Desiree: I wanna be in movies. I wanna act. You ever watch teen movies, what’s that? mean girls, mean girls. I wanna be like one of those.

 

YOUTUBE TRAILER: Get in loser...  we’re going shopping. 

 

Rodriguez: Desiree is seventeen. And what she craves most is the carefree life of a spoiled teenager:

 

    Youtube trailer: Calculus class ...

You want to experience that even if it’s just in a movie. 

 

Desiree: Even if it’s just in a movie. Yeah if I could just act it out and pretend it’s happening and I could watch myself over and over again. I’m fine with that. 

 

Yes, material things are part of the appeal—nice car, nice house, good clothes. But it goes deeper than that:

 

Desiree: Like the schools is just so nice. They got everything they want in they school.

 

Desiree wants the basics: a decent school, a home, friends, and maybe most of all, a nurturing mother….

 

Desiree: And they could bring home company and they mom will cook for their company, cook for them, wash the dishes, wash their clothes, get they clothes out like I would want something like that. (laugh) 

Have you ever had any of that? No, never did I want something like that though.

 

What Desiree has is something much different—a group home in the Bronx, the last stop on the 2 train…...where she lives with  11 other girls.

 

Let me just sign this book really quickly….

 

The group home is two stories with a pitched roof and a small balcony.  From the outside, it looks like a large family lives here. From the inside, the living room feels more like a waiting room...

 

Desiree: It’s a 24 hour facility so somebody comes in like 3 shifts.

 

Desiree’s lived here since last July. 

   

    So this is the place? 

    Desiree: Yes.

 

It’s her latest placement. She’s moved more than 20 times since she was 10. 

 

Desiree: I wouldn’t call it a home… I would call it… it’s like very independent... it’s not basically for me…

I’ve been getting to know Desiree for 7 month..that’s not her real name. We gave her a pseudonym because she’s young and we wanted to protect her identity.

 

Desiree: Wanna walk? wanna take a walk? … 

No she can’t take a walk. She gotta walk out the door. 

Desiree: I’m talking about up the block….

oh ok.

Desiree: How long you been doing this for?

Rodriguez: A long time…

Desiree: a long time…?

 

For nearly half her life, Desiree’s been considered a foster kid and a juvenile delinquent. Both systems have run her life. She has no trust in either and feels wronged by both. 

 

Desiree: I wanna write a letter to the commissioner...

 

The system didn’t work for her and she says it doesn’t work for most kids but they’re too scared to speak up:

 

Rodriguez: And you’re not? No I’m not scared because if Martin Luther King stood in front of that whole crowd … did a speech on black people and tried to help segregation and stuff, you think I’m really gonna be scared to try to help people out that don’t have a voice for theyselves….

 

___________________________________________________

 

KAI: And Desiree will get a chance to talk to city commissioners. She is smart, expressive, and painfully honest about her life...and she’s been chosen to tell her story to a task force trying to change the way the juvenile justice system in New York City treats girls. 

 

I’m Kai Wright and you’re listening to Caught.

 

Girls can be an enigma for policy-makers. That’s because research typically focuses on boys since they dominate the system.  

 

But studies that do exist, have found that within the juvenile justice system, girls experience higher rates of trauma than boys—especially sexual trauma.  Policy experts call this the sexual abuse to prison pipeline and they say it’s why incarcerating a young girl perpetuates more negative behavior and makes it hard to exit the system.

 

WNYC REPORTER CINDY RODRIGUEZ TAKES IT FROM HERE: 

 

Rodriguez: When we talk about the “system”, we’re talking about a lot of different players. There’s caseworkers, group homes, probation officers, police, judges, psychiatrists….

 

Desiree: Everytime I go to a psychiatrist I got a different diagnose….

Zimmerman: but you gotta keep it real. I don’t know if you need to be on medication or not. I’m not a doctor.

Desiree: I don’t...

 

That’s Brian Zimmerman.  He’s what’s called an 18B...a private attorney the state pays to represent indigent clients...like a public defender...only in family court. He and Desiree are talking after a check-in with her judge last fall:

 

Desiree: I still feel like I could do better but right now I feel like I’m doing very good…

Zimmerman: you’ve lasted pretty long without a real staff altercation so that actually, I’m proud of you for the fact that you’re holding that part together..

 

Rodriguez: Brian’s seen Desiree go from a tiny 10-year-old to a 5’9 young woman. She probably has four inches on him. Where she’s quick and impulsive..he’s slow and deliberate.

 

Zimmerman: But I think you shouldn’t fool yourself about the connection about your past and why you feel the way you do sometimes. 

Desiree: Uh hum.

 

Desiree’s past starts like this. When she was four-months-old, her mom stabbed her father to death and was sentenced to four years in prison for manslaughter. Desiree and her sister were sent to live with relatives in Rochester, New York. But eventually their mom got them back:

 

Desiree: The first month was fine like she was taking her meds. She was treating me like a daughter. It was fine. She wasn’t even hitting me or nothing.

 

But that changed and Desiree says it was like her mom needed an excuse to, “ beast out”. In other words, release a lot of pent up anger.  SHE ENDED UP WITH CUTS AND BRUISES. 

 

DESIREE: And like I had a busted eye and stuff

 

A teacher called Child services AND THAT’S WHAT LANDED HER and her sister in foster care...AT GELLER HOUSE,

 

Desiree: Most of the kids that were in Geller House with me… They had a lot of clothes. They had people that was always calling them, like their family making sure they ok and things. And I wanted all that but I couldn’t have it.

 

Geller House is a facility for adolescents with serious emotional problems.  Desiree and her sister were 10 and 11 and were young compared to everyone else. 

 

They stuck together, and when it was time to go to sleep, Desiree would sneak into her sister’s bed.

 

Desiree: And then we used to get in trouble in the morning time when they wake us up.

 

It was one of the rare times she would act like a little girl.

 

Desiree: I really couldn’t sleep and I  would tell them that I would tell the psychiatrist I really cannot sleep without my sister… Cuz like I have to play with her ear. I was still like a big behind baby.

Desiree felt alone and she started to have angry outbursts to get noticed

 

Desiree: ...when I was first having my episode, my tantrums, they was coming, ‘oh she’s a little girl just talk to her’, and they would talk to me and then like as I would do it consistently it’s like, ‘oh no, she’s too bad; she’s doing too much, she needs counseling, she needs this’.

 

She got the desperately needed attention but not the kind she was hoping for.

 

Desiree: So they put me on medication thinking that was gonna help. But I was still being bad and stuff so they just end up hospitalizing me, putting me in the hospital just because every program I went to they didn’t want me the would kick me out.  

 

Rodriguez: How was the hospital experience for you? It was sad. It was very sad. It was very depressing because it was like look at me like as I am your daughter. Yes, I am a little girl...

 

Desiree talks fast. I asked her to explain. It turns out what she wanted was something simple and not so simple….she wanted someone to reassure her and give her hope that things would get better. But she wanted it to come from someone who loved her UNCONDITIONALLY:

 

Desiree:  I’m not gonna blame like, I’m not gonna put my trauma like to like be like, ‘oh that’s an excuse to be bad or whatever’. But like I’ve been through things. I just want attention. I just want somebody to love me.   I don’t care if it’s like, for a second. So like, that’s basically yeah.”  

 

This need for attention is about to expose Desiree to the police.  One day, DESIREE, her sister and a friend tore apart the Geller House library.

 

Desiree: I threw all the books off the library shelf and I flipped over the air hockey table….We were all just like you know little kids silly moments but you know we took it out of hand.  We wanted to be cool.  We wanted to be older cuz me my friend and my sister, we was the youngest so we wanted to be older; we wanted to be cool so we decided oh, if we get arrested we older, we did something,  we grown…

 

She says the home called the police and just like that they went from being seen as little girls recovering from trauma to juvenile delinquents who destroyed property:

 

Rodriguez: Did a police officer actually come in and put handcuffs on you? 

Desiree: No we ran… and they finally caught us and then they put us in handcuffs and we went down to the precinct. We got arrested. We went to juvenile justice cuz our age.

Rodriguez: And you were like a little girl? 10 is really young. 

Desiree: Yeah really little.  

Rodriguez: And how did that feel to have handcuffs on you?

Desiree: Once again it felt like I’m older like again... I’m in handcuffs. You can’t tell me I’m not grown cuz I’m in handcuffs. Only grown people go in handcuffs cuz you don’t see no little kids going in handcuffs…. only grown people so we felt like, excuse my language, that we was the shit.

 

Rodriguez: Since that day at Geller House, Desiree says she’s been arrested more than 20 times. But those arrests no longer make her feel strong...they do the opposite….they make her feel constrained, powerless and misunderstood…The trajectory from the foster care system to the juvenile justice system is very common. Researchers working with the city found more than half the girls who get arrested have an open child welfare case...that means one of their parents has been accused of abusing or neglecting them….

 

One system feeds the other. For Desiree, being in both means she’s moved around a lot…. There’s been detention centers, mental health treatment centers, group homes, foster homes…

 

Rodriguez: How many foster moms have you had? 

Desiree: I can’t even count...The ones that I can think of ...1,2,3... five that I can count but I know I had more than that…

 

And in each setting she’s on the defensive.  Desiree’s gained a reputation as a “don’t mess with me,” kind of girl. BUT she’s delicate. And that makes her vulnerable in a way that may be hard to see. 

 

In her book, Girls Like Us, Rachel Lloyd, whose an activist, wrote this line about girls that have been sexually exploited. It goes something like this: “Girls weren’t drug addicted, they were love addicted and that I’ll learn is far harder to treat.”

 

Desiree does long for love. And that craving makes her a target:

 

Desiree: so now what am I getting you? A double cheeseburger and what else? A McChicken.

 

I didn’t know Desiree had been sexually exploited until SHE TOLD ME ABOUT IT… SITTING IN A MCDONALD’S… 

 

A girl she met in one of the facilities she was placed in introduced her to a young man who was 19 at the time. She considers him a friend.  

 

DESIREE: She said, ‘here’s a way you can go on a date with a man... and get some money. 

He took provocative pictures of her and MADE an ad on Backpage which he paid for in bitcoin.  Desiree says her ad got a lot of attention. SHE WAS 13 YEARS OLD.:

Desiree: all these guys, white men, african, spanish all different races probably like 60 years old, 50 years old, forty, thirty ...older guys. 

Rodriguez: Wow. And you would go to their house. 

Desiree: Uh huh.

 

Just last year a senate subcommittee accused Backpage of facilitating sex trafficking. And a source told me when girls run away from a juvenile detention facility, one of the first places caseworkers look, is Backpage. Having sex with grown men was hard for Desiree:

 

Desiree: I would have to be under drugs to do it cuz like I can’t do it sober cuz like yo, what am I really doing? So I would get high or I would get drunk. And I would do it and then after I come off the drugs and stuff, I’d be like what did I really do. Oh I’m about to stop doing this.

 

 It became a cycle. She felt bad about herself because she was doing it and she was doing it because she felt bad about herself:

 

Desiree: I would feel nasty like yo why am I doing this like what made me in my mind do this?...Like how can I say I used to have like nightmares. I used to be mad at myself. I used to be angry because it’s like yo, ‘nobody know what I have to do on a regular daily basis just to get money.’

 

The Administration for Children’s Services found out she was being sex trafficked and put her in different programs… but she says nobody could convince her to stop:

 

Desiree: Like when I first started doing it, ‘I was like alright I can stop.’ but then as I start getting into it and more money starts coming in it was like yo, this is addictive...  so it’s hard to get.... Once you in it it’s hard to get out.   

 

Girls and boys under 18 are no longer prosecuted in New York for prostitution. They are supposed to be seen as victims… BUT ATTORNEYS SAY SOMETIMES if girls have nowhere else to go...JUDGES put them IN DETENTION FOR SMALL INFRACTIONS TO KEEP THEM AWAY FROM THEIR PIMPS.   

That never happened to Desiree. But prostitution did expose her to a lot of danger:

 

Desiree:  Yeah I almost got kidnapped. Yeah. 

Rodriguez: What do you mean? 

Desiree: I had went on a date with a guy whatever. Come to find out he was a pimp.

 

It’s an intense conversation to have at a McDonald’s. She got a bad feeling about the guy the moment she stepped in his house:

 

Desiree: And then as soon as I said something’s not right to turn back around…he pushed me. He pushed me on the bed.  Mind you, it was just a mattress on the floor. No furniture, no TV, no refrigerator no food in the house just an empty house. 

Rodriguez: Wow. 

Desiree: And he was like, oh you’re not going nowhere.

 

She says HE WANTED TO MAKE HER WORK FOR HIM IN FLORIDA…… He screamed in her face. She tried to act like she wasn’t scared until several other men came out of nowhere.

 

Desiree: You would’ve thought it was just him and me in the house.  So like they hold a gun to my head like if you scream or do anything I’m gonna shoot you so I’m not gonna hold you I started crying like yo, what do you want, do you want money. I’m throwing them money…. you could have whatever you want.

 

But then one guy felt bad and yelled at the others to let her go. He opened the door and she took off running down the stairs and down the block shaken and terrified…but with the wherewithal to take care of herself and go to the hospital

 

Desiree: Cuz I had a dress on whatever so he like tried to rape me or whatever ...but he didn’t get a chance but then the guy he felt bad for me cuz I was crying...

 

The police got called and they tried to convince her to cooperate with an investigation:

 

Desiree: I’m not going to go through with it. He got my whole ID. He has my information. What am I gonna do? Oh I could put you in protective custody.  No ou can't do that because you can't. What you going to do with me in protective custody. I’m not going through with nothing.

 

Desiree was scared but she also has no trust in public system especially  the police.

 

Desiree: I didn't call the cops I just came to the hospital just to get tested and to get medicines because I don't know what he had or anything like that. 

Rodriguez: Right. Right. Wow that is really scary. I'm so sorry that you went through that. 

Desiree: It’s okay. 

Rodriguez: I think most people would be pretty destroyed by that. I've been through worse things, worse things.

 

When we come back, Desiree finds ways to speak out for change to the system. 

 

KAI:  WHEN WE LAST HEARD FROM DESIREE SHE WAS TELLING US A TERRIFYING STORY ABOUT NEARLY BEING KIDNAPPED AND SEXUALLY ASSAULTED BY A MAN SHE SAYS WAS A PIMP WHO WAS TRYING TO FORCE HER TO WORK FOR HIM. 

 

Rodriguez: Desiree brushes off the experience like she’s had to brush off other sexual abuse in her past. But sexual trauma cuts deep. There is an impact. And it comes out when she punches, kicks and bites the staff who try to restrain her. And in the angry fights, she has with other girls and adults who try to control her. And in the way she abuses drugs and alcohol. These private details of her life all get exposed back in family court.... 

 

 

ZIMMERMAN: Well I think the judge was mostly concerned with what I told you. 

 

Brian’s sitting on a bench inside Brooklyn family court talking to Desiree on his cell phone.

 

Zimmerman: And she really, she was like waking up on the subway drunk. She knows about that you know they’re going to report that….

 

Weeks earlier, police found her on a subway train, so DRUNK she had to be hospitalized. It’s troubling behavior and there’s no parent to decide what to do. Brian and her judge, Amanda White will handle it. She’s been overseeing Desiree’s case since 2015.  

 

Zimmerman:..she’s worried …that you’re using substances to deal with the traumas and the pain, ok. Remember I told you that’s how it would be thought of.

 

Desiree, on the other end of the line, explains how alcohol helps her forget about things. 

 

Zimmerman: I know.  And that's exactly the point... That's how you get your minds off things. It's because you're not addressing the things you need to address.  

 

The judge wants Desiree in therapy. Desiree thinks therapy is useless. Brian tells her Judge White is concerned 

  

Zimmerman: It's not your parent but…You know.  It’s just like me…You’re stuck with me as kind of a parent. You have to know... that I’m not going to say it’s okay. Right? Moderation. You know what moderation means...It means don’t too much to the point where you’re not controlling yourself. That’s not good. It’s when bad things can happen.

 

Rodriguez: This is the system as parent. JUDGE WHITE is the top judge in Brooklyn family court... And she’s held dozens of hearings about Desiree. There was a period when Desiree kept getting arrested...and the system was about to send her upstate to the most restrictive detention center for juveniles. It houses kids charged with felonies. Desiree never committed a felony. but here’s what she did do:

 

In 2016, she was arrested for allegedly throwing a candle and spitting on a worker at a group home. She was sent to a juvenile detention facility where she got arrested four times in about a month...for biting, pushing, and slapping workers...Her charges---assault, menacing, harassment

 

Lashing out at workers and at other girls, kept happening. Desiree says in at least one case, she was attacked by other kids and had to defend herself. After a fight, she says she would feel regret:

 

Desiree: Was it that serious? Even if she started it you don’t know what she’s going through outside of here…You don’t...Just like she don’t know what I’m going through

 

Brian didn’t want Desiree to go upstate...and thought that would only make things worse. So he argued to Judge White -- all Desiree’s arrests were for behavior INSIDE detention facilities where being physically restrained set her off. He said it wasn’t like she was out on the streets robbing and assaulting people. 

 

He asked that she be removed from the juvenile justice system and placed back in the child welfare system…meaning, treat her like an abused child again—INSTEAD OF A DELINQUENT. Judge White agreed, which is why DESIREE is living in a group home today. 

    Zimmerman: You heard what she said...

 

Recently, she and Brian had a check-in with Judge White…where it was revealed that when Desiree doesn’t want to go to school, her group home calls the police, yes the police.

 

Zimmerman: That's not the way they should be handling it.. 

DESIREE: Just for not waking up that’s so dumb. So that makes me going to get even more upset because now you're calling the police. I didn’t even wake up yet. . . 

Zimmerman: I know you haven’t put on your makeup yet to be seen by the police. But that's. (LAUGHING)

 

Exposing her to the police ups the chances Desiree will be arrested again. And she’s 17 now--so when she gets prosecuted, it’s as an adult. 

 

Zimmerman:  No, it's not right because someone like you who doesn't do well with authority who's with the trauma stuff, like might react. You don't want to catch …

Desiree: Another charge 

Zimmerman: Another charge.

Zimmerman: because you're…

Desiree: I already got too many…

Zimmerman: you’re gonna be upset. . . That's one of the reasons I ask those questions because... it bothers me. That they would put you in that position cuz this has always been a problem …they put you in this position...

Desiree: exactly. 

Desiree: That doesn’t excuse you from reacting…you have to keep controlling yourself because you know there’s high stakes if you don’t. 

 

And Desiree has been trying to control herself. Once she left the juvenile system, she went 9 months without getting arrested. She also got a job at Denny’s And an internship at Vera Institute of Justice--A NONPROFIT FOCUSED ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM. 

 

Rodriguez: How was Vera today? 

Desiree: Um, Vera was. . it was good. At first I really wasn’t in the mood to come. They actually got me working as a fellowship there. So now they gonna set me up with an email, a desk... so now I’m gonna officially be working at Vera instead of working like ...not just come in to help with like end girl’s incarceration….

Rodriguez: that’s pretty cool. 

Desiree: Yep, they surprised me with that today. I’m like Vera. Got me an internship at Vera…that’s good…

 

It’s an unseasonably warm night and we just left Vera’s offices at the Woolworth Building:

 

Rodriguez: the Woolworth building is beautiful right? Desiree: Yeah. I like being down here at night because it’s pretty. 

 

Vera first recruited Desiree to speak to a city task force working to end detention for girls  …And now as part of her fellowship, she’s actually helping to create a set of questions that will hopefully get used by the city to assess foster homes for girls. 

 

Through her work, she also got introduced to a researcher, Shonda Chapman, whose become a mentor.

 

Chapan:  Um call me though. Ok.  like if you want somebody just to show up there and be there to support you. I’m like down. I’ll come through. I’ll be with the kid. Desiree: I’m gonna call you tonight. It might be a little bit late. . .  (FADE the rest of the conversation under me)

 

Shonda encourages Desiree to keep up with school so she can graduate.  Desiree wants help with math:

 

Desiree: You know how to do like trigonometry and stuff?

Chapman: I do statistics. Trig is outside my wheelhouse. Laughter. But I can get you some support around trig….

 

Shonda was also in the juvenile justice system.

 

Chapman: There’s this tendency to like do this thing where it’s like, ‘ you need to take accountability for your actions lalalala’ But being able to say, no every fucking thing around me was like messed up and everybody that was supposed to protect me did not and every institution that should have be able to intervene thought that I was worthy of just being thrown in the trash and so you wonder why these kids are out here punching folks in the face...uhhh.

 

The idea that girls are being violent because they’ve been abused, ignored and misunderstood is PART OF THE REASON WHY THE CITY TASK FORCE WANTS TO END INCARCERATION FOR GIRLS….OR AT LEAST REDUCE THEIR ARRESTS AND FIND SERVICES they respond to that will keep them out of the system in the first place. Last year girls in New York City were put in detention 415 times. Those are short term stays while a judge decides what to do with them. 49 got sentenced to a more long term placement.

 

90 percent of the girls in the juvenile justice system are black or latina.

 

LINDSAY ROSENTHAL IS A RESEARCHER AT VERA… SHE SAYS THE CHARGE THAT GETS GIRLS DETAINED THE MOST IS ASSAULT IN THE THIRD DEGREE… THE LEAST SERIOUS ASSAULT CHARGE. And these fights mostly happen at school and at home:

 

LINDSAY: We’re really trying to pinpoint specific schools and neighborhoods that might be struggling with family violence the most and having the most simple assault cases coming into particular precincts. 

 

VERA IS RUNNING THE CITY TASK FORCE. ROSENTHAL HOPES THAT WHAT COMES OUT OF IT WILL BECOME A NATIONAL MODEL FOR ENDING INCARCERATION FOR GIRLS. DESIREE IS CRITICAL OF THE SYSTEM BUT SHE’s also kind of an expert on it.

 

AND VERA HAS INVITED HER TO A NATIONAL CONFERENCE IN Washington DC…. IT’S  ABOUT EMPOWERING GIRLS IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM.  It’s a CHANCE TO TRAVEL AND TO get away from her group home:

 

Zimmerman: it may be nice to have a few days away from them…

Desiree: to live the rich life….

Zimmerman: but that’s not the only reason you’re going to the program. It is to talk about the issues of women incarcerated.

Desiree:  I KNOW THAT BECAUSE THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED AND ALSO TO GET AWAY

 

BUT THE Administration for Children’s Services SAYS HER MOM HAS TO APPROVE THE TRIP.  THEY WON’T LET HER GO WITHOUT IT…Brian STEPS IN ONCE AGAIN, AND SAYS HE’LL GET A COURT ORDER IF NECESSARY:

 

Zimmerman:  You need to be responsible and I will do my job to kept it on the calendar so I can get orders if I need to.

 

He gets the court order and Desiree makes the trip:

 

Desiree: Hi Cindy…so I’m walking up the escalator on my way to my room. We just got back from building power, a woman’s initiative. . . I like it here…it is really good…like really, really good.

 

Rodriguez: She leaves me this message from the conference. Desiree isn’t just an attendee.  She’s on a panel and there’s dozens of people sitting in front of her waiting to hear her speak:

 

Desiree: Good afternoon….I’ve been working with Vera on ending girls incarceration in NYC. Girls come into child welfare as innocent kids but as they go deeper into the system and are moved from home to home it messes with them mentally.  Taking psych assessments over and over. . . It’s retraumatizing to have to think about your story -- getting verbally assaulted and physically abused. With the trauma and everything child welfare does to them, girls are unhappy. They have all this anger inside them. They go into the community and commits things. Then the juvenile system gets involved and sends them to these placements for god knows how long, where you don’t know who is going to hurt you.  You are forced to become older. You are disrespected because of your history; and you are not able to be a kid no longer.

 

Desiree has a 79-point-pan to make things right. The core of it is this: bad behavior is rooted in a child’s pain and they don’t deserve to be punished for that:

 

Desiree: When I went to jail and stuff, I wanted to be a child. I was forced to be like older. I had to take care of myself at the age of 11. It was really hard. Like I was out there doing things that I didn’t want to do but I was basically forced to do it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.Um I just feel like they just need to treat kids like kids and base things off their history cuz everybody been through stuff. They just wanna like … they just wanna like look at your paperwork instead of like looking at the person you are because when everybody interview me and they see my paperwork they be like, ‘oh dang I don’t want to interview this person or she’s crazy; she needs to be locked up. But when you really get to know me and really see me I am not that person on paper, I am not that person no more. I try everyday to be a new person and not go back to my old ways…applause

 

Five months after she returned from the conference, Desiree was picked up by police in the Bronx. She had warrants  for failing to check in with her probation officer and for missing court dates. Her public defender told me her group home did nothing to help Desiree keep up with the requirements imposed by the criminal justice system...like helping her to find transportation to court. She is now in Rikers Island, a violent, chaotic jail for adults. The city is still coming up with ways to end incarceration for girls. Unfortunately, any change to the system, comes too late for Desiree.

 
KAI:Ok, so it's been a while..but remember Z? from earlier in the podcast?

    [Bouncing like a bunny music or stay in school rap]

Yeah, him, the goofy kid who, somewhere along the way... grew into an angry kid.

 

 In episode 1, we explained that, by the age of 12, Z was already caught up in the system... getting repeatedly detained and arrested, going to court, and eventually getting locked up at 16 -- after he and a group of friends robbed somebody...one one of them had a gun.  That’s where we met Z. He was in juvenile detention..and we hung out with him until he got out.

   
    Mom: welcome home!
    Z: yeah, i’m back!
    Mom: Tay Tay, your brother’s home!

Z's mom has always felt like his real problem was his environment ... that he's just surrounded by bad choices, in the neighborhood and in school, and so he’s set up to fail... She would've loved an option like wilderness camps -- to send him away some place that wasn't jail and to buy him time to grow up.

But she didn't have that option. And when Z got out... well, he didn't stay out. That's where we left him in Episode 2: getting arrested again.

 

Kia: Z is in Coxsackie Correctional Facility. I believe he has no idea where he is, how far he is away from home.

 

So we're gonna follow Z upstate, to prison. That's in final the final episode of Caught.

 

CREDITS / Caught is a production of WNYC Studios and the Narrative Unit of WNYC News. This episode was reported by Cynthia Rodriguez.

Dwayne Betts is a consultant on the podcast. Cayce Means is our technical director.   Bill Moss mixed this episode … Hannis Brown is our composer and Students Taja Graves-Parker, Alberto Lugo and Sean Gary from Building Beats provided additional music.

Our team of talented producers includes Rebecca Carroll, Jessica Miller, Sophia Paliza-Carre and Patricia Willens Michelle Harris is our fact checker.  Kaari Pitkin is our senior producer. Karen Frillmann is our executive producer. Jim Schacter is WNYC’s Vice President for News. And I’m Kai Wright. Thanks for listening.

 

Copyright © 2020 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.