Chemical gas that had been used to subdue another inmate lingered in the hallway, Jamie later recalled, and she started to cough. A group of officers in gas masks hauled her out of her cell as she begged them to put her down. Then she climbed on her sink and threatened to kill herself. On June 15, 2012, she started yelling so loud and for so long that a correctional officer complained in the logbook that the noise was giving her a headache. In June 2012, Jamie’s special status was revoked and she was resentenced to up to five years in prison for her original crime. According to Chris Gautz, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), Jamie “failed in every instance” to meet good-behavior standards that under Michigan law allow certain inmates to have their records scrubbed clean after they serve their sentences. And when trouble came, she didn’t know how to explain herself to the guards. In this environment, Jamie found it hard to stay out of trouble. She had a bunkmate who did drugs she had never been around before, “something you snort.” Jamie said she was also around adults in the showers and the yard. In the seven months before her 18th birthday, prison records show that Jamie was housed with at least three adult cellmates, including one in her 50s who had a history of cocaine possession. “They rub on you and stuff, I can’t stand it,” she said. When she first came to prison, women old enough to be her mother told her she was cute and promised to take care of her. Jamie is 20 now, but her soft brown eyes make her seem younger. From this point onward, her world was largely governed by codes and practices and assumptions designed for adult criminals. Doug Mullkoff, a criminal defense attorney in Ann Arbor, told me that prison in such circumstances is “virtually unheard of.” But Jamie is from Detroit, and in January 2012, she was sent to the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, a prison that holds inmates convicted of crimes like first-degree homicide. In a wealthier Michigan county, kids convicted of minor offenses are almost always sentenced to community service, like helping out at the local science center. Jamie denies the assault-and the police report notes that the brick may not have hit her friend-but she admitted to officers that she was “mad” and “trying to get back in the house.” The Wayne County court gave her two concurrent six-month sentences, for assault and destruction of a building. The friend told police that Jamie threw a brick at her, hitting her in the chest, and then banged the brick so hard on the front door that she broke the glass mail chute. One fall day in 2011, they got into a bad fight over their living arrangements. Since she didn’t always get along with her adoptive mom, she lived with a close family friend from her church whom she referred to as her sister. At high school, she fell in with a wayward crowd and started drinking and smoking weed. Jamie, whose mother was addicted to crack cocaine, was adopted when she was 3. She loved to sing-her favorite artist was Chris Brown-but she was too shy to perform in front of other people. There was a time when she liked acting in goofy comedy skits at her Detroit church or crawling into bed with her grandmother to watch TV. For the purposes of this story, I’ll call her Jamie. When this video was filmed, the girl on the bed was 17 years old. Cruel and All-Too-Usual: A Terrifying Glimpse into Life in Prison – As a Kid
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