DECKING <i> THE </i> HALL : For the County’s Tough Young Prisoners, Christmas Activities Bring Out the Child Again

For the past 2 weeks they have had Bible pageants, parties, visiting carolers and a decorating contest. They have covered the bland, bare walls with paintings of elves, snow-capped fir trees and a horse-drawn sleigh.

The festive trappings inside the brick and cinder-block buildings on City Drive in Orange contrast the jailhouse atmosphere of metal detectors and vault-like doors at which all visitors must be buzzed in.

But for 280 boys and 45 girls ages 12 to 18 who are imprisoned in the Juvenile Hall awaiting trial or convicted of crimes ranging from petty theft to murder, this is Christmas.

Boys in Unit E have pasted wrapping paper and bright ribbon on their doors, turning the entrances to their cell-like bedrooms into Christmas packages.

Writing Christmas Cards

In a girls’ unit last week, a dozen teen-agers wearing county-issue, red jackets sat at long tables, heads bent, writing Christmas cards.

Some were glum, depressed at the prospect of being away from their families at Christmas, said counselor Karla Siefkes. But others were looking forward to spending Christmas at “the hall.”

“Some of these girls have been out on the street. Here they have a bed, warm clothes, presents on Christmas Day. . . . This is really nice for them,” Siefkes said.

For all the effort to create holiday cheer, “we don’t want to gloss over the fact that these are young criminals,” noted Juvenile Hall Assistant Director Karen Kiddy. “But we also don’t lose sight of the fact that these are kids. . . .

“The public’s perception is that if you are an armed robber, you’re different from other kids. But in custody, in a controlled environment, away from their associates, they are not proving anything to anyone. They are not using drugs. . . . They are able to relax and be kids in here.”

In fact, probation officials forbade all but the briefest interviews with the youths, citing the privacy rights of juveniles and a concern about upsetting them.

Kiddy said her staff works hard to remind their young charges that they are children, especially at Christmas.

Last year, boys in one unit turned a borrowed linen cart into Santa’s sleigh, affixed brown antlers and red noses to their faces and “came prancing out” before the decorating contest judges.

“It was really neat to see these gang members” dressed as reindeer, Kiddy said.

Elegantly painted letters in italic script graced one wall of Unit E.

“Christmas, a Time for Love and Harmony,” they proclaimed.

Best Calligraphers

“The gang kids are really into their writing,” noted Kiddy. “Usually our gang kids are the best calligraphers.”

Wearing a festive red vest, coordinated skirt, red shoes, red earrings and a small pin shaped like a holiday wreath, Kiddy was showing a visitor some of the units that were preparing for the next day’s decorating contest.

She moved on to “O” unit, a unit of girls, where, except for a sign that said “Merry Christmas,” the walls were bare.

“They aren’t interested” in the decorating contest, said counselor Colleen George. “They just want it (Christmas) to be over with as soon as possible.”

Girls in a second unit, called “Girls Receiving,” for new arrivals to the hall, also weren’t participating in the decorating contest.

Not Real Excited

“They just haven’t gotten real excited,” counselor Siefkes said. “There are shows on TV. They want to get their showers, go on a co-ed (meet with a boys’ unit),” rather than make decorations.

Also, the counselors said, the girls were openly displaying their anguish at being locked up over the holidays. The girls cry more often than boys in the hall and write more letters home, said counselor Maria Thomas. “They’re more emotional,” she said.

“One young lady just found out she was going to be here for Christmas,” Siefkes said. “She was talking with her mom and she was not happy--not with the fact that she will be here for Christmas but because her mom said that it will teach her a lesson.”

But the counselors said many of the girls in Juvenile Hall won’t be lonely this Christmas.

“All of our girls cluster together,” Siefkes said. “So they have someone to share this with, someone in the same gang.”

Working out of a small office near the entrance to the hall, Jesse Frey, an assistant chaplain with Pacific Youth Correctional Ministries, has counseled Orange County juvenile offenders for the last 5 years.

Joyful Mood

He and a senior pastor pass out Christmas cards for the young people to send to their parents. The two ministers also schedule Bible study programs and arrange for half a dozen church choirs to visit the hall to sing Christmas carols.

As Frey saw it, “the mood here is one of joy. That is what we tell them. That they can have joy even when they’re locked up.”

Still, Frey conceded, this was also a time of heartache. “So many are from broken families. So many face rejection and neglect.”

The carolers and the Christmas decorations “make them reflect again on their families. This is where their problems are. And the Christmas cards they write say ‘Forgive me, Mom and Dad.’ And maybe Mom and Dad can forgive them.”

Then again, maybe not.

Counselor Edward Harrison, who will be working his third Christmas at the hall this year, recalled one “bad incident” in which a mother visiting her teen-age son on Christmas Day informed the youth that “she was divorcing him.”

There’s Still Hope

The timing was “atrocious,” Harrison said. After the mother left, the boy “tried to hurt himself, ripping out handfuls of hair. We had to restrain him. We were letting him know that there’s hope, and you can’t just say all the world has dealt me a bad hand,” Harrison said.

When the young man calmed down, counselors set him to work on more Christmas decorations. “He painted a window to look like stained glass,” Harrison said.

For an hour this week, a group of probation officers and juvenile court officers wandered from unit to unit, admiring hand-painted Santa Clauses, a gingerbread village and a make-believe winter scene in which two boys lying on a rumpled white sheet tossed “snowballs” fashioned from rolled socks.

“Year after year it amazes me,” Sue Cullen, Juvenile Court work program administrator, said of the skits and decorations. “If these kids could only channel that talent, they could be anything they want to.”

For the most part, the youths seemed as impressed with their handiwork as the judges.

“Have you seen our Santa Claus? He’s climbing out of that chimney with the presents,” said an 18-year-old from Unit F, a ward for older, more “sophisticated” offenders, as he pointed to a large Santa posted on a wall.

In the unit for mentally disturbed offenders, seven boys in blue shirts and jeans narrated the story of the nutcracker and the sugarplum fairy, then serenaded the judges with a rousing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

Put Hearts Into It

Afterward, an 18-year-old from the unit explained that their Christmastime project “felt kinda good, you know. We all put our hearts into it. We were wishing we could be at home, but doing this was making us feel like home.”

“Nice job, guys,” Edward M. Clarke, chief deputy probation officer, told the youths.

“I would have thought they’d be embarrassed to sing,” Clarke said quietly as he left.

“Out in the street some of them may be ruthless,” he said. But at Christmastime in Juvenile Hall, “there’s still kid in a lot of them.”

Today, the children will be allowed to sleep late and spend the day “just kind of hanging around and eating until you’re stuffed,” Kiddy said.