Archive for the ‘crime’ Category

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Intaking it personally

April 17, 2012

In the school where I work, every new student must go through an intake process that includes me asking them questions about their drug use and criminal history. The forms I fill out are important to the tracking and funding of our program and I always see this initial interview as an opportunity to get to know my students. On some days their words start to wash over me as the clients at the rehab often digress into personal tales.

“I have a detective coming to talk with me about being raped.” “I used meth and PCP together.” “The car accident, I can’t remember well.” “Seizures.” “I’ve been shot.” “I’m not here for drugs, I’ve had a terrible loss.” No one tells me they shot, robbed or beat someone — confessing their own misdeeds is a thin line few cross.

I have to remind myself that I am here to teach these guys and gals reading, writing and arithmetic. I’m not a social worker or a counselor, but I’m still empathic, intaking it all personally.

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Tired of running

June 24, 2010

Franklin has been cleaning my classroom. Chatty fellow, always has a smile. He told me his father was born in 1903 in Mississippi, a sharecropper. Franklin’s in his sixties but looks about 20 years younger. He comes from a big family and has a sister who is 81. Today he said he’d bring in a photo of his parents to show me. It’s hard to imagine Franklin committing a crime or spending his days smoking crack.  He seems so at peace with himself  at this point in his life.

A parole agent once told me that men reach a certain age and their testosterone decreases and they no longer have the energy or stamina to run the streets. Essentially, biology itself reduces recidivism. When a twenty-something guy comes in and tells me he’s tired of running, this may be true, but hormones have a drive and momentum of their own.

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Dis functional family (flashback)

April 5, 2010

We have all heard of homie, meaning from the same neighborhood but it goes deeper than that. Cellie is the guy or gal you shared your cell with. Crimie, that’s the person who was your partner in you guessed it, crime.  Very often a parolee will come in and recognize a former crimie or even more exciting an old cellie.  It’s like a reunion with lost family. Many of these guys have spent more time in their lives with their cellies than with their own family.

At work, two of the most unlikely students recognize each other, Edgar and Jeff.  Both know one-armed Paul and one-legged Charlie from their time inside. They sit and reminisce for a bit about their stolen Harleys and one-armed Paul and one-legged Charlie. They sound like pirates, and it makes me laugh.

— from a 2004 journal entry

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Ask for me

March 12, 2010

Samuel is my newest student. He told me he was living in a car with his mom but his parole agent would not accept that as a primary residence. So he is at our residential rehab for an address, not for drug addiction. Sam told me his mom, who still lives in the car, is an alcoholic. He also told me he is a hopeless kleptomaniac. He especially loves high-end markets. A gourmet selection of goodies increases his chance of offending. For Sam, stealing itself is a high — very addictive and almost impossible to stop. His “jacket,” a list of his criminal convictions, is riddled with petty theft. Sam is tall and handsome with a long brunette ponytail. He looks like the boy next door who surfs. He told me he can’t read, which is not entirely true. He has a third-grade reading level. Hopefully he will stick around long enough to get some help in my school. Half the battle will be raising his self-esteem. Sam seems quite depressed. I’ve yet to see him smile. He eagerly awaited his mother’s arrival yesterday while he worked on the classroom computer. She was coming to drop off some of his clothes. I asked him, “Don’t you want to wait outside so you won’t miss her?”  “No,” he said, “she will ask for me.” Sam checked with the front desk to see if his mother had come by. She had made a delivery but did not ask for him. Sam came back to school and signed out for the day. He was pretty upset.

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Pall Mall Reds

March 2, 2010

Today I helped my student Carey fill out a request to claim his father’s last paycheck through a state Treasury office. Carey had his father’s original death certificate. I couldn’t help but notice that the reason listed for his father’s death was carcinoma of the lung. I told Carey his dad died of lung cancer at 56. He said he knew his dad died of cancer but never knew which kind. I asked, “Did your father smoke?” “Pall Mall Reds,” said Carey. My students usually go on a ten-minute smoke break once in the morning and another in the afternoon.  Just before Carey went to smoke, I reminded him that he was holding his father’s death certificate in his hand and that smoking could have been a contributing factor. (It’s the Adult Health Educator in me. ) “Thanks,” Carey said, “I’m going to be thinking about that all day.”

And then he left to go smoke.

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Criminal history

February 7, 2010

While surfing the web I ran into this announcement: “The Museum of Criminal Anthropology, dedicated to Cesare Lombroso, has reopened after years of restoration and access to specialist researchers only. The institution was founded by Lombroso in 1898 under the name ‘The Museum of Psychiatry and Criminology,’ documenting his beliefs and research into detecting criminality through physiognomy.”  You can now see this collection for yourself but you will have to fly to Turin, Italy. How you feel about this kind of pathologizing is another thing.  Here’s some history: “For many years, Lombroso’s text on the female criminal would have great influence.  It described the female offender as worse than male offenders, contending that they had more masculine than feminine characteristics. Lombroso also popularized the notion of a ‘born criminal’ which represents an extreme statement of biological determinism which had great influence well into the 20th Century.” The Museum of Criminal Anthropology serves as a reminder of a past that must be known but never repeated.

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