My Time in Juvenile Detention

I was first sent to the juvenile detention center for stealing my mom’s car when I was fifteen. I would go on back for four more stays after the first. Here is my story about my stay in the detention centers, rehab, group homes, and foster care.

I was a troubled teen, to say the least. My home life was volatile and abusive. As a result, I smoked cigarettes and marijuana and drank alcohol at a very young age. I didn’t hang out with the bad crowd; I was the bad crowd that parents warned their kids about.

I used to steal my mom’s car all the time. She taught me how to drive when I was fourteen, which in hindsight was a terrible idea on her part. I would take her car out to show off to my friends while I was sneaking out in the middle of the night. She didn’t find out until about a year later when I was arrested and taken to jail.

One night, I stole my mother’s car like I had done so many times before. I was going to a friend’s house to smoke weed with her and take her back to my house after for a sleepover. But this time when I came back home, my two sisters were standing outside of our house telling me to leave because mom and dad had called the cops.

I didn’t even ask my friend if she wanted a ride home. I was so afraid that I told her my plans of skipping state. So, I did. We stole gas, food, alcohol, and hygiene products for the next three days before we were caught.

We didn’t get caught doing any of those things. In fact, it was an old man who called the police on us after a night of partying with him. It was because I stupidly told him we were runaways.

We were caught in Boonesville, Missouri. I woke up to the police announcing themselves at the door and telling us to open up. I told them to go away because we were still sleeping, I think I was still buzzed. He started talking with my friend before I fully woke up.

As soon as I wiped the sleep out of my eyes, I realized that I was extremely dehydrated. I downed a whole glass of what I thought was orange juice. The police officer yelled at me because he had just got done telling my friend not to drink it. Inside the cup was a large amount of vodka with orange juice. I then became pretty wasted as the officers brought us to the police station.

Because I was drunk, I caused a lot of trouble in the police station. I remember sneaking around to call my mom and getting caught. I also went to the bathroom and started playing with all the switches they had in there. I didn’t realize that it was the fuse box that I was playing with, and I had turned off the power to the whole police station.

The captain came down so angry. My question is why were the switches in the women’s bathroom in the first place? I think I was lucky it was a small town because I don’t think where I’m from the police would’ve been so kind.

The police handcuffed me to the wall because I was still a little drunk. As I sobered up, I wanted to apologize for the way I had behaved. It was too late. The officers had already arranged for me to spend the night in jail while my friend got to spend the night in a foster home. The next day we were flown home.

My friend’s mother paid for us both to fly home in exchange for my mother not pressing charges on her daughter. As for me, I already had charges pressed against me because my step-dad called the police before to report my mother’s car being stolen. He told the police that he wanted to press charges. I spent three days in jail the first time. I cried so hard and begged my parents to bail me out.

I was being exposed to things and people that I had never experienced before. I can tell you one thing, none of us deserved to be there. We were all lost souls that had done some really dumb shit to land us in there, but it wasn’t what any of us needed. Every one of us had really fucked up home lives and just needed to not be caged. We needed a safe place to grow.

When it was all said and done, I was charged with aggravated motor theft, which was a felony. It was reduced to a misdemeanor after making a deal with the DA. My punishment was to wear an ankle monitor while on house arrest for six months and probation for two years. I remember I cut my ankle monitor off after a week and ran away to a friend’s house.

My step-dad knew exactly where I was and called me over the phone to tell me to come home and that if I did the police would not arrest me. That was a lie. I was immediately taken to jail and this time my parents wouldn’t bail me out.

My siblings and I were unsafe in our home because my step-dad would abuse us. I decided to let it all out and tell this to a caseworker that worked in the jail.

I was never able to live at home again after that because my parents were deemed unfit for just me, not my siblings. It was only me out of the home because my siblings were too afraid, to tell the truth, and told the caseworker that our step-dad didn’t beat them.

I went to a rehab facility first from jail. I was in for smoking marijuana. It made me run into kids with real addictions. I didn’t even know there were kids that shot up heroin or smoked meth or anything like that because I was thankfully never around those sorts of things in my life up until that point.

While I was in rehab, my parents finally got a divorce. It needed to happen and none of us were sad about it. My mom would have never left my step-dad if I didn’t get taken out of the home. My step-dad of course blamed me for the divorce.

I did very well in the program at first until I ran into a friend I met at the mental institution about a year or so before. I believe she was bipolar and had severe anxieties. We had some things in common.

While we were in rehab, she and I bought some cough medicine to get messed up on. Unfortunately, she told people about it and word quickly spread. Then everyone was on it except for two kids.

We were in trouble. This was also my third strike, and they were going to kick me out of the rehab program. I didn’t want to face what may lie ahead because I knew I would go back to jail. I ran away and went to go stay with my mother in another state.

My mother was dating another douchebag (kind of her MO). He was disgusting and my sisters didn’t feel comfortable with his drunk ass. He was always trying to get my siblings drunk and high. They were fourteen and twelve at the time.

My sister and I moved back to Colorado after a few months of living with my mom. We went back to live with our step-dad. We didn’t have another place to go. He was trying to get my mother back, so he was on his best behavior.

I called my caseworker to turn myself in and we arranged to do that the next day. I went to register my sister for school and then I ran into the principal that hated me. He knew I was supposed to be on probation because he had kicked me out the previous school year for stealing my mom’s car, even though it was never on school property. He told me I’d be better off getting a job than graduating high school.

He immediately called the police on me, and I never had the chance to turn myself into the detention center. Back to jail, I went, and my probation started over.

I had other family members that were willing to take me in after my stay in jail and they denied them. They said it was because my grandma was too old and because my aunt was gay. Both bullshit reasons to keep me in the system. They are supposed to try to get you to live with a family member first. My caseworker, Teri, made that decision all on her own.

I was lucky to get into a group home called Gemini right away. The counselors were very nice and loving. All of the staff was supportive, and the teachers really believed in me. They wanted to see me succeed. I liked the safe environment. I didn’t know, but the thing about group homes is they are temporary. I was there for a little over a few months before they needed to find me another place to go.

I did get into trouble while I was out visiting my mom one time because I stole a cold medicine from the grocery store to help my cousin get high. Maybe deep down I wanted some too. The point is I was caught and had to start my two-year probation over. No jail this time though, phew.

From the group home, I went into an emancipation program called Third Way. They had very few supportive staff members and the supportive ones usually ended up quitting. There were some unethical practices at this placement. I believe the owner was a bad person.

But basically, the goal was to be emancipated before or at the age of eighteen in Third Way. They first placed you in a program that eventually got you ready to be in another placement in your own studio apartment. They also expected you to go to school full time and have a job.

I started to work at Mcdonald's. The pay was lousy, and it was one of the hardest jobs I have had to date. I didn’t like the stress involved, but I was an incredible employee.

My drawer kept coming up short. After the third time, I seriously thought about quitting. I knew that someone was stealing from me. Sure enough, the boss ended up firing three people, one being a manager, in order to keep me from quitting.

Third Way had its own school. The teachers there were all great. They inspired me and thought I was really smart. I was above average in that school and there came a point in my math class that they could no longer teach me. They gave me a trigonometry book and I taught myself trig. I wasn’t able to teach myself calculus though. They recommended I go to another high school.

I started to go to an adult high school named Emily Griffith. I was tested there to see where I was at in school. I scored in the 98th percentile. I was so proud of myself that I came back to the home to let my counselor know and the owner of the place said, “Really? I thought you were stupid.” I very rarely felt supported in this placement.

Despite that, I received amazing grades in high school and learned at my own pace. The teachers at Emily Griffith were there to answer any questions that we may have had. This school was just the place I needed to flourish. I was even inducted into the National Honors Society for my grades.

I did very well at the first Third Way home. Then they moved me into the second part of the program, a studio apartment that they still monitored and ran. That’s when everything went to shit for me. My old roommate told counselors that I had drugs. She gave them a piece of candy and told them it was my drugs. They had it tested and said it tested positive for meth (which I believed they never even tested it, and they just said that).

They said I was making meth at my mother’s house when I went to visit and sold it to the kids in the home. It was absolutely ludicrous. First of all, my mother would kill me, and secondly, I had no clue how to make meth.

None of the kids came back with dirty UAs. We were randomly drug tested all of the time. I was being blamed for something that I didn’t do and so I ran away to a friend’s house. My mother talked me into going back to my apartment. I went to jail after that, but my probation didn’t start over (probably because it was a lie, to begin with).

The life I created on the outside was crumbling. My caseworker had no choice but to keep me in jail because there were no other group homes at the time with beds. So, I had to continue to stay in jail because there were no beds anywhere, not because I was in trouble.

Think about that for a minute. Why was that okay to do to teens? I genuinely hope they are not still doing this today, but it’s very likely that not much has changed. I was doing so well in a placement that I didn’t even feel supported because there was no violence in my home. I was about to be emancipated and grew vigorously.

I was so against going to a foster home in the beginning because I already had a mom and dad. They sucked, but they were mine. My caseworker talked me into it by saying that I would have to stay in jail longer until they found me a bed. Plus, it helped that she said my foster father was a disabled vet and I could likely get away with things there, lol.

I was again lucky to live at my foster parents’ home. According to my foster sisters’ stories about foster care, Tom and Connie’s was the best place you could be. They had been in foster care their whole lives. The stories I heard about other foster homes were extremely devastating.

I did really well at Tom and Connie’s. There was only one incident when I started to have flashbacks about my step-dad when Tom went off on me for no reason. It reminded me of him because of the screaming without cause.

I was given the opportunity to go back to Emily Griffith and finish my diploma. I was stoked. I even took a college course. I was on the right track again. I was about a year and a half behind in schooling though. But that didn’t stop me, I was determined to be a good role model for my siblings and graduate.

Then I learned that you cannot leave foster care until you graduate from high school and legally, they could keep you up until you were twenty-one. I couldn’t wait that long. That would mean I would be in foster care until I was at least nineteen. I regret not finishing high school, but I did get my GED and scored very high on the test. It felt really good.

I was about to move out on my own and it was my final pee test for my probation officer. I failed it for marijuana. I did it. Back to jail I went, except this time I was eighteen and so I wasn’t going to juvenile detention. It was off to county jail for me.

My caseworker, lawyer, and my G.A.L. all recommended to the judge that I spend three days in jail because in reality it was just pot in Colorado. My probation officer however recommended a maximum sentence of two years. It was all up to the judge to decide my fate.

I was sentenced to twenty days in jail and thirteen days with good time. Then it was over. No more probation and no more jail. It was finally over!

When you are a troubled teen growing up in a volatile home, just being away from the abuse can be enough. Teenagers are rough, but they deserve a place to grow, not be punished for a long time for doing something that a stupid teenager would do. In the end, I was in trouble for three whole years for stealing my mom’s car and violating my probation.

Just some final questions to get you thinking. How do you perceive my time in and out of jail? Do you believe this was the best way to get me on track or do you think that there is a better way? Can you think of another way for troubled teens to thrive?