Stick Together and Come Back Home. Patrick Lopez-Aguado
a manicured, tree-lined road leads around the courthouse to the “commitment side” of the facility where FYN has a clubhouse for the youth inside. Standing alone in the dry, hot openness of the San Joaquin Valley, JDF is surrounded in each direction by flat fields that stretch out to the horizon, filled only with the noise of the highway and warm, unmitigated winds that carry the smell of tilled soil. It just makes coming in or out of the facility feel that much more dramatic. The glass door at the entrance is locked, as it often is. There’s a reception desk just inside, but when they’re short-staffed you have to just wait for someone free to come let you in. Sometimes it can take a while. I push the button on the metal intercom next to the door and a voice comes in asking “Can I help you?” I glance up to the round black camera bulging from the overhang ceiling and explain that I volunteer with FYN inside. They have hundreds of the same camera throughout the facility, above every doorway and down every hall. “Alright someone will be there in a few minutes.” While I wait for them to let me in a pair of rabbits chase each other around nearby, in the field between the parking lot and the cement wall of one of the pods.
After about ten minutes one of the JCOs finally gets to the door and lets me in once I show them the ID card the agency gave me. I store my wallet and cell phone in one of the lockers built into the opposite door, pass through the metal detector next to the reception desk, then wait until I hear the door buzz and the handle click open before going into the waiting room on the other side. I turn left in the waiting room and pass through a double set of security doors, the kind with a small room between them where the second won’t open until the first one is closed again. I push the same metal intercom button to open the second door and wait for the staff controlling the door remotely to inspect me over the camera again. This is why I keep my ID out. Eventually the thick steel bar locking the second door begins to slide open and I proceed into the visit room. I pass by the rows of lunch tables to another set of double security doors on the other side. These doors open into a long gray hallway with a concrete floor and walls, and more black camera bulbs every so many feet along the ceiling. The sound of the door closing echoes down the hall, and I walk to the end through one more door, this one leading to the grass quad outside. Outside is a soccer field with all the pods built into a circle surrounding it. I walk along the outside wall of the gym until I reach the door to the rec room, where I knock so the FYN staff will let me in.
The recreation room FYN runs inside JDF is a stark contrast to the rest of the facility. The white walls are covered in posters and artwork created by the youth who come in. The room features a pair of TVs with Xboxes; some beanbag chairs and a couch; ping pong, foosball, and air hockey tables; and a stereo for them to play music. Ten youth from each pod are allowed to come into the rec room for one or two hours every two to three days. The pods use a point system developed to monitor behavior to determine which ten get to come. FYN brought me in to facilitate a violence prevention program in which I asked youth a great deal about their communities, their ambitions, and their perceptions and experiences with the justice system. But more than anything the room serves as a place that just lets them get out of the pod for a little bit, which they greatly appreciate. Consequently much of my time here was spent hanging out with the youth as someone to play cards, video games, or just chat with. I jotted notes on their conversations and interactions during break periods between pods. Additionally, many of these youth were required to report to the San Joaquin Educational Academy (SJEA) upon their release from custody, which gave me the unique opportunity of stay in touch with them as they moved between these settings.
San Joaquin Educational Academy
Hidden from the main streets among rows of apartment and office buildings, few people know that SJEA is there, or even exists at all. The county runs the small continuation high school out of a converted AT&T call center that is surrounded by barbed wire fencing, the only opening a gate with a metal detector and stationed guard who searches students as they enter, confiscating keys and cell phones they forgot to leave at home or hide in the surrounding shrubbery. There are about 100 to 150 students enrolled at any given time, most of them (usually about 85%) boys. The racial makeup of the school was fluid during my twelve months there, but most of the time about two-thirds of the students were Mexican or Chicana/o, about a quarter of them were Black, and the remainder comprised of a mix of White, Native American, and Asian students. All of SJEA’s students are on juvenile probation, and most are ordered to attend the school upon their release from JDF. The drug treatment and mental health programs that many of the youth are required to complete as conditions of their probation also have their offices on campus, as do five probation officers (POs) who supervise most of the students at the school.
The county established SJEA to provide transitional education for probationary youth that would allow them to catch up on the credits missed during incarceration and transfer back into the public school district. Students earn credits faster here than they would in public school, which helps make up for lost time and catch up to their grade level, but surveillance at the school keeps most of the youth on probation. Few students actually transfer back to public school from here, as only a small number complete their minimum stay at SJEA before violating probation, and even those who do stay on track may see their transfers denied by a district that refuses to take them back. Instead, SJEA essentially functions as part of a system of continuation schools throughout Fresno that isolates criminalized youth from the rest of the district. While the school’s faculty and staff work well with the students and are genuine in their desire to help them graduate high school, the way SJEA is structured “helps” students through punitive discipline, pushing them deeper into the justice system and making it difficult for them to attain a standard education. Most students have their PO on site, and can be incarcerated for violating their probation based on discipline problems at the school. Even excessive absences can be enough to send them back to juvenile hall. Most of the students I met in my time here were at some point reincarcerated, many based on something that happened while they were being monitored at the school.
I originally came to SJEA as an intern shadowing a counselor who worked onsite, but was fairly quickly asked to contribute as a tutor for disruptive students, which came to be how I spent most of my year. Three days a week I would pull students out of class and help them with assignments, either individually or in small groups. Teachers often gave me the students who gave them the most trouble, but these students were usually able to focus and complete their work once they were taken out of class. Oftentimes they simply acted out because they didn’t like their teacher, but usually enjoyed getting out of class and were willing to do their work once I took them. Taking four to five students out at a time gave me the opportunity to get to know many of the students at the school, to hear their stories, and to listen to them talk with each other about the school, their weekends, their neighborhoods, who had been arrested or released, and other topics relevant to their daily lives. These conversations also gave me a chance to explain my research and recruit students for interviews after school. I also frequently sat out with students in the hallways and outside of offices when they got in trouble, which helped me learn more about conflicts at the school and hear students’ concerns about violating probation or returning to juvenile hall. Some students initially suspected that I worked with law enforcement, but sharing so much time with them and most importantly not “snitching” on them for minor things like tagging in schoolbooks helped them trust me as someone at the school they could speak candidly with without getting into trouble. At times this created some tension with a few faculty members and administrators who expected me to cooperate with their surveillance and discipline of students, and I had to negotiate this so as to maintain access to the school while also protecting the students’ trust. However, most staff respected that helping them monitor and discipline students was not my role at the school.
I conducted interviews with thirty-six of the students from the continuation school that I had gotten to know in my time volunteering at the school as a tutor, as well as with two security guards and the school principal. These interviews focused on youths’ experiences with street cultures in Fresno and how they felt the justice system impacted their lives and communities. These interviews provide a deeper context for the observation fieldnotes, particularly regarding the identities the youth perform and how they interpret the roles street culture and incarceration play in their day-to-day experiences. Participants were recruited for interviews from the groups of students I pulled out for tutoring,13 as well