Forever Young

"Hey Nasty, your boy C-Loc says what's up, cuz."

"Heeey, what's my boy doin out there Capone?"

"Gang-Bangin!!"

So the conversation goes, night and day. Delusions of grandeur in the minds of socially disadvantaged, developmentally stunted young adults in the California Division of Juvenile Justice. These guys are rapidly budding into adults, at least legally and physically (state jurisdiction delays their legal development into full-fledged adults until their 25th birthday...unless of course they do something really bad).

Beyond physical and legal maturation, however, there is little or no progress. All the trappings of adolescent immaturity--the idolization of Rap stars; unrealistic delusions of impending fame and wealth; unrestrained hypersexuality; utterly self-centered notions of social expectations and responsibilities; oppositional-defiance syndrome-esque perspectives of normative modes of social participation and authority--mixed with histories of abuse, broken homes, drug abuse, delinquency, antisocial attitudes, and frequently, violent crime, reinforced by a youth prison culture that turns these characteristics into a full-blown identity.

Meet the typical ward of the California Division of Juvenile Justice.

Sometimes it amazes me that these are the same kids that California has become so frightened of. A kid that calls himself Capone (after the famous Mobster) is a gang member, but can barely read or write, sings rap songs at the top of his lungs thinking he's the next rapper-cum-entrepreneuer, and whose plan B is to somehow buy an apartment complex in Watts and "sell it for big money to Section 8."

Another who tattoos racist symbols on his arms with pen ink and a staple in his cell ("I just do it dot to dot, you know."), thinks himself a part of a neo-nazi race of ubermench, but who comes to me when nobody's looking to ask for help to pass his GED exam so that he can "get a high-power (that means really good) job when I get out."

These guys, these kids are frightening when they have a gun in their hands. Have we ever really stopped and asked why they don't even believe the hype themselves?

Living among them, being identified as one of them, I know that for most, they turn to criminality, paradoxically, because its the easiest option. Their fears are the fears of children--they don't want me because I'm too different; they think I'm stupid; I don't have what it takes. Many of these thoguhts I had when I was 6 or 7 years old.

I frequently wonder what kind of hell it is to simply lack the socio-psychological (or, as the system likes to call it, cognitive-behavioral) equipment to grow up, to think adult thoughts, to develop a truly mature sense of self. I have read about patients with severe brain trauma, who can no longer recognize the human face qua human face. Is something of the sort also the case with these eternal youth? Have they lost the ability to recognize, identify with, the face of society? What do they see when they look in the mirror? Is acquiring social norms like acquiring language--the older you get, the harder it becomes?