Arrest-Proof Yourself (9 page)

Juvenile detention is one of the most dangerous places in your city or county. Some of the kids there will be stone killers who would very much enjoy cutting out your stomach and intestines with a plastic shiv. Other kids will be florid, unmedicated psychotics, which is medical jargon for saying that they’re stark raving mad. Inside, kids yell day and night. They bang on their cells. The stronger ones attack the younger and weaker ones. The only difference between juvenile detention and adult jail is that in juvie the guards are usually not armed and are
somewhat
less likely than adult correctional officers to beat you when you misbehave.

FIELD INTERROGATIONS

With the improvements in computers and data transmission, you can wander into the criminal justice plantation
even without getting arrested!
This is due to something the general public never hears about, a little bit of police routine called the field interrogation reports (FI). Patrol cops are required to make notes about
everyone
they talk to when they respond to a call or make a street stop. They note your name and address, your appearance, what you’re wearing, and where you’re going. These reports are cross indexed and filed. When a crime is reported in your area, police can review FI cards and instantly know everyone they have encountered in the neighborhood. Back in the old days, FI reports were handwritten on cards. Today, in most cities, they’re computerized files and instantly accessible.

As you can imagine, FI reports are extremely useful to police. They might not be so useful to you. Let’s say you encounter police. They stop their cruiser, call you over, ask for your ID, and quiz you about where you live and where you’re going—all typical questions whose answers go into FI reports. Let’s suppose you’re wearing a red T-shirt, blue jeans, and a baseball cap. All this gets noted down, and with the miracle of computers and wireless database transmission, the information becomes accessible to every cop in the city almost before the police cruiser gets out of sight.

“So what?” you say. The police didn’t arrest you, and you go on your way. But what if a crime is committed later in your neighborhood, by a guy about your size wearing a red T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap? You can bet the police will be at your doorstep within minutes. (Remember, you told them where you lived.) Now the cops are not cruising. They’re investigating a recent crime and looking for a fleeing suspect. They’re tense; they’re edgy. They can arrest and hold you as a suspect. Even if charges are later dropped, you will have an arrest record.

Some of the police problems that minorities attribute to racism are actually routine police use of FI cards. You are likely to get arrested if you

encounter police and become the subject of an FI card

live in a neighborhood where crimes are being committed

somewhat resemble the description of a criminal

I’ll discuss this further in a section about why you don’t want to chat up cops. Remember, the essence of staying free is staying
away
from cops and
out
of the system. The system is designed to arrest you, not to help you.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE? THE SOCIAL SERVICES PLANTATION

Guys, listen up! The worst thing about getting arrested as a juvenile is that an arrest dumps you onto yet another plantation—the social services plantation. In most cases a judge will order you into the custody, or at least the care, of social workers and their contractors. These people can ruin your life trying to help you. Next time you hear someone waxing sentimental about how it “takes a village”—meaning a village of social workers—to raise a modern child, you should run, preferably screaming as you run, as far away as possible. Many well-intentioned people, especially those whose income, education, and jobs mean that their children will never encounter social service workers, imagine that probation officers, juvenile judges, public defenders, guardians
ad litem
, caseworkers, foster parents, and government psychologists are like kindly schoolmarms and wise old preachers who gently guide wayward youth to truth, enlightenment, and the American way.

Wrong. I work with these people every day. They try hard. They want to do the right thing. All of them, without exception, are overwhelmed with cases; underpaid; and restricted by a web of complex, confusing, and frequently contradictory bureaucratic procedures. All of them together, the entire village, cannot care for children as well as the most mediocre parents. Getting into the social services plantation sometimes means getting help. Often, however, it means getting your brain fried with drugs and then being dumped into juvenile detention facilities and foster homes.

Always it means that the state will gather an enormous dossier of information on you. A gigantic file, your “jacket,” stuffed with medical reports and “expert” opinions of your neuroses, psychoses, hang-ups, allergies, food preferences, IQ, and personality, will follow you around for life. You’ll be officially certified as damaged goods. You’ll be in the computer, in the system, for life, even if you never actually get arrested. Juvenile criminal records are generally separated from adult records, but in most states prosecutors
can
get to them. This means that, when you’re on trial years later as an adult, a prosecutor can point out to the judge what a loser you’ve been practically since the day you got the diapers strapped on.

The social services system and its affiliate, the public schools, are obsessed with definitions of what is normal. This definition is narrowed every day by new studies, new expert opinions, and batteries of ever more subtle psychological tests. Anyone outside the acceptable range of behaviors is, by definition, abnormal and subject to state intervention, supervision, and labeling. I call this the tyranny of normalcy.

Let me give you an example. Years ago, children who got distracted, ran around a lot, slept very little, and did several things at once were called jittery, pesky, or a handful. Now such children are defined as suffering from attention-deficit disorder. Supposedly, 7 percent of American children are so diseased. Most are given powerful psychoactive drugs. Some of these, like Ritalin, are related to amphetamines. Others are tranquilizers, antipsychotics, and neurotransmitter inhibitors, which were never approved for use by children and whose long-term effects are unknown. All of these drugs, without exception, are restricted, scheduled narcotics. Many are addictive, and all are sold illegally on the street. Possession of any of them without the prescription
in your possession
will land you in jail. When adults take tranquilizers for a decade or more, they are considered addicts. When children take them, they are considered normal. Of course the kids don’t complain. They’re drugged.

Now I’m going to say some things that will enrage 52 percent of the population. Ladies, prepare yourselves! Launch your word processors for angry letters and e-mails. Get out the spray paint for protest signs and banners, and dust off those marching shoes. Ready? Here it is: The social services plantation is staffed predominantly by women. Its attitudes are female, and, most importantly, its definition of normalcy is female.

For young men, this is a disaster. The system defines many innate male behaviors as abnormal and sick. For example, the social services plantation’s female overseers (teachers, social workers, counselors, psychologists) stigmatize boys for fighting, throwing and kicking things, teasing, resisting authority, etc. Yet these things are what little boys
do
. These behaviors are the play that become, in a man, fighting and hunting skills. Of course, such behaviors need to be socialized and controlled, since we are no longer Neolithic hunter-gatherers, but they are not abnormal or sick. All of us have caveman DNA and behaviors. They require patience and parenting, not drugs and the lockup.

Look at this another way. Do the female overseers ever stigmatize and punish little girls for doing any the following?

having too many friends

forming overly intense personal relationships

coloring too neatly within the lines and failing to be creative