WEBVTT - Part Two: The Child Prisons of Texas 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:14.560 What's fucked my home state? Yea, this is Behind the 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.279 Bastards podcast Bad People tell you all about him. We 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.919 have an opening schema that I used in the last 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:22.200 episode that dates back several years, where I would I 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:24.960 would essentially say, what's xing my wise. It started with 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.720 generic introduction, you know, what's cracking my peppers and stuff? 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:33.720 And now it's become completely atomized from its origins and 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:35.519 probably makes no sense to people who are just like 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.559 hopping into an episode, But that's how we introduce you sometimes. 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:41.080 So hello, it's quite a joy, man. I'm not gonna lie. 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.840 And we don't usually introduce ourselves, and sometimes we forget 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:47.800 to introduce our guests. Yep, our guest who is of 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:51.400 course Prop. I will not be saying your your your 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:58.200 government name. Appreciate that. It's all yeah, yeah, um Prop. 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:03.520 How do you feel about Texas? How truthful do you 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:06.600 want me to answer this? It's fine, it's fine. I 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:11.000 can't stay in this place. Yeah, I couldn't, like you know, now, 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.920 there's things about it that are nice. Yeah. Now, as 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.800 a caveat, there are plenty of lovely people that I 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:22.200 adore that live in Texas, one of which is my grandmother, 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:26.880 you know, was from Sulfur Springs and moved to Dallas, 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:30.120 and my father was born into big d you know 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:32.000 what I'm saying, And like, so I got some I 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:35.080 got some some roots out there. That being said, I 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:37.839 don't know nobody in my family that still lives there 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.000 because pretty much strange from that side of the family. 0:01:41.160 --> 0:01:44.440 That being said, the ones that were from Texas that 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.280 I do know, all came to California in the sixties. 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.200 So in my mind that Californians. So I moved from 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:53.080 Texas to California. It was one of the best decisions 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:58.520 I ever made my family, just like my great grandma. Yeah, 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:02.400 let's see, there's a thing that you get. I mean, 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:04.360 I say, it's about half of the people that I 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:06.760 love in the world still live in Texas. There's wonderful 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:09.520 things about it. There's still only Texas has but like 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:12.360 there is a feeling a lot of people get living 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.040 in Texas that more or less I would sum up 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.560 as I gotta get the funk out of here, out 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:22.160 of this place. One of my d j's from San 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:24.680 Angelo that I worked with, the same thing. He was 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.400 just like, I'm a Texan, but I cannot wait to leave. Yeah, 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:30.960 and it is indelibly printed on my soul. There's all 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:33.360 sorts of things about me that are very deeply Texan. 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:35.480 But like, well, I just at a point where I 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:37.520 was like I'm going, yeah, I gotta get out of here. 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:45.239 And yeah, David, Um, I like I like a lot 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.240 of West Texas. Um, had some real good times in 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:51.480 Hill Country. Um. There's kinds of freedom that you can 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:54.160 have in Texas. If you're a white person, I should 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.959 I should stay. Yeah. If you are a white person, yeah, 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.960 um that you you don't often find other parts of 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:04.480 this country, even as a white person. There's like things 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:06.400 that you can get up to in Texas that are 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:11.079 absolutely nuts. Um. But it comes with a couple of caveats, 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:14.000 one of them being the fact that Texas has probably 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:18.520 the most nightmarish juvenile justice system in the entire United States, which, 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:20.920 as we have discussed a number of times in this podcast, 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:23.560 including earlier this week, has a pretty shitty history with 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:28.680 juvenile justice. Texas is unquestionably the worst. Like the state 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:32.040 that is the has the worst history with juvenile justice, 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.040 and that's Texas is winning in a contest that includes 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.120 fucking Florida. It's crazy like, do you know how much 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:44.200 Florida hates kids? Yes, Florida really really hates keys Texas. 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.280 Oh boy, Yeah, that's what we're about to talk about today. 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.080 Um So, in our last episode, I opened by giving 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:52.400 a history of the term super predator, and while that 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.520 specific term was the creation of a single man, he 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:57.520 was simply the latest in a line of men who 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:00.280 have spent generations building and reinforcing an area if that 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.280 some children are inherently dangerous and must be policed brutally 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:08.240 for the safety of all. William S. Bush is a 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.320 PhD u S History professor from the University of Texas 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:13.840 at Austin. And he's a good guy. I introduced him 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:15.480 after you're talking about the super predator thing. No, he's 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:19.320 he's he's a he knows his ship. He wrote a 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:21.760 book that is one of the major sources for this episode, 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:24.440 with one of the most chilling titles for a book 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:28.120 I've ever heard. It's called Who Gets a Childhood? And 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:33.040 it is about the criminal justice system in Texas. Yeah. Yeah, 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:36.880 it's It's interesting, dude, because it's like one of the 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:40.120 things among like black activism is the idea that like 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:43.320 black and brown children are forced to be adults in 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.960 the eyes of the law, way before we're ready to 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:48.719 be it. So, yeah, okay, this is crazy and bull 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:50.800 boy he does focus a lot of it is about 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:55.080 racism in the Texas criminal justice juvenile justice system. It's 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.160 a good book. I recommend it. It's very readable. It 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:59.080 is kind of an academic text, but it's a very 0:04:59.080 --> 0:05:02.960 readable one. Um now, Bush and it, folks, this is 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:06.640 a book about Texas specific. Bush notes that historians of 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:10.240 childhood claim that the or tend to agree that the 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:14.279 concept of of what they call protected childhood started in 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:17.400 the United States around the eighteen twenties. Obviously, this is 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:18.800 the thing happening in different parts of the world in 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:20.720 different ways. But like we now see childoo was like, 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:22.480 you have to not just that, Like you have to 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:24.880 protect children, which is the thing people have always done, 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.240 but you have to protect children from certain things like 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.800 understanding and interacting in the world the same way in 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:34.080 adult That's right, kids don't work, they shouldn't. We most 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:36.960 people agree on that now, like like kids should not 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.839 recent labor like adults labor. Kids should not be subject 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:43.120 to some of the realities that adults are subject to. 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:46.240 These are we can always debate some of this stuff, 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.320 like particularly hiding certain realities of the world from kids, 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:51.680 but these are things society broadly agrees upon. Now, this 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:54.440 is what a protected childhood is, right, the idea that 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.560 you protect kids from some of the things that adults 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.359 have to deal with. And no, the movement towards this 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.520 concept for protected childhood in the United States, and again 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:04.040 we're talking in the U s. Here, it happens other 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.000 places different ways. There's a lot of academics here. Please, 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:09.680 I'm not trying to this is this is a broad overview. 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.599 This movement starts with the free school and Sunday school 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.320 social movements, which again kind of the eighteen twenties come down. 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:18.479 As we've talked about actually in a couple of recent episodes. 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.040 These all start in like the Northeast and kind of 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.039 spread to the rest of the country. These ideas that 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:25.520 like school should be free, every kid should get an 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.440 education and it shouldn't cost them anything. And also the 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:30.719 idea that like Sunday school is a is a thing, 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.200 which is you know, tied to religion, but also also 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:36.120 tied to this idea that like this very new idea 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:38.520 that like education is a thing that every kid deserves. 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:41.920 So people died all the time back then for basically 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.640 no reason, which also meant that like in this period, 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.440 there's a ton of orphans, you know. Um, And so 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:50.480 when people started this kind of long process of giving 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:54.680 a ship about childhood's for children, um, it leads to 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:57.719 a bunch of facilities getting opened, not just to deal 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:00.240 with orphaned kids, but to deal with like kids were 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.320 delinquent kids who have various kind of behavioral issues. They 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:05.520 all kind of get shoved into the same place. These 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.440 these are generally called houses of refuge. And it's a 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.120 mix because obviously they are saying like well, if you're 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:13.520 homeless or or if you're a kid committing petty crimes, 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:17.520 you belong in the same place, which is not great, um, 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:20.760 but also it is it is good, and that it's 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.280 kind of as a society people being like, well, even 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:25.760 though they're not my kid, I as a member of 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.480 society have some responsibility towards And that's just a fun 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:31.920 this facility, which is not a bad development. Again, it's problematic, 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:36.120 but yeah, but it's a communal understanding that like the 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:41.000 children are ours, yeah, not just yours, they're ours, and 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:43.960 like we and if we want to like live in 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:48.000 a community that we enjoy, Like I should invest in 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:51.840 your the other things around me, you know what I'm saying. 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:54.440 I think often when we talk about movements like this, 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:56.600 it is easy to focus on like the horrible negatives 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.120 which we'll be talking about. Everything today we're gonna talking 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:01.760 about comes from this. But it's not one thing or 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:04.200 the other entirely it is. There's a lot that's sucked 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.200 up about this. It also is coming from this place 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:08.520 of like, oh, there's all these children on the streets 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:12.680 and like maybe we have a responsibility to them some 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:17.160 money here too. Wait, You'm I mad? Yeah, what what 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.240 are you doing? People? What you're doing on the quarter 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:24.720 three years old? Yeah? Yeah, I would even say this man, 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:28.360 Like even just going through as a parent, like I'm saying, 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:30.800 as like a now a parent is like even when 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:36.000 going through just the history of the decisions other parents 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:40.160 or societies have made for their kids that obviously that 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:44.600 weren't preposterous, but ones that are like the reality is 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:49.520 like there's no this a whole last human and you're like, 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:54.520 there's nothing more terrifying than the idea of like their 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:57.360 life is in my hands and I don't know what 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:02.360 the funk I'm doing? Like that that existential dread. I 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:04.400 feel like, if you're going to be a good parent, 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:07.880 you have felt that fear where you're like, I don't 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:12.040 know what I'm doing, YO saying, You're like, where do 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:16.400 what do I I can't I don't know what I'm 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:18.480 I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:20.600 fund this kid up. You know what I'm saying. And 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:22.599 you know, you're like, well, I'm fucked up, you know 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:23.800 what I'm saying, Like, I mean, I don't know. I 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:28.240 just I think, like I think you're like, I don't 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.959 know what I'm doing, but at least I know you 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.080 should live on a damn streets man, Like there needs 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:37.319 to be some sort of adult in your life, right, 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:39.960 like you know, I mean, yeah, yeah, and that that 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:43.559 that's kind of happening on a really broad scale here, 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:45.839 and a lot of it's made possible because of industrialization. 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:48.680 Both there's a lot more people from industrialization kind of 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.679 all the sources and so like these facilities kind of 0:09:51.760 --> 0:09:54.120 grow in size and pop up, start popping up all 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:56.240 over the United States throughout like kind of the mid 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.640 to late eighteen hundreds. Now at the same time, all 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:01.439 this is happening, and part of why it's happening is 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:04.280 that the US is creating its middle class um and 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:07.319 in fact the very concept of a middle class. Parents 0:10:07.320 --> 0:10:10.480 start having fewer kids and devoting a lot more time 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:12.360 and attention to the development of the kids that they 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:14.640 do have, and the idea starts to spread as a 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.480 result of all this that children not not don't don't 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:20.040 just deserve maybe to be house but deserves to learn 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:22.880 and play um and not to die in coal mines 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:25.520 are like bang drums, Well, don't shoot rifles at each other, 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:27.680 right at Like, maybe you shouldn't be doing some of 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.080 the things we're doing with kids. At some point you 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:33.960 said to yourself, you know, my childhood was trash. You know, 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:36.280 I didn't really get to that. Look, I wish I 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:37.840 could have been able to you know what when I 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:41.360 have it's I'm gonna let him play outside. You don't 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.680 need to go to no coal mine and die. Yeah, yeah, 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:47.640 yeah yeah. And so that that's happening in this period 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:50.479 and the kind of the people who these early advocates 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:52.600 of the concept of a childhood, these early like people 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:54.800 who are are supporting the idea that there should be 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:57.439 restrictions on like what we can make kids do. UM. 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.280 They're generally called child savers, and most of them are 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:03.120 middle class moms. UM. And it's from them in this 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.240 advocacy in kind of the late eighteen hundreds that we 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.480 get stuff like age of consent laws, child labor bands, 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:13.840 and compulsory education. That's all good stuff broadly speaking. UM. 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.720 But these positive moves occur along more muddled developments too, 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:20.360 because these women are also responsible. These activists are also 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.200 responsible for the concept of youth curfews, the idea that like, 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:25.640 we shouldn't let kids out at night sometimes and they 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:28.000 should be punished if they are out at night, um, 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:32.280 and the juvenile justice system, which is a very mixed bag. 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:35.679 William Bush writes. Many of these reforms were aimed at 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:39.480 extending the protections of childhood to working class and poor children. Moreover, 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:41.640 they sought to broaden the years of protection and semi 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:45.400 dependence on adults upward into the adolescent years, a reflection 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:48.120 of the slowly spreading idea of adolescence itself at the 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:50.920 turn of the twentieth century. One of its leading proponents, 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:54.880 the Clark University psychiatrist and child study movement leader Grandville. 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.160 Stanley Hall described the life stage of adolescence famously as 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:02.360 a time of storm and stress, a time of risk taking, rebellion, awkwardness, 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.640 and self discovery. Adolescence he and other psychiatrists such as 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:10.240 William Healy proposed uh needed to be treated individually, especially 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:12.960 when they ran a foul of rules, as seemed almost inevitable. 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:16.480 Early juvenile court judges such as Denver's Ben Lindsay helped 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:20.280 popularize the idea of the tough but fatherly juvenile justice official, 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:23.880 for whom understanding his wayward charges was a specialty. Meanwhile, 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:26.920 courts for delinquent girls, headed by matronly figures such as 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:30.720 Mary in Barthelm of Chicago, preoccupied themselves with curbing the 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:34.360 precocious sexuality of working class girls, whose families were often 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:38.480 recent arrivals in American industrial cities. So again, a lot 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:41.760 going on here, you know, still products of your your time, 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.280 of its time. But yeah, this is this is kind 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:48.199 of how this starts to look. Um. Yeah, and it's 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:49.920 it's important to note that, like, because we're talking about 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:52.240 how bad the juvenile justice system, the idea that we 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:54.840 should have one came from a really good place, which 0:12:54.840 --> 0:13:00.120 is that like kids as adults when they grownups. You 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:01.679 should be in prison with the grown ups. You shouldn't 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:03.800 be judged by the same judges who judged grown ups, 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:05.640 like we should have a separate thing for you, in 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:09.880 part because kids are gonna funk around and like they're 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:12.240 like the finding out part of that shouldn't be as 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:16.040 brutal as it is for adults. Judge Lindsay even complained, 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:19.520 quote this business of punishing infants as if they were adults, 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:21.680 and of maiming young lives by trying to make the 0:13:21.720 --> 0:13:24.400 grizzle of their unformed characters carry the weight of our 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:30.640 iron laws and heavy penalties. Um, yes, yeah, yeah, there's 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.880 there's some people who are saying really good shit now. 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:37.360 In Texas, juvenile and adult offenders were first separated in 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:41.360 eighteen eighties six after protests from the local women's Christian 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:43.800 Temperance Union, which is right around the same time it 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.440 starts happening in a bunch of other places. The next year, 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.479 the legislature in Texas passed a bill approving a dedicated 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:53.760 house of correction for children. Gatesville opened in January of 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:56.319 eighteen eighty nine, and it was one of the first 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.400 dedicated juvenile attention facilities anywhere in the United States. It 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:03.840 was followed later that year by facilities from in Virginia, Kentucky, 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:08.040 and Alabama. Gatesville opened with eighty six inmates. It was 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:11.040 immediately popular with the locals, who saw rightly that it 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:13.640 would bring a lot of jobs to their town. Local 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:17.920 residents actually raised money so the state can't pay, like 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:20.160 their budget runs short and they can't pay for all 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:22.160 the land they need to buy this facility, and people 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:24.160 who live in the town nearby raise the money to 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:26.520 buy it for the state because they're like, well, this 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:28.720 is going to provide us with jobs forever if we 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.000 have a child prison in town. Oh my god, why 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:35.360 is that? Their first thought was like everybody's first thoughts, 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.040 like spoilers, that's where this is going for the next century. 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:41.720 That's why I went. What it's like. I thought they're 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:44.000 gonna be like, oh that's cool man, you know, yeah, kids, 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:45.440 I got it. You shouldn't have to go to jail. 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:47.440 There's money in this ship. Wait, we can buy some 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:51.920 money off you hit the lip bro like yeah, yeah, 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:55.560 it's great. Um. So, the boys who were interned in 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.440 Gatesville were overwhelmingly city dwellers. And there's this idea at 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:02.920 the time that Texas never gets past that kids who 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.720 are juvenile delinquents, most of whom are urban kids, need 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.800 to be put in prisons far away from their families, 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.960 in isolated rural communities. Um basically, all of these kids 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.280 were poor to One survey of early Gatesville inmates found 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:19.960 that a hundred nineteen out of a hundred ninety five 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:24.080 listed their mother's occupation as housekeeper, while the leading descriptions 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:30.920 of their fathers were unknown railroad men, laborers, and farmers. Unknown. 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:33.640 Being up there is to tell you something about what's 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:36.680 gone on. Two thirds of these boys had lost one 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.440 of their parents, and slightly less than half of their 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.800 parents had criminal records themselves. William Bush goes on to 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.560 note that the racial disparity and who went to Gatesville 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:49.720 was pretty blatant. African Americans comprised forty six of the 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.240 first forty of the first sixty eight inmates, all of 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:55.440 whom were transferred from the adult prison system. Although Gatesville 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:59.160 admitted inmates regardless of race or ethnicity, it's strictly segregated 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:03.440 every aspect of daily lives, housing, schooling, dining, and religious services. 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.400 As a result, by nineteen seventeen, about two hundred and 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:09.360 fifty black inmates crowded into Harris Hall. The Jim Crow 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.240 Congregate Dormitory built a house about half that number. By contrast, 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:15.560 when the state opened its first and only training school 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:19.600 for girls before World War Two, it excluded black females altogether. 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:22.120 Black girls charged with committing a crime in this period 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.480 may have had their cases heard in local juvenile courts, 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:27.320 but the available remedies were limited to the county jail 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:33.080 or released back into the community. So nothing new. Yeah, yeah, 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:37.200 I mean not exactly news that Texas in nineteen seventeen 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:43.520 was pretty fucking racist. Um, but it's good to have data. Yeah, Like, 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:47.320 I'm still like trying to picture of Juvenile Hall in 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:52.440 the eighteen hundreds. Oh god, right, and I'm just like spiral, 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:54.280 Like it just got me spiraling and thinks, like, I 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.920 just don't know how anyone survived the eighteen hundreds. Yeah. 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.240 And one of the worst things to think about is 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:03.760 the degree to which maybe it's it wasn't much worse 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:05.520 than it is now, at least in a lot of 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:10.080 these facilities in Texas. Um. But that's a that's something 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:13.120 we can talk about. So the fact that Texas would 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:15.479 go on to lead the nation and juvenile incarceration had 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:17.240 a lot to do with the fact that Texas was 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:19.760 the only southern state to see a net gain in 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.320 its black population during the first half of the twentieth century. Right, 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:25.760 That's part of why they're building these facilities is they 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:29.639 have this huge influx of black UM and Hispanic citizens 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.360 moving to the state. UM. And so you've got, well, 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:34.760 the Hispanics were already there, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:37.479 but but yeah, you do have more like coming in 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:40.520 from Mexico and stuff. And you also have, um, you 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:43.720 have a huge number of poor, non white kids moving 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:47.400 into Texas cities, UM, a lot of whom don't have parents, 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:51.959 UM for a variety of horrible reasons. UM. And this 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:54.960 causes a backlash from white Jim Crow supporting citizens who 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:56.760 don't like seeing all of these kids who are not 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.880 white and what they think of as their cities up. 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.800 Police do the thing that police do, which is responds 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:06.520 to the demands of middle class white people, and they 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:10.240 start sweeping juke joints, which is generally how the places 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:12.680 they sweep to to arrest black kids are described I 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:16.359 think it's like, you know, it's like a dance halls. 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:20.720 Like that's just like the club was, like the time joint. 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:24.680 Yeah yeah, great music came out of here. Yeah yeah. Um. Now, 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:28.360 the nation's first juvenile court was was established in Chicago, 0:18:28.520 --> 0:18:30.960 and the focus of this court was, at least on papers, 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.679 supposed to be rehabilitating the kids that got interned in 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:38.600 the system. Texas though, and obviously Chicago like that system, 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:40.200 you know a lot of flaws and a lot of 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:42.000 things that they could be criticized. Could probably do an 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.160 episode about that. But it's worth noting that the first 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.200 juvenile court in the nation is in Chicago and it's 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:50.480 supposed to be focused on rehabilitation from the start, because 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:55.159 Texas follows soon after. Their juvenile justice system from the 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:59.960 start very openly is not about rehabilitation. They specifically say, 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:03.160 that's not our goal here. We are here to punish kids. 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.320 Gatesville became what one activist group described as an instrument 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.840 of torture. In nineteen twelve, a new superintendent for the 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.960 facility ordered the banning of several forms of corporal punishment 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:16.600 that had started in the late eighteen hundreds, and these 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:19.640 sound somewhat tortury. I'm gonna read a quote from Who 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:21.439 Gets a Childhood if you want. This will give you 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:23.880 some context on what it's like being in a juvenile 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:25.880 prison in Texas in the late eighteen hundreds, and start 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:30.040 with the nineteen hundreds, Adams outlawed pulling toes and which 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:32.360 boys were forced to stand holding their toes with their 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.679 hands indefinitely, and bustings, and which boys were made to 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:38.080 stand with their arms held over their heads while a 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:42.160 guard flogged them with a bat. I think that's flogging. 0:19:42.240 --> 0:19:48.200 That's just that's not flogging, flogging something soft, right, it's 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:50.760 pretty ugly too, but like, that's just hitting a kid 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:55.119 with a bat. Flogging not flogging, that's just beating a 0:19:55.240 --> 0:20:03.280 child with a heavy stick. I was like, the images 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:07.520 egregious and the sentence for which you used to explain 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:12.760 the images egregious because that's not flogging. Now. So in 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:17.000 nine twelve, this new superintendent orders these things banned, and 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:21.359 the guards revolt. Um. They initially express their displeasure by 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:24.280 allowing more than two dozen kids to escape over a 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:26.399 three day period. Right, so they just stopped doing their 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:33.119 jobs kids, put them on the streets. You'll see you know, 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.760 um and yeah, they eventually they walk off the job, 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.919 just completely strike, which forces the superintendent to recruit local citizens, 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:43.399 most of whom supported the guards, to serve in their place, 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:47.600 and obviously very little gets actually changed because in this 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:50.240 will be a pattern. These trends will continue through the 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:53.040 rest of the story. Oh my god, why someone in 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:56.240 this case, the guy running it like recognizes a problem, 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:59.080 tries to change it, and a mix of the guards 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:02.520 working at the facility and the local citizens say absolutely not, 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.600 you ain't improving shit, and nothing gets done. Can you 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:11.240 imagine that you're unionizing and somebody's like, why you are 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.520 using unionizing because they won't let us beat the kids 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:17.040 with bats. Yeah, imagine like a couple of like, well, 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:19.320 we're unionizing because we're all going to die from the 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:21.880 black log and we'd like our families to get slightly 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.560 more money and maybe have weekends off. Oh, well, we're 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:27.600 unionizing because people keep burning to death in garment fires. 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:30.680 They won't let me hit kids with a bat anymore. Yeah, 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:34.719