Up in Here: Jailing Kids on Chicago's Other Side

Chapter 15

141 ​15 Today, I’m working the 3E console with Attendant Hammonds, who works 4–12 on 3E every shift. The regular 2–10 attendant is on vacation, so I’m here, still floating . Since my flameout on 3D, if someone like Edison, Otis, or Marcus won’t be my coworker, supervisors only appear confident enough to assign me to 5G and Medical. Block 3E is new, but Hammonds, over six feet tall with a square face channeled into a jutting chin, reminds me of Ken Norton Jr., the Dallas Cowboys linebacker whose boxer father broke Muhammad Ali’s jaw. Every indication is that Hammonds is another Edison, Otis, or Marcus. I feel neutered once again, knowing that supervisors don’t trust me, like they’re cheating for me in which cellblocks they assign me to and with which coworkers—protecting me from certain inmates and protecting certain inmates from each other. So far, 90 percent of my shifts have come on the same third of the jail’s total cellblocks. The continued floating means that supervisors haven’t settled on a place for me. Even between annual or biannual shift bids when attendants win particular shifts on particular cellblocks, supervisors do leave new staff on certain blocks where bids will open. A guy from my new-­ hire group younger than me and at least ten pounds lighter is doing 8–4 on 4H—a very thuggish block, I’m hearing. After dinners of Polish sausages and seafood the Vice Lords may or may not dig into, but before showers and lights-­ out, cellblocks can host special programs. Once, tutors from a church visited 5G to read and play Chutes and Ladders with the shorties while Attendant Milton and I chatted about barbeque joints in his South Side neighborhood.These are the only such volunteers I’ve seen, aside from well-­dressed mostlyearly twenty-­something males in the third-­ floor hallway, whom I suspect are my succes- 142 c h a p t e r f i f t e e n sors from Good News Jail & Prison Ministries, Chaplain Rick’s organization. They still bring Bibles, but Bibles handed to them from a different Protestant minister. The cancer blinding Chaplain Rick since youth killed him before my first dayas a children’s attendant. Nothing extra ever happened for Donnell and Chance or even for 3G boys during my evenings there. The younger the juveniles, the more savable outsiders conjure them to be. The special program called Law-­ Related Education has just ended, but some juveniles commenced whispering long before —which has irked Attendant Hammonds to bark, “Fellas, listen up!” Four students from Loyola and Northwestern Universities have guided willing juveniles to hold up character placards: District Attorney, Defendant, Plaintiff, Public Defender, Witness, Prosecuting Attorney, and Judge. Other kids posed to their sides and voiced courtroom role-­ play lines from paper sheet scripts, most in monotones despite the dialogue’s obvious modification for these young actors. The remainder watched this special program from the tables. “They’re only trying to help. They don’t have to be here. You need to be taking this more seriously,” Attendant Hammonds lectures. Our guests haven’t yet stepped completely through the door, so I know the law students can hear him. His words must dishearten , like their own scripted words were dispatched upon deaf ears. I hope they’re mildly depressed, that they’re not just here because a professor is making them be here. I’d have been depressed if Jerome had begun whispering and staring around our tiny room during my New Testament readings and the discussions I followed them with. Nothing from the boys here on 3E. If not for their disinterest, I am sure that Attendant Hammonds would already have granted the standard go-­ ahead for cards, chess, and ping-­ pong. “Hey, I was poor growing up in the hood, with no father, and my mom on public aid. But now, I’m living the American Dream. I gotta wife, two kids, a house, two cars, a dog, and a nice vacation every year,” my coworker goes on. Block 3E compares to 3K and houses only three boys facing AT charges. I’m bigger than everyone by at least my neck and head. 143 c h a p t e r f i f t e e n Most units hold far more Automatic Transfers. This unit...