Legacy Community School and the New Face of Alternative Education

Legacy is California’s newest version of “continuation” or alternative education. This school is housed in a World War II army barrack. Here, kids are searched, made to walk through metal detectors, placed on formal or informal probation, and subjected to perpetual contact with criminal justice agents. In this school we find the Recuperation Class. This class is a self-contained program for youth with “drug dependence and other behavioral issues.” Unlike the rest of the school, the local probation department directly funds this classroom. In this unique setting, the teacher provides instruction as the probation agent walks around, conducts random drug tests on students, questions youth about their behavior outside of school, and/or takes them directly to detention. Legacy school officials have granted this criminal justice agency unfettered access to their students in return for financial support. While the probation department refers to this well-intentioned process as providing wraparound services to students, I argue that this process resembles “wraparound incarceration” where students cannot escape the formal surveillance of institutions of confinement. In this institution, young women move back and forth between this school and secure detention.

Life behind Bars

In this and other American detention centers, violence is ubiquitous, a central part of life behind bars. Most research in this area focuses on the violence that takes place among fellow inmates (Davis, 2003). My time observing the girls at El Valle suggests the behavior of the correctional staff contributes to violence and fighting in secure detention. In the following chapter, I demonstrate how this institution and its staff promote problematic behaviors (like fighting) and create an atmosphere where these behaviors are necessary. Encouraging these actions might help keep girls safe in detention, but it ultimately further entrenches these young women in the El Valle–Legacy Community School cycle and the larger criminal justice system, contrary to the stated goals of wraparound services. Most of the young people in this study were initially arrested for nonviolent, drug-related offenses, but they earned more time in secure confinement because of fighting. In other words, girls began participating in violent behavior after entering El Valle juvenile detention center.

Trouble in the Home, and First Contact with the Criminal Justice System

In this chapter, I draw on feminist criminology and research on gender and crime to demonstrate how abuse and neglect in the home led the young women in my study to their first contact with the criminal justice system. I pay attention to how home instability is shaped by gendered, racialized, and class-specific challenges. First, I discuss the multiple types of abuse girls experience in the home. This mistreatment led the young women in my study to begin dating at an early age; this new behavior resulted in more abuse at the hands of family members, who viewed their behavior as inappropriate and a violation of “proper” behavior for young Latinas. As this abuse continued, most of the young women in my study began using controlled substances. Soon, they ran away from home. Once on the street, they experienced a new set of challenges, which included finding housing, staying safe, and avoiding physical and sexual abuse. By this point their initial drug use had usually turned into full-blown drug addiction. Drug use and abuse were key factors contributing to first girls’ arrest.

Conclusion

The conclusion revisits the major themes of book. It also highlights the larger implications of these findings for young people in the United States. New partnerships between education and penal facilities and wraparound services as a whole do not help young people stay away from the criminal justice system. Despite the positive intentions of these new services, law enforcement and education administrators inadvertently undermine their goal of helping youth by exposing them to further criminalization. Instead these new services break down social bonds between adults, institutional actors, and other young people that would help the girls in my study begin a more positive life-course. This is reflected in their failed attempts to finish probation, return to traditional school and leave the criminal justice system altogether. I revisit this clear disconnect between the well-intentioned goals of education and corrections administrators with negative outcomes young women must negotiate as they try, and often fail, to stay out of secure detention. I also remind the reader how this process has a set of challenges that are unique to Latinas’ intersecting identities.

Introduction

The book opens with a description of the two key sites in my study: El Valle Juvenile Detention and Legacy community school. I describe the focus of the project and the questions I address. Here, I emphasize how these two institutions and wraparound services shape the pathways of my participants and how these young women navigate these interlocking entities. I then discuss why understanding these new educational and penal connections is important, especially the role they play in the lives of the Latina girls in my study. In this chapter I introduce the term wraparound incarceration, which I coin in the book. I draw on previous research on intersectionality, the school-to-prison pipeline, life course theory and work on gender and crime to situate my own intellectual contributions. The chapter ends with a discussion of the major components of the book, providing readers a “map” of what to expect in the text. Finally, I introduce my primary respondents who will lead off and end every chapter in this manuscript. This introduction as a whole reminds the readers of the importance of studying the processes that lead this growing group of girls into the juvenile justice system.

Hooks for Change and Snares for Confinement

For girls in El Valle and Legacy, incarceration is a central component of their lives. However, once kids turn 18, the violations that previously landed them in juvenile detention now lead directly to adult prisons. I identify the key turning points that lead girls in my study from detention to college, gainful employment, or the larger California prison system. I also reveal the key moments in girls’ development when they are ready and willing for positive change. Unfortunately, many youth are so entrenched in the criminal justice system that when they become ready for change, exiting the criminal justice system becomes impossible. I inform scholars understanding of young women and criminal desistance, as well as the institutional and interpersonal factors that prevent these youth from exiting the criminal justice system. This final section sheds light on the key factors that educators and criminal justice agencies can look for when attempting to make positive interventions in young peoples' life trajectories. It also sheds light on the shortcomings of wraparound services and further verifies my argument that these services resemble wraparound incarceration.

School, Institutionalization, and Exclusionary Punishment

In this chapter, I demonstrate how the treatment girls received at their “regular” schools puts them in situations that landed them back in detention. The challenges of attending school were exacerbated by the lack of positive support girls received from wraparound services once they left Legacy Community School. In fact, the little wraparound support they did receive, like probation supervision and electronic monitoring, actually made them targets for mistreatment at the hands of their peers and educational staff alike. Along with this, the girls were also stigmatized because of the time they spent at Legacy Community School and in El Valle Juvenile Detention Center. In Sandra’s case, those challenges proved too great, and she eventually ended up back in El Valle. Like at home, in detention, and at Legacy, the girls in my study continued to experience interpersonal violence at the hands of their peers, and they received little protection from school or criminal justice officials. Instead, they experienced institutional harassment and targeting shaped by administrators’ gendered and racialized perceptions of these young Latinas as gang members and criminals.