In Prison at the 'End of the Earth'
D.C. Youths Are Jailed Across the U.S., Making Family Connections Difficult

By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 27, 2008

DEVILS LAKE, N.D. -- The 15 travelers from the District were exhausted after a 1,500- mile journey. It was not yet dawn. They had been on the road for 24 hours, and sub-zero temperatures smacked them in the face like needles, stinging cheeks and tearing up eyes.

But the weariness and discomfort were nothing compared with the ache of lying awake nights wondering whether a teenage son behind bars halfway across the country was eating right or getting health care or being abused. Now, only minutes, and the brick walls of the Lake Region Law Enforcement Center, separated them from the eight D.C. teenagers incarcerated here.

"This is my Christmas," said Frances Williams of Southeast Washington, whose 17-year-old son, Marquis Hicks, is a year into a three-year sentence for armed robbery.

Here's what it looked like: Grandmother and grandson playing Sorry! and Sequence in a municipal courtroom converted with folding tables for families to talk in private and a buffet for snacks and lunch. A 15-year-old girl blushing when her brother tells her: "You were flat-chested two years ago when I saw you." A white corrections officer smiling as he watches boisterous young black men melt into their mothers' arms and act like kids again.

Prisoners everywhere look forward to receiving letters and visitors from home. But for more than 6,500 District inmates, these visits are few and far between, because most of them are scattered in more than 70 federal prisons across the country, wherever the Bureau of Prisons can find space.

It has been that way since 1997, when Congress transferred authority over District felons to the bureau and shut down Lorton Correctional Complex in Fairfax County, which was close to home but considered crowded and violent.

The 15 people who traveled here last weekend might never have come if it were not for the Campaign for Youth Justice, which paid $15,000 for their airfare, shuttles and hotels. The trip highlights what the group sees as the folly of sending youths with relatively short sentences far from home to places that do not understand them.

"The farther away someone is, the less likely their family will ever be able to see them and be involved in their lives," said Liz Ryan, executive director of the group, which has lobbied for 18 years to stop minors from being treated as adults in the justice system. "That family tie is something that should not be broken. We're straining it by sending juveniles 1,500 miles away. These are nameless, faceless children to decision makers in Washington."

The youths here were prosecuted under a law that allows 16- and 17-year-olds charged with serious crimes, including rape, murder and armed robbery, to be tried as adults and sentenced to adult prisons. Most committed robbery, several of them with toy guns, which carries the same time as robberies with real weapons.

Jon Gustin, who runs juvenile programs for the bureau in several states, told the parents that their children arrived wary of how they would be treated -- in the D.C. jail, they told him, they had been afraid of being beaten by other juvenile inmates.

"They don't have to worry about that here," he said. "It's horrible they have to be this far away from home, but if they were my kids, I'd rather they be here than in the D.C. jail."

In some ways, this place is a sanctuary. Under bureau policy, adults and juveniles cannot be within sight and sound of each other.

So juveniles are kept on one side of the facility, adults on the other. In the federal system, inmates can remain in juvenile facilities until they reach 21. But D.C. youths are transferred to adult prisons as soon as they turn 18. The Devils Lake facility contracts with the bureau to provide counseling and education that is not offered to adults.

On the juvenile side, there are 14 youths, three from the District. Five D.C. teens recently turned 18, and even those with only a few months remaining on their sentences are headed for adult prisons.

Devils Lake, population 7,000, is 170 miles northwest of Fargo. It has a small-town feel, and ice fishing is a pastime.

"Why are they in North Dakota?" said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who plans to push for city teens to be brought closer to home. "It's a trip to the end of the earth."

It certainly seemed that way to the family members who made the trip.

The trek included shuttle mix-ups, canceled flights, missed connections, turbulence and, after they reached North Dakota, a four-hour midnight drive on icy highways with no lights or houses in sight for miles at a time.

But, for eight hours, they wouldn't have been anywhere else.

It was just before 10 a.m. when the men and women from the District were ushered into a small waiting area, asked for identification and patted down. They were given a brief tour of the classrooms and cells, which have a twin bed and a toilet. Then they waited in the converted courtroom, which had a Christmas tree in one corner. Gift bags were placed there unwrapped, so guards could inspect everything.

When the doors opened, the teenagers rushed in to see their relatives, embracing for minutes before settling down at tables to talk. At lunch, corrections officers, family members and inmates shared roast beef and potatoes. Pizza was brought in for dinner.

There were silly moments. One teen stared into a camera brought in by the trip's sponsor to make a video aimed at preventing youths from getting into trouble: "It's rough out here. Don't come out here. I'm not going to be here when you get here."

There were poignant moments, too. An 18-year-old whose family did not make the trip wrote a poem about the visit:

Why does it feel so lonely?

So empty

Does anybody love me?

Somebody show me

I never see good times

I never see any signs

Am I in the blind?

Somebody open the blinds and show me

Mothers wiped away tears, then hugged him.

In quiet moments, the D.C. teenagers talked about their feelings of alienation in the remote prison. They said they did not know what to make of the white guards or the Native Americans imprisoned alongside them.

"We the only black people in North Dakota," one of the inmates said, joking.

The cultural disconnection was mutual. The D.C. youths were loud and worldly and had a hip-hop swagger not seen regularly in North Dakota.

The two young men without visitors were welcome to join the gathering. They listened in on conversations and sifted through the socks, underwear, soap, lotion and puzzle books given by the Campaign for Youth Justice.

Jermaine Hailes, 18, was visited by his mother, Keela Hailes, and 15-year-old sister, Shaylah. The family had a drawing to decide which of the five children would come. Dad stayed home with the rest.

"This hit my heart," Jermaine Hailes said. "I never would have even asked my mother if she could come see me. She couldn't afford it."

Hailes has served two of his three years for robbery and with credit for good behavior could be released to a halfway house in March. He will have to do the rest of his time in an adult prison because he has turned 18.

Keela Hailes is thinking about moving from Anacostia so her son won't run with the same crowds. She was happy that he got more than a slap on the wrist and was sent far away. "My son has grown up from being here," she said. "I pray that he takes the growth, and the things he has learned, back to the community."

When the 30-minute warning was sounded, tissues were passed out. Choked-up mothers said their goodbyes. Corrections officers who had been reading magazines and eating jelly beans stood up. So did the young men, preparing themselves to go back into prison mode.

Chris Scott, a burly 18-year-old, hugged his big brother for several minutes, not wanting to return to his cell. Nearby, his 6-year-old nephew, Deontay Cozart, realizing Scott would not be coming home with them, broke into tears nearby as the prison door slammed shut.