Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America

Chapter 2. “It’s a Mess What’s Happened”

Chapter 2 “It’s a Mess What’s Happened” Londa lives in the center of Washington, D.C., in a twenty-year-old housing project.* The project is one of the more modern in the District, spreading inhabitants out in a series of squat cement row houses. Her street is a small loop off of a main thoroughfare, and there is no traf‹c except for the cars of those living in or visiting the project. Kids and the occasional grown man ride bikes of varying quality up and down the street, some aimlessly riding, others watching for police. In the middle of the workday, the school day, the block is still populated by a scattering of people young and old. A run-down Dodge Neon is parked on the street with two halfway in›ated balloons ›oating inside, one with a picture of a teddy bear, the other with “LOVE” written in large print. And, although it hides behind the doors of this project most of the time, there is a lot of love here. Many of the residents are unemployed, but around ‹ve o’clock, when the working parents and their kids have come home, the street activity picks up. Parents, kids, and the occasional dog are in and out of the tiny cement tenements, playing and calling after each other. It is the typical puzzle of the inner-city project, with some folks working hard at being “decent” and others unable or unwilling.1 Many of the younger kids alternately play at being “thugged out” and “respectable” to different people, caught between trying to impress their friends and please their mothers. It’s the usual mix of loud and quiet, smart and foolish. It’s a mix that is better than most, in part because Londa’s project is within walking distance of downtown. That means jobs are available * A more detailed account of Londa’s story and that of her family is given in chapter 5. and more of the residents can ‹nd work than those living in other, more remote projects. And, rather than being a high-rise warehouse of dark and dangerous interiors, it is spread out, making the common spaces visible to all. The proximity to downtown and the visibility mean less violence than the more notorious projects of the District.2 But it is also clear that a fair amount of the activity during the day here is, as it is around the corner and for several blocks, drug related. In the last year, there were sixty-four arrests for drug possession and distribution within a two-block radius of Londa’s residence.3 Over 120 men living within the same two-block radius were admitted to the D.C. correctional system during that time, about one-quarter of them on drug possession or distribution charges. Many others, like Londa’s husband , Derek, were incarcerated on other charges related to drug addiction .4 When we ‹rst meet, Londa has trouble opening the door because her leg is in a cast and her crutches get in the way. She’s a solid woman, light skinned, with wide eyes and wrinkles just starting to form in the center of her forehead. When she’s in pain they become deep furrows. Once inside her house, surrounded by the debris of family life—toys, a few empty kid-sized boxes of juice, dishes on the table from a lunch just ‹nished, bottles and baby blankets strewn over the couch—she is apolo21 “It’s a Mess What’s Happened” Fig. 1. Arrests and incarceration in the District Drug Arrests Residences of Male Prisoners getic for the mess. “But,” she tells me, “I’ve got three kids, a broken leg, and a husband who’s locked up.” She has been ‹ghting her husband’s crack addiction and struggling to keep her family together for ‹fteen years. Gesturing out the window, she tells me, “I don’t want to end up like everyone else. I guess I’m halfway there. But my kids need a father. I look around here and none of these kids have fathers. It’s a mess what’s happened.” What, exactly, has happened? Not just to Londa’s family, but to the millions of families and thousands of communities like hers across America? Doing Time on the Outside 22 ...