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

Chapter 20

180 ​20Attendant Bradley expects a sluggish response from DCFS inquisitors regarding Timmy’s rape accusations . The Illinois child abuse hotline averages over a thousand daily calls. This government agency whose decrees result in suspensions and firings unnerves many attendants. “They’ll take a kid’s word over yours,” I’ve been warned. Much to Attendant Bradley’s satisfaction, DCFS rules Timmy’s claim “unfounded” fewer than ten days after the allegation. Inmates accusing us of mistreatment, even with subsequent DCFS not-­ guilty verdicts, do not return to our cellblocks. Dr. Jacobs and the caseworkers can thus hold Timmy in Medical or transfer him to 3J where one of the three naked-­ for-­ an-­ evening kids isn’t much bigger than him. Dr. Jacobs suspects that Timmy had wanted to change blocks because “some of his gang buddies” are housed on 3J, hence his assertions against Bradley. “Instead of him responding to the system, Timmy loves seeing the system respond to him,” Dr. Jacobs tells me. He keeps Timothy in Medical for three more weeks, but shortly after his twelfth birthday, Timmy has his preferred living arrangement. “Where’s Timmy Tyler?” I wonder aloud, reporting to Medical one early December afternoon. I’d expected the boy’s bug eyes peering at me through cell door number two. “On 3J and already in Confinement,” a fifty-­ year-­ old regular Medical Movement attendant wearing boots and a black leather vest says. Last night, this small man with glasses escorted Timothy from a locked 3J cell to Medical for dosage. I haven’t worked 3J since Timothy’s transfer there. The attendant reports that kicking resumed,Timmy dislodged his first 3J cell door window from its steel frame and staff members moved him to a different cell but to no effect. He kicked on, but the Plexiglas held. 181 c h a p t e r t w e n t y Supervisors and caseworkers are shackling Timmy more too, but I hear that he thrusts his wrists into the air, taunting whoever threatens to cuff him. Timmy has discovered how to wriggle out of his fetters. For Timmy as Houdini, supervisors revert more to steel-­doored cells.Within policy and procedure, this is all we can do—subtract privileges and increase his time caged inside various cells. Aside from earning a later bedtime or quarters closer to the TV area, we wield little else to motivate Timmy to change. I’ve never seen him, nor any other inmate, scheduled for regular therapy or counseling. WhereverIwork,IforeverwonderaboutTimothy,hoping he will conform, as if his fate here will mirror mine. If Timmy can behave, then I can too. I can be another Attendant Tucker, never cursing or stripping inmates or throwing cold water into their cells. I can’t resist quizzing coworkers with Timmy-­relevant knowledge—like Attendant Simons who mans 3B, where Timmy often ends up behind steel. While he drives me to Union Station again for my train home, I ask him about Timmy’s stints there after all his Plexiglas damage on 3J. Simons tells me about a recent incident when he heard a meek tapping sound from behind Timmy’s steel door. The noise surprised Simons because Timmy usually yells when he wants something. Simons left the console and opened the cell to find Timmy standing at the front, panting with vomit speckling his chin and shirt. Simons escorted the faint boy to Medical, where nurses let Timmy suck air from a ventilator for an hour.Then he returned behind the metallic door with the envelope-­ sized window. Simons admits, “It’s probably the only time I ever actually felt sorry for the kid.” At Timmy’s next court appearance, a judge continues his case. Timmy will spend the winter holidays detained. His claim to be indicted in “a gun case” still disheartens me. Perhaps Caseworker Hampton will sympathize and disclose what administration won’t. After work, Hampton spots me on our way out of the building. “Aggravated assault, so he could’ve used a gun. He had to use something.” Everyday physical attack must be a bare- 182 c h a p t e r t w e n t y handed one. I tell myself that Timmy fabricated the gun part to thump his chest as a badass but in reality had brandished something less lethal, like a rock or a bat—my ploy to believe that...