The island of misfit kids

MEDICAL LAKE — The kids sit at various tables working on Christmas projects, as kids will do during the holidays.

The concrete walls of the large, utilitarian room devoid of decoration echo with youthful voices and laughter as they decorate Santa-shaped cookies with sprinkles and frosting, or paint cheap wood craft store ornaments with the help of volunteers dressed in a Santa costume or sporting headbands of reindeer antlers or oversized elf ears.

The kids are all dressed nearly the same, their shoelaces replaced with Velcro.

Their laughter is broken by the occasional squawk of a two-way radio in the background.

Guards wearing black duty belts with key rings and pouches hover on the periphery, keeping a close eye on their prisoners.

Lined up in one corner of the multi-purpose room on the bare concrete floor are bags filled with gifts, each with a soft, stuffed animal poking out of the top, waiting to be opened.

A pimply-faced, blond-haired boy from Moses Lake bragged about stealing a high-end truck in New Jersey and driving west. He and a friend ran out of gas and money in Billings, Mont., where they were arrested for prowling.

“I did 37 days in juvenile prison in Billings,” the boy said with a hint of pride.

That was before he was transferred to the 24,000-square-foot, 64-bed Martin Hall Juvenile Detention Facility on the Eastern State Hospital campus, where he and 21 other boys, girls and one transgendered teenager, are locked up.

“My family are great people,” he said when asked about his upbringing.

Perception

Melody Youker, a volunteer manager and case manager at Martin Hall for 19 years, later pointed out the boys severely crooked teeth.

“Would a good family at his age leave his teeth that way?” she observed. “Some kids don’t know what a good family is. So when he says he comes from a good family, in his eyes it’s a good family.”

The boy, who’s name wasn’t revealed — none of the kids’ names were provided — was one of 14 inmates who took part in a Christmas party hosted by The Landing ministry, a group of Christians who meet with the kids weekly.

Alicia Doney, wearing a full-body neoprene Christmas tree costume, leads the multi-church ministry that visits Martin Hall. She and other volunteers have been hosting the Christmas party for 10 years.

Most of the ministry members are in some form of recovery, she said.

Doney herself was once a short-term guest at Eastern State Hospital, before spending six years in prison, “back in my crazy days of my poor choices,” she said.

The volunteers share their life histories that often parallel the kids’ lives. They share stories of recovery and fruitful post-criminal and post-addiction lives that gives them credibility with, and a glimmer of hope to the kids.

Some volunteers are parents, homeowners and businesspeople, like 29-year-old volunteer Janie Talley, an alumna of Martin Hall, where she landed when she was 16 after she began using drugs, stopped going to school and was eventually arrested for drug possession. Like many at Martin Hall, she also grew up in a family with addiction issues.

Talley got on the right track after landing in a Christian-based clean-and-sober house where she “really dove in” to her church and Christianity.

“I try to use my story to let these kids know that it doesn’t matter where you came from, what you’ve been through or what stigma people put on you,” Talley said. “You can come out of anything and make something of yourself.”

Sadness

Another inmate, a 16-year-old girl with her strawberry blond hair tied in a tight bun, talks in a quiet, distracted voice with her head down as she paints the head of a small ceramic Santa Clause — all black.

At Martin Hall for a week after being picked up for missing a court date for theft and running away from foster care, she also has substance abuse issues.

“Sad,” she said in a shaky voice before breaking into quiet tears when asked what it was like to be locked-up. “Because you’re all by yourself.”

“I hoped to be home with my kids,” she said, her voice cracking, of her 1- and 2-year-old children who live with their great-grandparents.

Facing long-term drug rehabilitation for mental health and substance abuse, according to Youker, the child-mother hopes to eventually “do better for my kids,” and help the people who need her, “more than I need myself.”

“I really want to go home,” she said, adding that the Christmas party only saddened her.

Different reasons

Kids arrive at Martin Hall for different reasons, with different mindsets and with various levels of drug addiction and life-trauma. The crooked-toothed boy still “glorifies” his lifestyle and criminality, Youker said.

“He’s not ready to give up anything,” she said. “He’s having a good time.”

But she felt the teenage mother was “definitely near” her bottom.

Youker estimated that 5 to 10 percent of kids who arrive at Martin Hall are teenage parents.

The weekly ministry visits break up the otherwise highly structured jail environment and allows kids to loosen up and feel that someone cares about them; that they’re connected.

“Often when these kids come in here, they’re in a very lonely place,” Youker said, like the teenage mother, where feelings of abandonment and societal indifference are prominent emotions.

The volunteers and their familiar faces help offset those feelings and lets the kids know that someone cares about them and even loves them.

“The connections show they can trust an adult,” Youker said.

And case managers use that seed of trust and leverage it into other places in the kids’ lives, with other adults, who can help them.

Christmas dinner and gifts

As the party progresses the kids are eventually, one by one, invited to pick out a gift bag, which they open on one of the facility’s industrial-strength tables. Along with the stuffed animals there are small items — an entire bar of soap instead of the usual small sliver, a small pencil, both rare — and a Bible.

Still, Martin Hall is a jail, and while the kids open their gift bags and horse around in a subdued way, guards begin quietly gathering and counting the craft tools — paintbrushes and other items the inmates might use as weapons, or to harm themselves.

After waiting for a time with various levels of patience — some holding their stuffed animals close with faraway looks in their eyes — Christmas dinner arrives. It’s pizza — a big treat for the teenagers.

A group prayer is offered, led by a volunteer who gives thanks for being allowed to meet with the inmates. He prays that “this not be the end of this relationship; that it would continue on into the future” — to a loud chorus of amen’s.

Then the kids, row by row, stand, take a paper plate and point to choose three slices of pizza.

Consortium

Constructed in 1935, Martin Hall is owned by Washington State, but leased by a consortium of nine Eastern Washington counties and two tribes to temporarily house juvenile offenders.

It’s operated by Community, Counseling, and Correctional Services, Inc., a Montana non-profit. The facility is temporary in nature — the typical stay is 11 1/2 days, Youker said, before kids are transferred to a long-term state-run facility.

According to the CCCS website, the company began operating Martin Hall in November 1999, “resulting in the addition of 32 employees and increasing annual revenues by $1.6 million.”

Party’s over

With the pizza gone, and the craft supplies carefully counted and secured, the mood in the room slowly shifts from carefree holiday fun to a more solemn, institutional tone as ministry volunteers say goodbye and the guard’s transition from Christmas party back to detention mode.

There are some hugs. Thanks are exchanged.

“Line up!” a guard yells. “Girls in one line, boys in the other.”

Christmas gift bags in hand, the temporary child-residents of Martin Hall shuffle out.

And the heavy-gage steel door closes loudly and is locked behind them.

Lee Hughes can be reached at [email protected].