Steve Reba: His Life

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Of all my cases, his is far and away the most unjust, living in the fracture just out of the reach of Graham. I met him among the ragged novels in the prison library, a small table between us.  I began the conversation as I begin every first conversation, “Tell me about your life before the alleged offense and prison.”  Nervousness paralyzed his words, which I attributed to the natural reaction that unsounded desperation has when presented with a modicum of hope. His story was sadly common. Siblings defaulted to the role of parent while a mother worked three jobs.  A father would show up occasionally, deliver a beating, and vanish.  He knew precisely how many times he had seen the man.  The last time, particularly memorable, involved a blow that left the boy disabled.  The transitory family moved from government-subsidized housing to mobile home parks in the small North Georgia town.  Some residences theirs, some the homes of kind neighbors who let them stay for awhile.

New Rules: Isolation, Handcuffs, Hogties

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Schools cannot put children in seclusion rooms as a form of punishment anymore, and must limit the use of physical and chemical restraints. The State Board of Education approved new rules Thursday for handcuffing children, controlling them with prone restraint tactics, and giving them prescription drugs to control their behavior. These measures are now limited to situations where students are an immediate danger to themselves or others, or when calming techniques don’t work. Parents of 13-year old Jonathon King of Gainesville pushed for changes after their son hanged himself in a seclusion room in 2004. Jonathan was a student in the Alpine Program, a public school in Gainesville, Ga.

Normer Adams: Data Matters

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"Anything worth doing is worth measuring," is the philosophy of the Fostering Court Improvement. Fostering Court Improvement is a non-profit organization that uses data to assist Dependency Courts and Child Welfare Agencies in making informed decisions, managing their operations, monitoring their performance and making systemic changes to improve outcomes for children and families. Their roots and founding are in Georgia. Georgia's own Barton Child Law and Policy Clinic at Emory University works very closely with the Family Research Center at the University of Illinois to refine data so that it is usable and accessible to the courts and child welfare agencies.  It is a terrific resource to our State and those involved in advocacy for the wellbeing of children in Georgia. They have an excellent website that has the latest information concerning many states including Georgia. Georgia's data is very informative and complete.  Data is sorted by county, region, judicial circuit and judicial district.  Comparisons can be made relative to how counties are doing in comparison to each other. Did you know that in regard to counties per 10,000 residents that:

Children subject to maltreatment investigations - Lanier County was the highest (55.5) and Webster County was the lowest number of investigations (0).

Steve Reba: On the Ground in Georgia's Juvenile Justice System

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For more than an hour, I sat in an interview room waiting for the prison guards to bring him up from solitary. In a place where anything can be fashioned into a weapon, time is no exception. Tired of staring at the large metal door, I pulled a manila folder labeled “Letters” from my case file and began reading. Sent in roughly four-week intervals, each letter was a plea in the same format.  Part one, the abuse.  Part two, imploring me for help.  Part three, thanking me profusely. As I reached the end of last month’s letter, I heard the faint sound of ankle chains hitting the ground.

Steve Reba: Unrecorded Life

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We opened case log after case log; some on shelves, some piled in columns, askew on the damp floor.  In the process, century-old dust resting on the massive books had awoken, making it increasingly difficult to see anything in the room. When we first began to search the poorly lit space in the catacombs of the ancient building, the court clerk found a reference to what we were looking for.  But, in the five hours since that find there had been nothing.  It wasn’t here. He had been trying to track it down for half of his life.  And my trip down these pecan-tree-lined roads to this decaying courthouse in southern Georgia had been just as futile as the countless letters he had sent to the court from prison over the last sixteen years. On my way out of town, I made a left on a road I recognized from the police report.  Just beyond a mobile home park was a vacant storefront with a grassy lot of long-abandoned cars at the rear.

Steve Reba: Better Than Not Trying

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With the confederate battle flag high atop a pole in the foreground, he trudged up the courthouse steps.  It was a toss-up as to what made it more difficult for him to move, the oversized jumpsuit hanging off his thin frame or the shackles running from wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle.  His mother looked at him, then at his juvenile correction officer escort, then at me.  She was crying. The officer let mother and child speak for a moment.  They moved off to the side, and we asked the officer why our small, gaunt client still had clothes that were three sizes too big.  His answer was something to the effect of he’s so much smaller than the other residents, and the facility doesn’t stock jumpsuits that size.  Sensing his answer to be inadequate, he jumped into a monologue on the facility where he currently worked, the facility he worked at previously, and his retirement that was days away.  He spoke with the boldness that comes with leaving something entirely.  He chastised the system, its failures, its apathy, its infectious numbness. His discontent waned and he directed his attention back to the youth in chains, summoning him into the courthouse.  Mother hugged son.  Son, unable to separate his arms to complete the action, leaned into his mother’s grasp. I sat in the hallway outside the courtroom jotting down some final notes before the hearing.  There was no holding cell, so the officer sat in the opposite corner of the hallway next to the youth who was despondently swatting at flies circling his head with both hands.  After a few swats, each one a little less enthusiastic than the last, he gave up and put his head in his bound hands.