Young criminals, new strategies
Jacob Valencia, 18, vacuums the day room at Esperanza Cottage, a housing unit for high-risk males at the Youth Diagnostic and Development Center in Albuquerque. Valencia was considered a model resident at YDDC, but was later moved to another facility in Santa Fe County to make room for others.
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A son, mother and grandmother huddle at a placement hearing before Children's Court Judge Marie Baca.
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Rodolpho Ramirez (right) and Adan Peraza (center) are escorted back to their lodges by corrections officer Darren Levantonio at YDDC. Although state officials say the center will be a model for rehabilitating violent teen offenders, critics say it mixes some of the state's most violent kids with some of its most vulnerable - with terrible results. "It used to be the clients were assaulting each other; now they assault the staff," says guard Roger Stansbury, a 14-year veteran of YDDC. "The only safe place for me is on graveyard (shift). The majority of the time they sleep. . . . Like so many of the kids, I've gone into survival mode."
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In this 2006 file photo, Michael Brown was convicted of helping kill his grandparents in Rio Rancho in 1994 — one of the first teens in New Mexico to be punished as an adult. Now 29, with decades of time still to serve, he wonders what might have been. As he serves time at a prison in Grants, Brown declines to think about time in a conventional manner. "If you give up on the outside world," he says, "you lose hope."
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In this 2006 file photo, Michael Brown heads back to his cell from his job folding and packaging plastic trash bags at a prison near Grants. He's paid 50 cents an hour, one of the best wages in prison. "This is the biggest wake-up call you can get," he says. "And it took losing the life of my dad's parents, my grandparents, to realize that."
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Bernalillo County Assistant District Attorney Garry Breeswine gathers his thoughts in the middle of a long day of hearings in Judge Marie Baca's courtroom. A huge volume of juvenile cases is a daily reality for judges, prosecutors and lawyers in the state's juvenile justice system.
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Judge Marie Baca listens to the words of a teen offender during his placement hearing. Baca wants the system to provide more rehabilitative services to juvenile offenders in the near future.
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Thirteen-year-old Justine Archuleta smiles as she rushes from Judge Barie Baca's courtroom with members of her family. Though she had been arrested on domestic violence charges at one time, Archuleta came to court earlier this summer with letters from teachers who picked her as student of the year at Truman Middle School.
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Bryant Coley (right) stands next to his mother as they face Judge Marie Baca in Children's Court earlier this year. Bryant, charged with aggravated battery on his mother among other offenses, was just one of 31 troubled teens the judge saw on a routine Tuesday this summer. The parade of problems that walks into court is a key part of what ails the juvenile justice system in New Mexico. "It's very emotional," says Judge Baca. "Very draining."
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A resident takes advantage of free time to watch TV after class at the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center.
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Teens wait their turn at bat on a rain-soaked field at the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center. Teens housed there are kept in groups throughout the day and move from place to place as a unit.
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Probation officer Brian Lakes talks with a 12-year-old resident at the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center. Counseling services are key to the state's new plan to help rehabilitate young offenders, and Bernalillo County's program has received high marks. But judges and others say services are hard to find for a population that must have them if they are to emerge from jail as more productive members of society.
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Teens at the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center line up and are checked before leaving the gymnasium after playing basketball. The Albuquerque facility held 13 accused killers at one time this year, the highest number it has seen in years. The state has embarked upon a new plan for juvenile offenders that focuses on treatment and rehabilitation rather than incarceration. But it's a path fraught with growing pains - and to some, peril.
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A female resident at the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center spends time in her cell, relegated to "OP" time - off privileges.
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