I met the Thin Blue Line while working in juvenile justice. The program is grant-funded and operates parallel to the system of supervision. It is designed to be rehabilitative and keep kids out of the adult carceral system by improving communication, teaching aggression replacement, and sharing general life skills. Watching the adults manipulate the system at the students’ expense just reinforced the cynicism I feel toward authority. The students knew enough not to trust it. I was more naïve. I really thought I could do some good.
The programs are nationally tested and rely heavily on the competence of the facilitators, yet the program had employed for 4+ years someone the administrator, Christine, described as “dead weight” and a drag on the system. She reported being “stuck” with him and finding it politically contentious to remove him because his mother worked in another part of the county government. She felt her job would be in jeopardy if she addressed the problems with his performance and asked me to help him improve (I know now I should have seen this as a red flag, but, again, I’m naïve and hope for the best.) Reading his nightly field notes made it difficult to imagine he was a graduate student, but knowing the negative evaluations of online programs similar to the one in which he was enrolled explained a lot. We shared notes back and forth for months, but he made no effort to get the details correct or improve his performance. I was very frustrated with him, and her for allowing this to continue. He was nice enough, but didn’t stick to the material when he taught. He would often get off track trying to make the lessons relatable and be unable to find his way back to the material. When I finally put it in writing via email that instructor competency was critical, and that without it the program actually harms students, the director found my documentation to be the problem. My co-worker’s response was thoughtful and well-written, and I wondered why he didn’t put that same effort into his work with our students; Christine advised his mother had written it for him.
She had difficulty clarifying program guidelines and expectations. Being vague always makes me uncomfortable. We held students accountable to a specific set of behaviors, yet Christine couldn’t specify what they were. The student who wore his gang-related black ninja-style ski mask was described as wearing a Covid mask despite the fact that his face was the only thing it didn’t cover because she wanted to get him through the program. It didn’t matter that we had to remove him from the class regularly for inappropriate behavior- including threatening the instructors and mimicking shooting me. She ignored the few clearly established behavioral/safety protocols because annual program completion numbers were down and she needed another graduate. What message does that send? Threatening and bullying get you what you want. It was difficult to maintain any sense of legitimacy with the other students.
I really liked most of the kids. I identified with them. They are struggling to find their place in a world that doesn’t want to include them. They know it and are doing their best to carve out something, anything. They have extreme loyalty to the people close to them and little concern for anyone else. They stay high to manage the day. This was me in high school and a good portion of the time after. It is a difficult place to be. We had a particularly challenging student in my first cohort. Her older sister had been through the program a few years prior and there were reports of struggles in the home. They lived in an affluent neighborhood in our generally poor county and I am aware money masks a lot of problems. It was speculated she had undiagnosed mental health challenges. I’m no professional, but I couldn’t see it. (This description was floated by our program director often; it always felt like a way to separate herself from the students.) This kid worked hard to be oppositional as often as possible. She was hurting and it showed. She craved and demanded attention, but didn’t trust it. Smart and manipulative, she managed to work herself into a difficult position. Her probation was scheduled to end during the program and she thought that she wouldn’t be expected to finish so she used her two allotted absences at the anticipated end of her probation. When her P.O. extended supervision until she completed the program, she faced an impossible choice- scheduled for the same day were the family celebration and her sister’s high school graduation and our last class meeting. If she missed class, she’d have to start the 10-week program from the beginning and/or face additional punishments from probation. She realized what she had done and struggled with the impossible choice for a couple weeks, her behavior escalating steadily. When I realized it, I shared with my coworkers that I thought she was trying to get us to expel her, saving her a difficult decision. We debated the options, I thought she would benefit from another 10 weeks with us, but no one else could stand the idea of having her around. She seemed like a kid who desperately needed a win, maybe more so than anyone I’ve ever known, so I asked the program director if we could offer her the final class in a special session a day early while we taught another class, allowing her to both complete the program and be part of the important family milestone. To my surprise, she agreed. It seemed uncharacteristically generous, but I assumed it was because she didn’t want her around for another cohort. Christine insisted we should tell the student that this solution was my idea, a recognition I did not want, I thought credit should go to the entire team, but Christine did it anyway. When we presented the idea to our student, she readily accepted. Her behavior shifted a bit during the final weeks, not as much as I had hoped, but change takes time and progress is always slower than I’d like. I was optimistic. I thought we had demonstrated the world can sometimes do nice things and that people aren’t always out to make your life difficult. The last day broke my heart. Our student showed up happy and ready to accept her win, but the program director had a flex waiting for her. Every other student got a giant gift bag for completing their program and our girl had to sit there as the only kid without a gift. She struggled to manage her emotions for several hours, she didn’t want anyone to see how it had hurt her. I hated the program manager for it and struggled to manage my emotions, too. I know we harmed that child. And she did it intentionally.
Our after-school programs were conducted at a county building that also housed the 4-H Club and Senior Services/Meals on Wheels and our students were considered a problem by both programs. They were never invited to any of their events and were viewed suspiciously by all who encountered them. Juvenile justice is designed to be rehabilitative, but these additional punishments made clear there would be no such opportunities. A county van picked the students up for class at home a few minutes after their school busses dropped them off and they would arrive hungry and frustrated after spending anywhere from one to three hours on an uncomfortable bus without climate control. We provided snacks, generally ramen noodles and chips, to help sustain them during the active class work, but it never seemed to be enough. The van was manned by two drivers who thought like people expecting trouble- they collected student’s cellphones so they couldn’t send the van’s location to their friends and varied the route to avoid an ambush. LeRoy was a retired truck driver and Mr. Jett a retired corrections officer. They did not think well of our students; having been around much longer than I, they did not believe in the redemptive qualities of the program. LeRoy was divorced and bitter, and struggled with diabetes and other health problems. Even though he was in his late 50s, he paid extra attention to the young women he found attractive. It was obvious and made things uncomfortable. We are the same age and when I suggested we should occupy a role closer to grandparent than potential partner he was highly offended. I was told Mr. Jett had worked in corrections since the old Alabama chain gang days and had been part of making problem inmates disappear, their records vanishing along with them, their families never knowing what happened to their loved ones. I wondered why she would have someone like working with young adults.
The drivers liked to take their time departing the building after class. They laughed and talked and were in no hurry to get going. The students would often stand around the locked van for an extended period. It felt like a power play, the students were all anxious to get home, but knew it would be another hour or two before the van dropped them off, depending on the route. The drivers worked this to their advantage and used being the first to be dropped off as an incentive and the last as a punishment. Waiting to get on the van was establishing who was in control. One night while we cleaned up the classroom and this played out, I heard LeRoy telling a young man with sagging pants to pull them up and, when he resisted, saying something to the effect of, “You know what that means in prison. It means you’re open for business. Is that what you want to be saying?” I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do, but knew I had to do something when an adult was using homophobia and sexual innuendo with a student in his charge. I responded that he shouldn’t be using homophobia to correct behavior and LeRoy got angry. He tried to get me to agree with his assessment of what sagging pants mean, but I struggled to explain I understood the trend to have started in California as a show of solidarity with the incarcerated who are not allowed belts, but that it had since evolved into a style of its own. LeRoy was generally disgusted and muttered some things I couldn’t understand before stating something to the effect of, “You were giving him a hard time about Chick-Fil-A, but the boy just wanted to find a job.” The statement made no sense so I asked who he was talking about and he adjusted it to say I had made someone feel bad about having previously worked at Chick-Fil-A. It still made no sense. When I again asked what he was talking about, he began to yell at me and explain that his brother is a prison warden so he knows what happens inside. As he ranted, I wondered if his diabetes was making him behave erratically. He was yelling at me in front of our students. I stood squared to him, but chose not to engage with his anger. After a moment of staring at me, he turned and walked out the door, muttering something I could not understand. I wasn’t sure I should let the students get on the bus with him. Mr. Jett assured me it was okay.
I was shocked.
Shocked by his comments to the student, at having been yelled at, wondering what Chick-Fil-A had to do with any of it, but recognizing their general homophobia made their inclusion somewhat understandable, and wondering whether LeRoy was experiencing some type of diabetic issue. None of it made any sense.
I immediately went to the program director’s office to report what had happened. The van was still outside and I wasn’t sure LeRoy should be on the van with our students. Christine listened intently as I relayed the story and immediately began apologizing for LeRoy’s comments. She explained they had all for some time used this same rhetoric to address student’s sagging pants and she had not realized it was homophobic. She reported hearing it often, even on the radio, without questioning it and apologized to me several times. I believed she meant it.
The next afternoon I received an email asking me to reply privately to her with a description of the events. I shared the story assuming this was an issue for human resources to resolve. When LeRoy was copied on the following day’s email asking everyone to attend a team meeting, I knew there was trouble.
Team meetings had been infrequent in my tenure, but generally utilized a sign in sheet with the agenda listed. Because I take notes in meetings, I would request a copy of the agenda. At this meeting, Christine was for the first time oppositional to my request, stating she would need to check with Jill, the county-level program supervisor to see if it was okay to give me a copy. I recognized she was sending a message. Christine talked for 90-minutes about a number of changes we were implementing without addressing LeRoy’s behavior, including increased use of student sanctions for issues with offenses, specifically citing homework completion and improper language as concerns. The student dress code was also to be emphasized and henceforth should be followed to the letter, including zero tolerance for sagging pants and providing zip ties or loaning oversized t-shirts to address the problem. She acknowledged students wouldn’t like it, but explained that would help to curb the behavior. Facilitators would no longer share class notes and we would stop using the program fidelity checklists in class (she specifically explained this was because I had noticed and documented our grad student skipping a section of the program the previous week.) Christine announced she would instead begin to conduct classroom observations herself and would roll out an evaluation process to be conducted after each cohort of students. For the agenda item “Peer relationships (respecting each other and differences, staying in your lane)” she read a statement on personal gain and reminded us that we cannot use the program to advance a personal agenda. She cited as an example, “Say I didn’t believe in marriage” and explained we cannot project our beliefs onto students. From there a 40-minute discussion of the “confrontation” between LeRoy and I commenced. It was determined that we were both equally wrong, him for having used homophobia and sexual innuendo with the students, and me for having addressed it in front of the students. We were instructed to work it out between us.
During the discussion many telling comments were made. The “dead weight” facilitator explained he thought the problem was that LeRoy and I were both old and set in our ways, so the disagreement got out of control. The former corrections officer thought the problem was that this situation was likely to become known outside the building and that when people learn what’s going on, programs like this tend to go away. He stated that even though he had a pension, he like the “little money” he got here. The facilitator who had not been present during the event had a strong feeling that the problem was simply that it happened in front of the students.
The next week brought more changes, the student who had been assigned to me, and who was coming in early before most classes to talk about the happenings in his life, would no longer be allowed to talk with me. He would need to sit in the driver’s room outside Christine’s office and watch TV. The facilitator who had not been present stopped speaking to me completely. She would avoid being in the same room with me and stopped assisting/participating when I was the lead instructor. The program director began leaving the building once the students arrived and stopped responding to my emails, including questions about dates for trainings I had been asked to attend and a request for clarity about the “personal gain” clause. After a week of ostracization and increasing hostility, I emailed my intent to resign at the end of the program; an out of office auto-reply informed my supervisor would be absent for a week, something that had not previously been shared with me.
I finished out the week and didn’t go back. It was clear I was not welcome. They had circled the wagons to protect LeRoy, even while acknowledging he was wrong. They had admittedly all been doing the same thing and it is likely they just didn’t want to address their own behavior. Bigotry and the resulting privileges are tough to give up. But, what about the students? These folkx know they are harming them and do not care. They personally benefit, so they continue doing it, despite the harm and having been tasked with protecting the students. It is the school-to-prison pipeline and prison industrial complex at work, protected by a version of the thin blue line. I think our kids deserve better.
Three months later, I passed the van driving through the community; it was loaded with students and LeRoy was at the wheel. It re-opened the wound and I reached out to the state-level administrator about his continued supervision of students. Her polite, two-sentence email let me know she was holding the line.
Debby Yoder 