A view from within: diaries from juvenile probationers

When minors commit less serious crimes, they won’t necessarily go to state prison, but they still face the possibility of incarceration at county juvenile halls. Their fate really depends on where they’re from. KALW’s Rina Palta recently reported on how Santa Cruz and Monterey counties are culturally and geographically quite similar. But here’s where they differ: though Santa Cruz has about half the population of Monterey, it only has about one-tenth the number of kids in lockup.

YOLANDA PEREZ-LOGAN: We lean more towards the social service side, so that’s what our department’s value is.

Yolanda Perez Logan is the director of the Evening Center in Watsonville – a city in Santa Cruz County. Perez Logan’s alternative juvenile justice center focuses on keeping kids out of trouble in the evenings, but letting kids sleep at home. Studies show that incarceration, even for one night, is linked to higher recidivism in children.

PEREZ-LOGAN: So teaching them to stay there and be connected to the community and engaged is the best thing we can do.

In the rural hills outside of La Honda there’s another alternative juvenile probation program run by the city of San Francisco called Log Cabin Ranch. It’s a 12-month, open-ended program of counseling, education, and vocational training. In a series called “Listen In at Log Cabin Ranch,” producers at New America Now gave some of the young men microphones, and asked them to take us into their lives. Here are excerpts from two of the diaries by young men who asked to be called Chuco and D.

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CHUCO: My name is Chuco. I’m about to feed the hummingbird.

D: Man, you can just call me D, if you want. If you don’t want to call me that, don’t call me nothing at all. I’m 16. I’m from downtown.

CHUCO: I feed the hummingbirds from now and then. I feed them sugar water. I’m climbing the ladder so I can get the hummingbird feeder. You can hear them. Those are the hummingbirds.

D: Well, right now we’re at Log Cabin Ranch, a program for misguided youth I guess, coming to jail a few too many times, doing a pretty big crime I guess. Basically, the only thing you can come over here for is assault, weapon charges, or if you have a few minor charges, like a bunch. This is my first placement. My charges were serious. I heard about it from my big homies that came here a few years back.

CHUCO: There’s beautiful birds. It’s amazing. We’re getting the food that’s stored right here. By the way, they love this stuff. I think it’s amazing how they like a lot of sugar. I mean, who doesn’t, right?

D: It’s supposedly the step before YA, the California Youth Authority – basically prison for kids. It’s ugly down there. But I guess it was supposed to be close to that, where you have to worry about getting shanked and stuff like that. That’s what my big homies was telling me. But that was years back, years and years ago. That was the real old ranch. I guess they got a new program and made it better.

Personally, how I see it is a way for the city to send us away for eight months and just forget about us, not have to worry about the 22 or 23 people they got up here. Just keep us out of their hair.

CHUCO: I like feeding the hummingbirds. It makes me feel like I’m doing something for the community here at Log Cabin Ranch. It makes me feel like I’m giving back to nature since nature gives us a lot of oxygen.

D: I don’t like it here, but I guess it could be worse. That’s how I look at things. We are in the middle of the woods on top of a mountain. They think that just because we’re so called gangsters, we don’t have a heart. Wrong. We do.

These stories are part of a series called “Listen In at Log Cabin” from New America Now – which can be heard Fridays at noon on KALW. It was produced by Lisa Morehouse, with support from Will Roy and The Beat Within. The program was funded by the Zellerbach Family Foundation and the City of San Francisco Probation department.