I Cried, You Didn't Listen by Dwight Abbott. Caution: reading this book will make you sick. Sick that such conditions can still exist in our country. Californians especially will have cause to be physically ill because this book is about how the California Youth Authority turns a troubled boy into a hardened criminal. If this book can be believed, the CYA also employs hundreds of "counselors" who don't deserve the title or the pay as they are little more than pedophilic babysitters. Instead of backfilling for the education that young men have missed out on or training the young men a trade that they can use in real life, the CYA facilities essentially train the boys in the law of the jungle where you kill or get killed, enslave or become a slave.
The author of this book didn't even do anything wrong to become a ward of the state. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. His parents were involved in an accident and he was being taken care of by close relatives who didn't measure up to the state's standards. So he was taken from family and place in the hell holes they call security facilities and left to fend for himself. With that a modern day version of Lord of the Flies is enacted.
The miracle is that he survived at all and without having even more hatred and dysfunctional attitude toward "the man". Even if only 1/10th of the story is accurate, the pain, the battering, the torture, the humiliation delivered to these most vulnerable people in our society is enough to guarantee jobs for prison guards in California for years to come.
There are a couple of curious spots in the book such as when, after being imprisoned for 4 or 5 years as one of the toughest cases, he is suddenly taken to his family and released there. That makes no more sense than jailing him in the first place.
Read at your own risk.
No comments:
Post a Comment