On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (19 page)

Tim comes out of the kitchen and down the back steps with two paper cups and passes
me one, saying
hum
to get my attention.

Miss Linda hears the phone ring again—it is inaudible to me—and jumps up to get it.
She is rewarded this time, as it is Chuck calling from CFCF (Curran-Fromhold Correctional
Facility), the county jail. She talks with him for a few minutes and then calls Tim
over to speak to his brother. Chuck is waiting to start trial for a case he caught
for possession with intent to distribute.

Tim sprints up the stairs. I can hear him laugh, and I assume he’s telling Chuck about
the good news today in court.

Tim talks to his brother for a few minutes and then calls me over to the phone. I
walk up the steps and through the kitchen, which smells of cigarette smoke, cooking
oil, and animal urine. In the living room, Miss Linda is lying on the two-seater sofa,
sipping her drink and watching court TV. Tim says, “I love you, too” to Chuck before
passing me the phone.

With a heavy addiction to crack and alcohol, Miss Linda was by many accounts not an
ideal mother. But she took pride in staying abreast of her sons’ legal developments.
This was no small or finite task, as at least one of her sons was in juvenile detention,
jail, or prison at any given time during the six years I spent with the family—save
for a two-month period in 2007 when all three sons were at home.

In contrast to Miss Linda, Mike’s mother, Miss Regina, worked two jobs and kept an
exceptionally clean house. She also spent much of her time dealing with her son’s
legal affairs. When Mike was in his early twenties, he caught a series of cases for
drugs as well as gun possession. In addition to attending Mike’s court dates and managing
his probation and parole, Miss Regina visited him in jail and prison, arranged for
his two children to visit, sent him packages and money regularly, accepted his phone
calls, and wrote him letters.
²
As his sentencing date in the federal courts approached, she also organized Mike’s
friends, relatives, and past employers to write letters on his behalf, and to attend
the trial:

It is the day of Mike’s sentencing in federal court. He has been awaiting trial in
a federal holding cell for the better part of a year and had been in county jail for
another year before that.

This morning, Miss Regina drove his uncle and aunt, and the mother of his children,
Marie, to the courthouse downtown. Also, she has arranged for Mike’s grandmother to
pick up Mike’s girlfriend and his girlfriend’s mother, who live way out in the greater
Northeast. I have come in my own car.

In the weeks before the sentencing, Miss Regina had succeeded in persuading nine family
members and friends to send letters on Mike’s behalf. She gave us each a stamped envelope
and typed up the letters that his grandmother and uncle had written by hand.

Walking into the courthouse, Miss Regina gets a call from Mike’s lawyer, who says
there has been a last-minute time change—the sentencing will now take place at 3 p.m.
Frustrated but resolute, Miss Regina tells the assembled group that we’ll be going
to her house in North Philly to wait it out. There she makes chicken and rice and
salad, and entertains us with pay-per-view. She practices what she’ll say if the judge
calls on her.

At the sentencing, Mike emerges wearing the suit that Miss Regina sent him. She remarks
on how well it fits and how it was right for her to go with a size smaller than he
had suggested. He smiles when he sees so many of his family assembled. I haven’t seen
him in over a year, since only direct relatives were permitted to visit him in the
federal holding cell. He looks older, his beard grown out.

The judge, a middle-aged Black man with a stern gaze, asks the parole officer (PO)
to stand. He asks if the PO has been in touch with anyone in Mike’s family about his
upcoming release. Because the time that Mike has sat awaiting trial will be counted
toward his federal sentence, he’ll serve only eight months in the Federal Detention
Center. So, he’ll be home within the year. The PO says that Mike’s mother phoned him
to give all her contact information, and that she kept calling to check in and let
him know that she wanted to be “part of the process.” Miss Regina nods fervently as
he is explaining this.

The judge says that it is clear that Mike is a good person who has done some bad things.
He says the letters from Mike’s children made the biggest impact on him; he could
tell how much his children loved him and that they actually wrote the letters themselves.
Then he got out the letter from Mike’s ten-year-old son and read it aloud to us. The
last line was “So please let my daddy come home, because my mother does not know how
to raise a boy, and I need my daddy.” Miss Regina mouths the words as the judge reads
the letter; she has read it so many times, she knows it by heart.

The judge says that the maximum sentence for Mike’s offense is 16 years. Given the
two years he has already served awaiting trial and given that he has such support
from his family, Mike will receive only six months in prison and six months in a halfway
house, followed by three years on federal probation. The judge asks Mike if he has
anything to say, and Mike says he is sorry for his actions and that he is glad to
be given this chance. Then the judge asks Miss Regina to stand as he tells Mike, “Now
turn around, and thank your mother for everything she has done for you.” Mike is caught
a bit off guard by this, and the judge tells him again to thank his mother.

Mike turns to her, sobbing. She says, “It’s okay, baby.”

Like Miss Linda and Miss Regina, many women around 6th Street find that their son’s
legal proceedings structure their days, which are punctuated by court hearings, bail
payments, jail visits, and phone calls to public defenders. Their days are also marked
by the good or bad news they receive concerning his fate with the courts, the parole
board, and the prisons. Staying on top of a son’s legal matters and supporting him
through the legal process can be a heavy burden, but it can also be a rewarding way
for women to spend their time. It is partly through their efforts to keep their sons
out of jail and to support them once they have been taken that women fulfill their
obligations as mothers.

PENAL TRANSITIONS AS SOCIAL OCCASIONS

A young man’s movement through the criminal justice system happens in a series of
phases: the police stop him, search him, and run his name in their database; he catches
a case, gets taken into custody, gets a bail hearing, attends months or years of court
dates, gets sentenced; serves time, pays fees, and comes home on probation or parole.
Along the way, he may violate the terms of his supervision, for example by drinking
or staying out late, or get accused of a new crime, or fail to pay his court fees
and fines, or fail to attend a court date, and be issued a warrant. As he ages, he
moves from juvenile detention centers to adult facilities, and from shorter sentences
in county jail to longer ones in state or perhaps even federal prison.

Over the course of a young man’s passage through these stages, a number of events
present themselves: bail hearings, trial dates, and returns home after long stints
locked up. These events serve as key social occasions, for which a young man’s friends
and family dress up and argue over who should pay. People watch carefully to see who
is in attendance, who is sitting with whom, who organizes the event or sits in the
first row. If the mother of the man’s children is missing from the benches of the
courtroom, talk begins to circulate that she has indeed left him for a man down the
street. If a new woman is sitting next to his mother in the first row, people acknowledge
her as his main partner. At these public criminal justice proceedings, the members
of a man’s social circle deduce where they stand in his life and where he stands in
the eyes of those around him.

One of the first significant social occasions that the criminal justice system provides
occurs when a young man gets booked. With a young man suddenly taken from his home
and placed in confinement, the question arises as to what will happen to the belongings
he has left behind. Who will care for these items? Who will take responsibility for
them or be allowed to use them? In the first hours or days of a young man’s confinement,
a tremendous redistribution of his material possessions takes place, and his partner,
family, and friends watch to see whom he chooses to manage this movement of goods
and to whom they will be given.

.   .   .

Mike’s mother, Miss Regina, usually coordinated his legal matters, organized the attendance
of his court cases, and kept the schedule for jail visits, letting those who wished
to see him know what his visiting hours were and which dates had already been spoken
for by others.
³
Often, she also undertook the management of her son’s affairs while he was away,
and when he was first taken, she typically spent a number of days taking care of what
he left behind: cleaning out the apartment he could no longer pay rent on, canceling
his cell phone and paying the cancellation fees, taking over his children’s school
fees, and securing his various possessions—cars, motorbikes, sneakers, speakers, jewelry,
CDs—or selling them to pay his bills.

But when Mike went back to prison on a parole violation in 2004,
he appointed his new girlfriend, Tamara, to handle his affairs, mind his possessions,
and give some of them to specific people. His mother called me to discuss his decision:

MISS REGINA: I got no problem with Tamara; she’s a good person. But he’s known her
for
two months
, Alice. I’ve been taking care of his stuff for years. Last time, the only thing I
didn’t have here was the bike.

ALICE: Yeah, Marie [the mother of his children] had it.

MISS REGINA: And what happened to it?

ALICE: The cops took it.

MISS REGINA: Yup. Because her cousin was riding it around. You can’t ride those bikes
in town! Those are off-road bikes. Or if you do, you better be faster than the cops!

ALICE: Right!

MISS REGINA: Me and you are the only ones that make sure everything is still here
when he comes home.

ALICE: Yep.

MISS REGINA: When he got locked up for that gun case, everything stayed right here.
Every shirt was ironed and waiting for him. Sneakers still in the box. But like I
said, if he wants Tamara to do it, that’s fine. She can pay all his bills and clean
out that apartment and find somewhere to put his car that don’t even run. Let her
tow that car somewhere, that’s fine with me. I already told him I don’t want anything
in that apartment. Anything. And when he comes home and his TV gone and he sees Ant
wearing his clothes up and down the street, he better not come complaining to me.

In some communities, the event that makes clear to a young man’s family that he’s
in a serious relationship is a school dance or graduation ceremony to which he takes
his new partner. Later, it might be a family wedding out of town, a vacation, or a
nephew’s christening. But for Mike, the first event indicating to his mother that
he had a serious girlfriend came when he got taken into custody and designated Tamara
to handle his affairs.

Not only does the distribution of his possessions become a key task for a trusted
friend or family member, but the people to whom a newly jailed man bestows his belongings
are recognized by loved ones as his
inner circle, the people he trusts and cares for the most. When Mike violated his
parole by drinking alcohol and got sent back to prison a few years before, he phoned
me shortly after his arrival to explain who should get what:

MIKE: I told Chuck he can hold the AP [apartment] down for me till I get back, so
can you give him the key? I know his pops ain’t letting him sleep at the crib no more.
And he already got the keys to the Bonnie [Pontiac Bonneville]. I told him to just
ride out with that.

ALICE: Okay.

MIKE: Can you give my cell phone to Shanda? I told her you were going drop it off
to her—you know hers got cut off.

ALICE: Yeah. Probably tomorrow.

MIKE: My moms might want that car, though. If she call you about the car, just tell
Chuck I got to give it to her, you know.

ALICE: Okay.

MIKE: Ronny going to come by for my Xbox; I told him to call you before he come to
make sure you there.

The events marking a young man’s passage through the system thus become times when
private relationships are made public; when a young man makes careful decisions about
the relative ranking of his social relations. But these occasions are not only times
when private relationships are made public, they are also times when a man’s general
social standing or level of familial and neighborhood support is made manifest. For
example, young men on 6th Street took the number in attendance at another man’s sentencing
as indication of his social standing, a demonstration of how much “love” he has in
the streets. From field notes taken in 2009:

There was a big showing in room 405 today for Reggie’s Must Be Tried.
⁴
I drove his mother, Miss Linda, and their neighbor Anthony, who has two bench warrants
and took a real risk showing his support today. Reggie’s older brother, Chuck, drove
their youngest brother, Tim, who skipped class today at his new school in order to
come. Victoria, Reggie’s sometime girlfriend, met us there. The judge, a stern-faced
Italian man, dropped all the charges—conspiracy, drug possession (when he arrived
at the hospital
he had some work [drugs to sell] on him), possession of a weapon—so now it’s just
attempted murder. On the way back, we heard from Reggie’s cousin Keisha, who said
she had gone to the neighborhood courthouse instead of the courthouse in Center City.
She met us back at the house and brought some weed. All in all, it was quite festive
and solidary. Reggie called from jail and discussed the showing with me proudly, comparing
it to Rocky’s sentencing last month, where none of the people who had promised to
attend actually showed up.