Are You Crazy?

Image by Malingering via Flickr

So who would be so crazy as to have a dream job that includes a building full of hormone-crazed adolescents with low self control and a vocabulary that would make most truckers blush? Me. Why you ask (or I will pretend). That is a good question... I absolutely love kids and probably relate to most teens better than I do my peers but that is not why I choose my profession. My calling came to me one day when I was commuting the forty-five minute drive from my house to the community college I was attending in Eureka, CA. I had already changed my major from Computer Science to Sociology but really had no idea what I wanted to do with all this education when I graduated. I already had two children of my own and was an aunt of 13 nieces and nephews. Nevertheless, it was not only my love of kids that made me discover my purpose...

When I was a teenager, my best friend used to live down the street from me. She was the oldest child in the family and had three younger brothers. The oldest boy was a couple years younger than we were. He was an annoying younger brother but beyond the younger sibling drama, he was a good kid. This kid, Bobby started to get in trouble at home when he was around twelve. Bobby did not know his biological father, and his stepfather and he did not have a good relationship. Bobby started looking for male role models in his group of friends. I grew up in a small city about two hours away from Los Angeles called Apple Valley. In the 1990s, the entire High Desert region of California, which included Apple Valley, started to have an influx of gang and criminal activity streaming from LA and other large cities in the area. It was this crowd of gang members and criminals that Bobby latched onto.

It started with school. Bobby started having trouble in school first and then he quickly started getting in trouble with the law. Theft fights, and gang activity became the focus of Bobby's life. The fun ended when Bobby was convicted of some minor felonies and sent to a juvenile facility that was supposed to help rehabilitate him. Unfortunately, for Bobby and his family, the rehabilitation failed and soon after his release from one facility, he was in another until before his 18th birthday he was convicted of major crimes and sent to prison as an adult. While in prison, Bobby was convicted of more crimes and given his third strike sentencing. Bobby will now be in prison until he is in his 70s if he lives that long.

Well it was Bobby that I started thinking about that day. I started to wonder why he kept on the path he did. I wondered if there was anything that could have been done to deter him from continuing a life of delinquency. I wondered if the juvenile corrections system really corrected anything. I wanted to find out why, and more important what could be done to prevent other kids from ending up like Bobby. I watched the way my best friend and her family were affected by Bobby's decisions. So, on that day, eight years ago I decided that I was going to make my mission in life to improve the way we as a society deal with at risk youth.

Now I am sure you are wondering how I think as one juvenile detention worker in a small city in Oregon, I can possibly make an impact. Rest assured that I am not delusional to my current insignificance at the moment. I would like to consider myself on a path. Right now, I am on one stepping-stone that will eventually lead to my goal. When I graduated college finally in 2008, I knew that I could not criticize or try to reform a system that I did not understand. You cannot truly understand something by looking at it from the outside; you must become a part of that system to truly understand it. That may be the sociologist in me speaking but I truly believe it.

So that leads us to the present moment where I am now working at a juvenile detention and shelter. I have worked at my current job for 17 months. I work with kids that are aged from 12 to 23 and are either wards of the court and live in the shelter, or are in trouble with the law and locked up in the detention. This blog is going to be a place where I will share some of my day-to-day experiences, I will analyze problems, and dream of a better future. I hope you will join me.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Everett 'angel' helps women released from prison (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Crime (alpup.blogspot.com)
• Quadreplegic Prisoner Still A Threat ? (themoderatevoice.com)
• Ex-youth jail official gets 10 years for sex abuse (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• When Goodfellas grow old (trueslant.com)
• Former fugitive credits social worker for steering him toward a restored life (cnn.com)
• This Is How Bobby Trendy Dresses To Pump Gas (dlisted.com)
• Editorial: De-Criminalizing Children (nytimes.com)
• Rare sentence for teen in sex attack (cbc.ca)
• What Is Juvenile Criminal Justice? (brainz.org)