NCJ Number
146761
Journal
California Youth Authority Quarterly Volume: 33 Issue: 4 Dated: (Winter 1980) Pages: 18-25
Date Published
1980
Length
8 pages
Annotation
The author describes his journey starting as a juvenile offender in California's Juvenile Hall continuing on to increasing criminal and gang activity through the California Youth Authority system and finally to the Department of Corrections, where he is serving time for murder. He describes the influences throughout the correctional system that make a life of crime and violence inevitable.
Abstract
In this article, an inmate in California's state penitentiary writes about his transformation from a bright student growing up in an East Los Angeles "barrio" into a hardened criminal. At the age of 14, he was ridiculed by his peers because of his ignorance about street gangs and doing time. By the time he was 15, he had been arrested and sent to Juvenile Hall. He describes feeling excited at the prospect of doing time and his desire to meet the challenge head on. There he learned about the pressures and codes enforced by prison gangs that force inmates, especially Chicano inmates, to be tough and violent in order to survive. He learned his "lessons" well which eventually landed him in the custody of the California Youth Authority and into increasing involvement with gangs. Finally, with a feeling of pride, he graduated to the California Department of Corrections where he is currently serving a sentence for murder. Now that he is trying to turn his life around, he can describe the influence of gangs throughout the correctional system and the frustration of being trapped in a perpetual cycle of evil behavior. Any backing away from this behavior would have been perceived as weakness by other inmates.