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

Chapter 21

187 ​21 The leniency of Tiny Timmy’s judge is corrupting our caseworkers.They have pared down Confinement sentences since Timmy’s departure for Placement. Possessing lethal contraband, cursing out staff, and brawling with each other, offenses formerly meriting five days, now bring only three, two, and occasionally, a mere day of lockup. I mention this to a coworker who comments on Superintendent Doyle: “Yeah, he thinks this is some group home or summer camp. It’s not. This is fuckin’ jail, and it outta be run like one.” He believes Doyle is instructing caseworkers to reduce such punishments ahead of slowly and subtly eliminating Confinement all together. I’m not happy either. Had Carltell on 3J not known that multiple Confinement days loomed if he defied my order to step to his cell, he would not have done so. I do appreciate one recent Doyle innovation. The day after Tiny Timmy’s assault on his Medical mattress and cell door, I gathered with twenty-­ five other attendants and caseworkers for lunch near Doyle’s office in a conference room normally emanating the same accosting odor as the cellblocks. Instead, I whiffed appetizing aromas seeping through torn aluminum foil covering pans of baked chicken, black-­eyed peas, and mustard greens. The free meal—a food service offering not culled from the juveniles ’ menu like at the other few staff functions—was an honor. A caterer delivered coconut cakes for dessert. We all wanted to know who had won the Do Right Foundation Program Proposal Contest. Grasping to recreate the relationships from my Chaplain Rick volunteer days, I had tendered a plan to create level-­ four reading groups. I would recruit willing older juveniles, perhaps Donnell and Chance from 5D or the 188 c h a p t e r t w e n t y o n e mature AT chess players on 3G, to read and discuss adolescent literature, maybe even Malcolm X’s autobiography and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” To open, Doyle stood in front of us and invited Assistant Superintendent Davis to “say a few words.” A children’s attendant at the actual Arthur J. Audy Children’s Home in the late 1960s, Fred Davis becoming the superintendent ’s next-­in-­power culminated a demanding administrative ascent . Despite a prominent limp due to a degenerative hip, Davis once subdued belligerent juveniles as an attendant, caseworker, and then supervisor. Many attendants though warn me not to bring concerns to Davis’s attention. “He’s forgotten where he came from,” Attendant Chambers says. “He won’t do anything to solve your problem,” according to Attendant Haines. Some mock Davis, a heavyset fifty-­ something man, certain the vacant superintendent position was his for the taking five years ago were he more educated. The county board commissioners hired Doyle, a fitter and college-­ degreed man, from a juvenile facility in the Bronx, New York. Before his younger boss reassumed the wood podium to announce winners, Davis remarked how the wide range of personnel who submitted proposals, twenty-­two in all, pleased him.The surprisingly high number who “served under an administration that did not encourage this kind of activity” equally impressed him. By “activity,” Davis meant this very contest enabling us to institute our own special programs and provide juveniles alternatives to staring at the television and bickering over kings and aces. Davis alleged that the previous superintendent, James Jordan , would not have endorsed this initiative. Winners were due cash prizes and funding from the Do Right Foundation. Various staffers wanted to teach juveniles to cook and interview for jobs. An ex-­ marine attendant envisioned 5:00 a.m. boot camp calisthenics for older inmates, rationalizing that thriving in military environs fosters kids’ self-­ esteem and attaches them to something .This is why, he preaches, they enlist themselves in gangs— poor self-­ image and nothing communal in their communities or familial in their families.1 189 c h a p t e r t w e n t y o n e Many colleagues who worked for former Superintendent Jordan vow that Doyle and Davis, whom several call “Uncle Jesse and Fat Freddie,” have already instituted too many changes. Relative to Jordan’s administration, they swear “the kids practically run the facility” as evidenced in Doyle’s apparent assault on Confinement. As the original Audy Home’s final superintendent, James Jordan became the...