No Matter How Loud I Shout

Humes describes the old building of Central lockup as desolation among urbanity; the one billboard inmates can see showing the King of Beepers:

his product is especially popular with the hundreds of drug dealers, gangbangers, and assorted other criminals who pass by his shrewdly placed advertisement in shackles each day, for whom beepers are both status symbols and necessary tools of the trade in this information age (12).

He shows readers the parking lot where people hurry to their cars at night when new inmates arrive at Central. Humes describes the smells—urine and sickly sweet disinfectant—as well as the constant electric buzzing and alarm sounds. He describes the intake process, wherein interviews are conducted as briefly as possible. He reiterates the officers’ beliefs that the people who are coming through are changing—rich teens, a woman—although the crimes stay the same. Murder is becoming usual crime, although Geri Vance—charged with the murder of his motel-robbing accomplice who was killed by a motel employee during the robbery—is unusual.

Geri is confused at the charges leveled against him, arguing that he was forced to take part in the robbery: “There is an earnestness in Geri’s manner and words that even the jaded Intake Officer can see” (14). Humes compares Geri’s situation to that of Ronald Duncan, who confessed to killing and robbing his employers. Humes believes that Geri tried to save a life—that of his co-conspirator—while Duncan willingly killed two people for a petty reason. Vance will most likely face life in prison with no possibility for parole while Duncan will serve at most eight years in a juvenile facility, after which his record will be sealed.

In Humes’s writing class, 15-to-17-year-old boys read poems they have written about their lives. Humes’ students include Vance and Duncan. They talk about how society perceives them to be monsters and the lessons they learned from street life. One Sureño speaks about how he never learned how to be a father. They talk about the ineffectiveness of probation and how gangs recruit at the county-run boot camps for delinquent youth. Elias talks about how this life was the only one he ever knew, and now that he is going to be a father he wants to change but it is too late. Elias says that people have to want to change; the system is never going to make them change: “There is nothing more sad than the sight of hopelessness in one so young. It is a look that seems, for the moment, to be reflected in every boy’s face in the room” (19).