences that will follow them for life: felony records; no voting rights; ineligibility for certain federal assistance programs; interrupted schooling; the trauma of being put through a procedure designed for grown-ups, just to name a few.
A 1999 report based on U.S. Department of Justice statistics found that blacks younger than 18 accounted for 26 percent of the minors arrested nationwide from 1996 to 1998. They represented 46 percent of the cases, however, sent to adult court and 58 percent of the minors in adult prisons.
In an April 2000 report, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, part of the Department of Justice, noted that minorities made up a "disproportionate" share of juveniles treated as adults, and it called the trend toward jailing minors in adult prisons "one of the most significant and potentially worrisome consequences" of changes in juvenile justice.
Supporters of laws such as SB440, notably prosecutors and Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), who was governor when the law passed, deny blacks are treated with more severity, as critics allege. Simply put, they say, black teenagers commit more of the serious crimes, such as armed robbery, rape and murder, that warrant adult treatment, though FBI arrest statistics do not show that blacks younger than 18 are arrested at a substantially higher rate than whites for violent crimes. Detractors argue that the racial disparities in resulting convictions show that SB440 and other comparable measures across the country are being enforced with a heavy dose of bias, and that prison abuse is yet another consequence being suffered by the mainly black youths caught up by such laws.
Both sides agree that come 2005, when the first batch of SB440 convicts -- about 157 armed robbers, rapists, child molesters and others -- walks free, they will face huge odds trying to lead law-abiding lives after coming of age behind bars.
"I can't help but feel these are forgotten children, that they've been thrown away," Morriseau said. "To me, that's shocking about what it says of our society, of our courts and of our prison system. I'm not going to make it seem as if there's no issue of guilt, but I think the whole reason behind distinguishing between juveniles and adults in criminal cases is the recognition that there's a difference, that there are issues of maturity to be considered, and that some things can be corrected. I think these kids deserve that chance."
Parents of SB440 offenders say the only thing worse than having a kid in prison is having a kid in Alto, a collection of low-rise, sharp-edged, salmon-colored buildings linked by concrete walkways and lawns, and ringed by layers of steel fences topped with concertina wire. Tucked incongruously into a placid-looking neighborhood of modest homes, cow pastures and rolling, grassy hills, its name conjures up feelings of dread.
In interviews and letters, Alto inmates describe being viewed as "fresh meat" by older prisoners who "lust off our bodies." "If someone wasn't stealing your stuff, they were trying to rape you," said Glenn Sims, 20, who spent about two years in Alto after being convicted at 16 of armed robbery.
Most of the adult inmates at Alto are in their 20s, an age group that has brought a heavy gang presence and volatile atmosphere to the prison.
"If you're not a fighter, you're not gonna make it in here. If you don't have money to pay someone to protect you, or if you're not a sissy or a homosexual, you're not gonna make it in here," said one 17-year-old, who spent three years in Alto after being convicted of rape under SB440. "This is not rehabilitation. You learn more bad stuff than you learn good stuff in here. You learn how to steal. You learn how to be more aggressive." The inmate, who feared repercussions if his name was used, spent nine months in protective custody, in a cell by himself away from other prisoners, after being attacked. "I've fought since I've been here," he said.
According to the Department of Corrections, since the first SB440 defendants began arriving at Alto in 1995, there have been at least 41 sexual assault cases at the prison. The reality, according to lawyers and inmates' parents, is that most assaults are never reported out of embarrassment and fear of repercussions. In some cases, inmates who have been assaulted might be blocked by officials from filing reports, alleges Elizabeth Dede of the Prison and Jail Project, a watchdog group based in Americus, Ga. Since November, Dede said the project had received about 30 letters from Alto inmates claiming, among other things, that prison officials sometimes refused to hand over the grievance forms required to file official complaints about rapes or other assaults.
"There's a culture where the staff really hates the inmates," said William J. Richwine, a retired schoolteacher who spent nearly 20 years teaching prison inmates, four of those years at Alto. He left in 1997 when the prison commissioner at the time, Wayne Garner, fired all 235 full-time academic and vocational teachers in the state system to save money. "It's not that we're supposed to love the inmates, but at Alto, I felt it was kind of a vicious thing. At the other prisons we treated one another with a degree of compassion and dignity," Richwine said of guard-inmate relations. "That did not exist at Alto."
Morriseau agreed. "This is part of the culture of the institution. Part of the way they regulate the kids is to incite their fears," she said. "They say to them, 'I'm gonna make sure you're somebody's bitch.' They're inciting these fears and doing these activities that create real risk of assault." The August strip search, she said, was an example.
"It's bad enough when you are locked up ... with violent inmates, but when you have to worry about what the administrative staff does next, it puts a lot of worry and stress on you," said one inmate who was strip-searched.
Richwine, who is white, blames the situation in large part on racism. Black inmates outnumber whites at Alto 2-to-1, while the county in which the prison is located is more than 80 percent white, resulting in an overwhelming majority of white prison staff. "You have this kind of undertone, these racial fears and animosity," Richwine said. Juvenile and adult prisoners were put in classrooms together and co-mingled during smoking and bathroom breaks, and they also would cross paths sometimes during meals, Richwine said. Inmates, including Sims, said adults often would threaten juvenile prisoners with rape when they were in the same room.
Worse, Morriseau said, because of the prison's chronic staffing problem, some adult inmates are used to patrol catwalks lined with cells housing juveniles placed in isolation either for disciplinary or protective reasons.
"They can pretty much walk up and down and do whatever they want," she said, listing things inmates had alleged to her: orderlies reaching through their cell bars to grab them; throwing things on them through the cell bars; spitting on or tossing mop water onto their food before handing it over.
Light, the corrections department spokesman, acknowledged that problems exist at Alto, but he denied things are as bad as critics allege. "People will embellish," he said, contending that given the conditions under which the staff works, they have done an admirable job maintaining calm among hundreds of dangerous men. "It's a difficult environment to work in, and a difficult clientele to deal with. Sometimes our officers don't make the best judgment calls, but they're working in a very trying environment."
Hanging onto staff is one of the biggest problems at Alto, where starting pay for guards is $25,000 a year. "We lose people all the time to other law enforcement agencies," which pay several thousand dollars more per year, Light said. Light also cited the growing number of inmates entering the system with mental health problems, and the burgeoning inmate population in general, which makes it impossible to provide one-on-one attention especially crucial to juveniles.
Alto has come under scrutiny in the past. In 1996, Human Rights Watch, a Manhattan-based group that studies allegations of rights violations worldwide, described an "overall neglect of the children convicted under SB440." The group cited the mixing of them with adults during classes, and a lack of educational and other rehabilitative programs. "Very few programs aimed at the developmental issues facing 13- to 17-year-olds, such as problem-solving and anger management, have been instituted" at Alto, the report said, charging that the Department of Corrections had decided that since the juveniles would eventually join the adult prison population, it made no fiscal sense to create separate programs for children.
"It seems unlikely, however, that teenagers who enter an institution at the age of 15 and leave as adults at the age of 25 will successfully participate in society, after being locked up and ignored," Human Rights Watch said.
The report prompted the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to investigate conditions at Georgia's juvenile facilities in 1997, but it did not delve into the situation at Alto because of the relatively small number of juveniles housed there at the time. Earlier this year, the Prison and Jail Project asked the criminal section of the department's Civil Rights Division to investigate Alto after receiving the letters of complaint from inmates.
In addition to alleging they were denied grievance forms to file complaints, inmates told of being raped, threatened with rape and of having their lives threatened. "I'm afraid for my life," wrote one. "Gangs are running this prison. Please help me get a transfer away from here.".
"I am locked down in a cell twenty-four hours a day because I don't want to get raped or my life took ... I don't understand. PLEASE help me if you can," wrote another.
"The big problem people complain about is that the prison officials aren't in charge of the prison -- that it's being run by gangs," Dede said.
The Department of Justice's criminal section said the allegations either lacked sufficient information or were not within its jurisdiction, so it could not investigate.
Juveniles convicted under SB440 can't avoid Alto, the sole prison in Georgia housing male minors convicted as adults. Once they become adults, they can ask the Department of Corrections to move them to another prison. Until that time, they have no option but to remain and, as Sims' mother, Kim Williams, says, "fight to stay alive."
"It's something he'll never forget. He'll carry it with him the rest of his life," Williams says of her son, who was attacked at Alto shortly after being convicted of armed robbery at age 16 and sentenced to 10 years. She says he was raped.
Sims was eventually transferred to Hancock State Prison in Sparta, but Williams said this only occurred after constant letter-writing to officials and phone calls demanding better security for her son.
Another mother, who requested anonymity to protect her son's identity, said he was attacked twice in Alto after arriving there in 1998. The attacks, which were not reported as rapes, were nevertheless serious enough to spur the tall, slender, smooth-faced teenager to request protective custody, meaning he was placed in an isolated cell along the catwalk described by Morriseau as being patrolled by menacing orderlies.
Prisoners who enter protective custody spend 23 hours a day by themselves in a cell and give up most privileges, such as classes, group recreation and daily phone calls. That deters many from reporting assaults or threats. "Who wants to stay in a cell all day?" said Sims when asked why he did not request protective custody at Alto.
Victims are usually afraid to name their attackers for fear of retribution, and many are ashamed to admit they have been raped. The result, investigators say, is that few perpetrators are caught and the number of reported rapes is far lower than the number that occurs.
"Based on interviews, we've had only a handful who've reported being assaulted themselves," said Erica Keys, an investigator with the Southern Center for Human Rights. "What you find is that juveniles will tell you who else they know who has been assaulted, but when you talk to those other people, they'll deny it and tell you about someone else." Sims, for example, whose mother says he was raped, insists he was able to fight off his gang of attackers, but he says he knows other prisoners who were raped.
The prevalence of fear, distrust, threats and violence has a snowball effect on the prison population. Victims often become abusers, and some juveniles turn predatory to forge frightening images of themselves in preparation for joining the adult population. "It's a way of building up a reputation so when you go into the adult population . . . you won't be seen as so vulnerable," Keys said.
Her interviews with Alto inmates include accounts of juveniles being held down and gang-raped, and of adults molesting juveniles or masturbating on them during classes, where teachers such as Richwine were expected to keep adults and children separated. Light said that given staffing limitations, it would be impossible to have guards posted inside each classroom.
According to Richwine, conditions at Alto were always rough and declined in the mid-1990s when politicians' efforts to cut costs and to appear tough on crime chipped away at prison programs aimed at rehabilitation. In 1994, the same year SB440 became law in Georgia, Congress ended the Pell grant program that enabled felons to obtain financial aid to take college courses in prison. Three years later, the state's prison teachers were fired, along with scores of recreational directors and counselors.
Since the Pell program ended, Georgia inmates have had no access to education beyond basic GED classes, something Light said was a "terrible blow" particularly to short-timer inmates hoping to emerge with some college credits. In 1996, a third of the state's 46,499 inmates had high school educations, Light said.
Without better educational opportunities, and with their introduction to prison life being the rough atmosphere of Alto, parents argue that SB440 offenders are learning little to prepare them for re-entry to society. "They totally have failed him in terms of education," Williams says of Sims. "It's like this kid made a mistake, they looked him up and down, and they threw away the key. I believe there are other forms of treatment than putting them in jail, because they come out worse. They're
coming out as men. There HAS to be a better way."
Light says he, too, worries about the futures of the first SB440 convicts, whom he calls the "class of 2005" for the year they will be freed. All will be in their mid-20s. According to Light, 39 percent of inmates released from Georgia prisons are back behind bars within three years of their release. SB440 cases are seen as particularly at risk because many of them lack strong family units outside of prison. Most had less than a ninth-grade education when jailed, read at about the seventh-grade
level and came from single-family households led by mothers.
"Knowing they're going to walk out of here is not a pretty thought," Light said. "I've got 13-year-olds who are going to walk out of here one day with no supervision, and with nothing to show but $25 and a bus ticket. The fact that they've matured in prison doesn't bode well for the future."
The return-to-prison rate for inmates who pass through state-run transitional centers, which provide vocational skills to prisoners a few months before release, is 25 percent. But there are only four in the state capable of handling a few hundred people per year. Even with four more planned, it isn't nearly enough to handle the number of men passing through Georgia's prisons.
Still, Light says things are far better than the image of chain gangs and prosecutorial ineptitude portrayed in Hollywood films such as "Cool Hand Luke" or "My Cousin Vinny," which was filmed in the town of Alto. It's an image that was no doubt perpetuated throughout the years by Garner, the former prison chief, who fired the teachers and gained notoriety among human rights activists for his tough-on-criminals attitude. His methods included cutting inmate privileges, deriding many of the
prisoners under his watch as not even "fit to kill," and introducing surprise shakedowns by teams of aggressive, black-clad SWAT teams. One resulted in a 1996 lawsuit by inmates alleging they were kicked and beaten bloody. The state agreed to pay the 14 inmates and their lawyers about $285,000 total to settle the case.
Ironically, Garner, who retired in 1999 after four years on the job, produced a report for the state parole board in March warning that the prison system was facing a crisis because of overcrowding. It advised alternatives to prison and more attention to preparing inmates for life and jobs on the outside.
In prison interviews, SB440 inmates talked of one day going to college, running their own businesses and becoming computer experts. But they also reminisced about holidays at Disney World and birthday dinners at Applebee's, and lamented missing their proms and not being able to have boom boxes in their cells. When asked what he misses most, one 18-year-old who was jailed at 14 said: "Just being able to give my mom a hug every day."
For critics of laws such as SB440, such answers prove that juvenile defendants, whether guilty or not, are still kids, incapable of comprehending the gravity of their situation.
How, parents wonder, will their sons respond when they learn that many employers won't hire convicted felons, and when they discover that their friends from junior high school and high school have moved on with their lives and forgotten them? How will they handle the intricacies of navigating through college applications, and how will they handle the inevitable rejection by people unwilling to take a chance on becoming friends with an ex-con?
"This is the prime of their lives. They need to give them direction, rehabilitation," said Kameelah Shabazz-Diaab. Her son, Joshua, 21, is serving 15 years for a holdup when he was 15 that he still denies committing. "What choices are they giving him? What are they supposed to do when they get out? Who's going to hire them, even if they have an education? These kids are going to end up paying for the rest of their lives."
With SB440, parents complain that their sons spend most of their developmental years slumped in front of TV sets in prison cells or watching their own backs, rather than preparing for futures in the free world. But such concerns don't sway legislators, says Billie Ross, whose son, Trey, is serving 10 years for an armed robbery. He was 15 when he was arrested in 1998. Today, Ross is president of Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice, a group of parents lobbying to repeal SB440 or weaken it by
permitting parole. So far, they've had no success, something Ross blames on white legislators being unable to relate to the problems of the mainly black children going to jail.
"He may be a little thug with a gun in his pocket, but he still needs nurturing," Ross said. "He still needs to develop life skills. He still needs to be hugged every once in awhile, and you don't get that when you're locked away in a place where punishment is the mantra."
Wednesday: Race and Punishment
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.
Law requires juveniles to face adult penalties and prisons
By Tina Susman
Staff Correspondent
August 20, 2002
Alto, Ga. -- Shakedowns and body searches were nothing new to the inmates at Lee Arrendale State Prison, home to hundreds of murderers, rapists, molesters and robbers. They were used to being patted down and to having their cells swept for weapons, liquor, needles and other smuggled goods. They'd all experienced the indignity of having prison guards scrutinize their naked bodies for possible contraband hidden in their mouths or between their legs.
Even by their hard-bitten standards, though, the search that took place on a hot, sticky summer afternoon one year ago was particularly degrading.
At about 3 p.m., dozens were herded from their cells at Arrendale, a sprawling, grim-looking complex of concrete slabs, razor wire and watch towers, and led to an outdoor recreation yard. They were split into two groups: minors on one side, adults on the other.
As other inmates ogled them from their cell windows, some masturbating and others hollering obscene comments, and as cars passed along a road near the yard, visible to the outside world through chain-link fencing, the prisoners were ordered to strip under the blazing sun, face the fence, and grab on to it.
Then, "One by one, we were told to open our mouths, lift our scrota, and spread our butt cheeks and cough, during which time cars were driving by with people yelling, other inmates in another building yelling, and female officers in the tower observing," an inmate wrote in a letter to the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. It was one of several received from inmates after the public strip search, which a Department of Corrections spokesman confirms took place last Aug. 2.
Most of the letters said 15 to 20 minors sentenced as adults and at least 20 adults were stripped. Some put the total closer to 50. Most of the prisoners were black and most of the guards overseeing the event were white, a reflection of the prison's racial makeup. A Corrections Department spokesman, Mike Light, said "a few" juveniles were among those marched into the sun and subjected to the search. "It wasn't a good decision," he said, adding that the captain in charge was suspended without pay for one month. Few dispute the details described in the hand-written letters -- some in scrawling manuscript, some in careful print -- that were mailed to human rights groups afterward.
"These other inmates were actually looking out their windows yelling, jeering and masturbating as they watched. Cars were going by. There were women officers on duty," said Charlene Morriseau, a lawyer who interviewed several prisoners after the incident as part of an investigation into conditions at the facility, where all boys convicted as adults in Georgia are housed. "I think the most pernicious part of this is that you had juveniles being stripped naked in front of adult inmates. It was particularly traumatizing to them, because they fear sexual assault the most."
For good reason. According to studies of juveniles in adult prisons, they are several times more likely to be raped or otherwise assaulted. That's why Georgia, like other states, has laws requiring that juveniles be separated from adult inmates. But according to Morriseau and others familiar with prison culture, including inmates, the rules are enforced haphazardly at best. Arrendale Prison, they say, is a prime example.
Better known as Alto for the northeastern Georgia town of 870 in which it is located, the prison houses about 1,200 young men and boys, among them some of Georgia's most dangerous criminals. Of those, 506 are between 13 and 23, the oldest of inmates who could have been convicted while teens. Of those, 384 are black. Most were convicted of crimes covered by Georgia's Senate Bill 440, which passed in May 1994 after a nationwide upsurge in juvenile violent crime and took effect the following year. SB440 requires that 13- to 16-year-olds accused of certain crimes -- dubbed the "seven deadly sins" -- be charged as adults. If convicted, they must spend at least 10 years behind bars. The average SB440 sentence is 16 years, and the law does not allow early release on parole, an option available to some adults. That means adults convicted of violent crimes may serve less time than teens charged under SB440 with the same offenses.
Since it took effect, more than 75 percent of the more than 3,800 teenagers charged under SB440 have been black, although they comprise 34 percent of the state's teenage population. According to a random sample of black juveniles' cases studied by the Georgia Indigent Defense Council, a state agency that tracks SB440 cases, 19 percent were waived back to juvenile court, an option open to prosecutors. A random sample of white juveniles' cases showed 38 percent were sent back to juvenile court.
The statistics are not unique to Georgia. By the end of the past decade, 29 states had laws such as SB440 requiring juveniles be charged as adults for selected crimes ranging from arson to murder. Even without such laws, in many states defendants younger than 18 are considered adults for the purpose of prosecution and trial. Thirteen states, including Georgia, begin adult prosecution for all crimes at 17. Three states, including New York, start adult prosecution at 16. While there are variations in state laws governing juvenile defendants, the states share one characteristic: black teenagers have a far greater risk of ending up jailed as adults than white teenagers.
Though the net may be wider in Georgia because of the seven crimes requiring adult treatment of juvenile offenders -- murder, voluntary manslaughter, rape, armed robbery, aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation and aggravated sexual battery -- the situation is not unique. Across the country, where all states now allow juveniles to be tried as adults under certain circumstances, an overwhelming majority of those convicted as adults are black and are saddled with consequences that will follow them for life: felony records; no voting rights; ineligibility for certain federal assistance programs; interrupted schooling; the trauma of being put through a procedure designed for grown-ups, just to name a few.
A 1999 report based on U.S. Department of Justice statistics found that blacks younger than 18 accounted for 26 percent of the minors arrested nationwide from 1996 to 1998. They represented 46 percent of the cases, however, sent to adult court and 58 percent of the minors in adult prisons.
In an April 2000 report, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, part of the Department of Justice, noted that minorities made up a "disproportionate" share of juveniles treated as adults, and it called the trend toward jailing minors in adult prisons "one of the most significant and potentially worrisome consequences" of changes in juvenile justice.
Supporters of laws such as SB440, notably prosecutors and Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.), who was governor when the law passed, deny blacks are treated with more severity, as critics allege. Simply put, they say, black teenagers commit more of the serious crimes, such as armed robbery, rape and murder, that warrant adult treatment, though FBI arrest statistics do not show that blacks younger than 18 are arrested at a substantially higher rate than whites for violent crimes. Detractors argue that the racial disparities in resulting convictions show that SB440 and other comparable measures across the country are being enforced with a heavy dose of bias, and that prison abuse is yet another consequence being suffered by the mainly black youths caught up by such laws.
Both sides agree that come 2005, when the first batch of SB440 convicts -- about 157 armed robbers, rapists, child molesters and others -- walks free, they will face huge odds trying to lead law-abiding lives after coming of age behind bars.
"I can't help but feel these are forgotten children, that they've been thrown away," Morriseau said. "To me, that's shocking about what it says of our society, of our courts and of our prison system. I'm not going to make it seem as if there's no issue of guilt, but I think the whole reason behind distinguishing between juveniles and adults in criminal cases is the recognition that there's a difference, that there are issues of maturity to be considered, and that some things can be corrected. I think these kids deserve that chance."
Parents of SB440 offenders say the only thing worse than having a kid in prison is having a kid in Alto, a collection of low-rise, sharp-edged, salmon-colored buildings linked by concrete walkways and lawns, and ringed by layers of steel fences topped with concertina wire. Tucked incongruously into a placid-looking neighborhood of modest homes, cow pastures and rolling, grassy hills, its name conjures up feelings of dread.
In interviews and letters, Alto inmates describe being viewed as "fresh meat" by older prisoners who "lust off our bodies." "If someone wasn't stealing your stuff, they were trying to rape you," said Glenn Sims, 20, who spent about two years in Alto after being convicted at 16 of armed robbery.
Most of the adult inmates at Alto are in their 20s, an age group that has brought a heavy gang presence and volatile atmosphere to the prison.
"If you're not a fighter, you're not gonna make it in here. If you don't have money to pay someone to protect you, or if you're not a sissy or a homosexual, you're not gonna make it in here," said one 17-year-old, who spent three years in Alto after being convicted of rape under SB440. "This is not rehabilitation. You learn more bad stuff than you learn good stuff in here. You learn how to steal. You learn how to be more aggressive." The inmate, who feared repercussions if his name was used, spent nine months in protective custody, in a cell by himself away from other prisoners, after being attacked. "I've fought since I've been here," he said.
According to the Department of Corrections, since the first SB440 defendants began arriving at Alto in 1995, there have been at least 41 sexual assault cases at the prison. The reality, according to lawyers and inmates' parents, is that most assaults are never reported out of embarrassment and fear of repercussions. In some cases, inmates who have been assaulted might be blocked by officials from filing reports, alleges Elizabeth Dede of the Prison and Jail Project, a watchdog group based in Americus, Ga. Since November, Dede said the project had received about 30 letters from Alto inmates claiming, among other things, that prison officials sometimes refused to hand over the grievance forms required to file official complaints about rapes or other assaults.
"There's a culture where the staff really hates the inmates," said William J. Richwine, a retired schoolteacher who spent nearly 20 years teaching prison inmates, four of those years at Alto. He left in 1997 when the prison commissioner at the time, Wayne Garner, fired all 235 full-time academic and vocational teachers in the state system to save money. "It's not that we're supposed to love the inmates, but at Alto, I felt it was kind of a vicious thing. At the other prisons we treated one another with a degree of compassion and dignity," Richwine said of guard-inmate relations. "That did not exist at Alto."
Morriseau agreed. "This is part of the culture of the institution. Part of the way they regulate the kids is to incite their fears," she said. "They say to them, 'I'm gonna make sure you're somebody's bitch.' They're inciting these fears and doing these activities that create real risk of assault." The August strip search, she said, was an example.
"It's bad enough when you are locked up ... with violent inmates, but when you have to worry about what the administrative staff does next, it puts a lot of worry and stress on you," said one inmate who was strip-searched.
Richwine, who is white, blames the situation in large part on racism. Black inmates outnumber whites at Alto 2-to-1, while the county in which the prison is located is more than 80 percent white, resulting in an overwhelming majority of white prison staff. "You have this kind of undertone, these racial fears and animosity," Richwine said. Juvenile and adult prisoners were put in classrooms together and co-mingled during smoking and bathroom breaks, and they also would cross paths sometimes during meals, Richwine said. Inmates, including Sims, said adults often would threaten juvenile prisoners with rape when they were in the same room.
Worse, Morriseau said, because of the prison's chronic staffing problem, some adult inmates are used to patrol catwalks lined with cells housing juveniles placed in isolation either for disciplinary or protective reasons.
"They can pretty much walk up and down and do whatever they want," she said, listing things inmates had alleged to her: orderlies reaching through their cell bars to grab them; throwing things on them through the cell bars; spitting on or tossing mop water onto their food before handing it over.
Light, the corrections department spokesman, acknowledged that problems exist at Alto, but he denied things are as bad as critics allege. "People will embellish," he said, contending that given the conditions under which the staff works, they have done an admirable job maintaining calm among hundreds of dangerous men. "It's a difficult environment to work in, and a difficult clientele to deal with. Sometimes our officers don't make the best judgment calls, but they're working in a very trying environment."
Hanging onto staff is one of the biggest problems at Alto, where starting pay for guards is $25,000 a year. "We lose people all the time to other law enforcement agencies," which pay several thousand dollars more per year, Light said. Light also cited the growing number of inmates entering the system with mental health problems, and the burgeoning inmate population in general, which makes it impossible to provide one-on-one attention especially crucial to juveniles.
Alto has come under scrutiny in the past. In 1996, Human Rights Watch, a Manhattan-based group that studies allegations of rights violations worldwide, described an "overall neglect of the children convicted under SB440." The group cited the mixing of them with adults during classes, and a lack of educational and other rehabilitative programs. "Very few programs aimed at the developmental issues facing 13- to 17-year-olds, such as problem-solving and anger management, have been instituted" at Alto, the report said, charging that the Department of Corrections had decided that since the juveniles would eventually join the adult prison population, it made no fiscal sense to create separate programs for children.
"It seems unlikely, however, that teenagers who enter an institution at the age of 15 and leave as adults at the age of 25 will successfully participate in society, after being locked up and ignored," Human Rights Watch said.
The report prompted the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to investigate conditions at Georgia's juvenile facilities in 1997, but it did not delve into the situation at Alto because of the relatively small number of juveniles housed there at the time. Earlier this year, the Prison and Jail Project asked the criminal section of the department's Civil Rights Division to investigate Alto after receiving the letters of complaint from inmates.
In addition to alleging they were denied grievance forms to file complaints, inmates told of being raped, threatened with rape and of having their lives threatened. "I'm afraid for my life," wrote one. "Gangs are running this prison. Please help me get a transfer away from here.".
"I am locked down in a cell twenty-four hours a day because I don't want to get raped or my life took ... I don't understand. PLEASE help me if you can," wrote another.
"The big problem people complain about is that the prison officials aren't in charge of the prison -- that it's being run by gangs," Dede said.
The Department of Justice's criminal section said the allegations either lacked sufficient information or were not within its jurisdiction, so it could not investigate.
Juveniles convicted under SB440 can't avoid Alto, the sole prison in Georgia housing male minors convicted as adults. Once they become adults, they can ask the Department of Corrections to move them to another prison. Until that time, they have no option but to remain and, as Sims' mother, Kim Williams, says, "fight to stay alive."
"It's something he'll never forget. He'll carry it with him the rest of his life," Williams says of her son, who was attacked at Alto shortly after being convicted of armed robbery at age 16 and sentenced to 10 years. She says he was raped.
Sims was eventually transferred to Hancock State Prison in Sparta, but Williams said this only occurred after constant letter-writing to officials and phone calls demanding better security for her son.
Another mother, who requested anonymity to protect her son's identity, said he was attacked twice in Alto after arriving there in 1998. The attacks, which were not reported as rapes, were nevertheless serious enough to spur the tall, slender, smooth-faced teenager to request protective custody, meaning he was placed in an isolated cell along the catwalk described by Morriseau as being patrolled by menacing orderlies.
Prisoners who enter protective custody spend 23 hours a day by themselves in a cell and give up most privileges, such as classes, group recreation and daily phone calls. That deters many from reporting assaults or threats. "Who wants to stay in a cell all day?" said Sims when asked why he did not request protective custody at Alto.
Victims are usually afraid to name their attackers for fear of retribution, and many are ashamed to admit they have been raped. The result, investigators say, is that few perpetrators are caught and the number of reported rapes is far lower than the number that occurs.
"Based on interviews, we've had only a handful who've reported being assaulted themselves," said Erica Keys, an investigator with the Southern Center for Human Rights. "What you find is that juveniles will tell you who else they know who has been assaulted, but when you talk to those other people, they'll deny it and tell you about someone else." Sims, for example, whose mother says he was raped, insists he was able to fight off his gang of attackers, but he says he knows other prisoners who were raped.
The prevalence of fear, distrust, threats and violence has a snowball effect on the prison population. Victims often become abusers, and some juveniles turn predatory to forge frightening images of themselves in preparation for joining the adult population. "It's a way of building up a reputation so when you go into the adult population . . . you won't be seen as so vulnerable," Keys said.
Her interviews with Alto inmates include accounts of juveniles being held down and gang-raped, and of adults molesting juveniles or masturbating on them during classes, where teachers such as Richwine were expected to keep adults and children separated. Light said that given staffing limitations, it would be impossible to have guards posted inside each classroom.
According to Richwine, conditions at Alto were always rough and declined in the mid-1990s when politicians' efforts to cut costs and to appear tough on crime chipped away at prison programs aimed at rehabilitation. In 1994, the same year SB440 became law in Georgia, Congress ended the Pell grant program that enabled felons to obtain financial aid to take college courses in prison. Three years later, the state's prison teachers were fired, along with scores of recreational directors and counselors.
Since the Pell program ended, Georgia inmates have had no access to education beyond basic GED classes, something Light said was a "terrible blow" particularly to short-timer inmates hoping to emerge with some college credits. In 1996, a third of the state's 46,499 inmates had high school educations, Light said.
Without better educational opportunities, and with their introduction to prison life being the rough atmosphere of Alto, parents argue that SB440 offenders are learning little to prepare them for re-entry to society. "They totally have failed him in terms of education," Williams says of Sims. "It's like this kid made a mistake, they looked him up and down, and they threw away the key. I believe there are other forms of treatment than putting them in jail, because they come out worse. They're
coming out as men. There HAS to be a better way."
Light says he, too, worries about the futures of the first SB440 convicts, whom he calls the "class of 2005" for the year they will be freed. All will be in their mid-20s. According to Light, 39 percent of inmates released from Georgia prisons are back behind bars within three years of their release. SB440 cases are seen as particularly at risk because many of them lack strong family units outside of prison. Most had less than a ninth-grade education when jailed, read at about the seventh-grade
level and came from single-family households led by mothers.
"Knowing they're going to walk out of here is not a pretty thought," Light said. "I've got 13-year-olds who are going to walk out of here one day with no supervision, and with nothing to show but $25 and a bus ticket. The fact that they've matured in prison doesn't bode well for the future."
The return-to-prison rate for inmates who pass through state-run transitional centers, which provide vocational skills to prisoners a few months before release, is 25 percent. But there are only four in the state capable of handling a few hundred people per year. Even with four more planned, it isn't nearly enough to handle the number of men passing through Georgia's prisons.
Still, Light says things are far better than the image of chain gangs and prosecutorial ineptitude portrayed in Hollywood films such as "Cool Hand Luke" or "My Cousin Vinny," which was filmed in the town of Alto. It's an image that was no doubt perpetuated throughout the years by Garner, the former prison chief, who fired the teachers and gained notoriety among human rights activists for his tough-on-criminals attitude. His methods included cutting inmate privileges, deriding many of the
prisoners under his watch as not even "fit to kill," and introducing surprise shakedowns by teams of aggressive, black-clad SWAT teams. One resulted in a 1996 lawsuit by inmates alleging they were kicked and beaten bloody. The state agreed to pay the 14 inmates and their lawyers about $285,000 total to settle the case.
Ironically, Garner, who retired in 1999 after four years on the job, produced a report for the state parole board in March warning that the prison system was facing a crisis because of overcrowding. It advised alternatives to prison and more attention to preparing inmates for life and jobs on the outside.
In prison interviews, SB440 inmates talked of one day going to college, running their own businesses and becoming computer experts. But they also reminisced about holidays at Disney World and birthday dinners at Applebee's, and lamented missing their proms and not being able to have boom boxes in their cells. When asked what he misses most, one 18-year-old who was jailed at 14 said: "Just being able to give my mom a hug every day."
For critics of laws such as SB440, such answers prove that juvenile defendants, whether guilty or not, are still kids, incapable of comprehending the gravity of their situation.
How, parents wonder, will their sons respond when they learn that many employers won't hire convicted felons, and when they discover that their friends from junior high school and high school have moved on with their lives and forgotten them? How will they handle the intricacies of navigating through college applications, and how will they handle the inevitable rejection by people unwilling to take a chance on becoming friends with an ex-con?
"This is the prime of their lives. They need to give them direction, rehabilitation," said Kameelah Shabazz-Diaab. Her son, Joshua, 21, is serving 15 years for a holdup when he was 15 that he still denies committing. "What choices are they giving him? What are they supposed to do when they get out? Who's going to hire them, even if they have an education? These kids are going to end up paying for the rest of their lives."
With SB440, parents complain that their sons spend most of their developmental years slumped in front of TV sets in prison cells or watching their own backs, rather than preparing for futures in the free world. But such concerns don't sway legislators, says Billie Ross, whose son, Trey, is serving 10 years for an armed robbery. He was 15 when he was arrested in 1998. Today, Ross is president of Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice, a group of parents lobbying to repeal SB440 or weaken it by
permitting parole. So far, they've had no success, something Ross blames on white legislators being unable to relate to the problems of the mainly black children going to jail.
"He may be a little thug with a gun in his pocket, but he still needs nurturing," Ross said. "He still needs to develop life skills. He still needs to be hugged every once in awhile, and you don't get that when you're locked away in a place where punishment is the mantra."
Wednesday: Race and Punishment
Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.