Parents and everyone else-

PCS is very manipulative. When my parents inquired about their methods of punishment, PCS told them that when a child misbehaves, they are sent to a different unit, where they must sit on a chair for 25 minutes, then write a contract regarding the behavior, then they may return to unit from whence they came.

They failed to mention that we would actually be standing, not sitting, during that time. They also left out the part about repeating this standing/sitting period OVER AND OVER AGAIN!, for hours or days or weeks or longer.

Mark,

When were you there? I remember the kid that had the bag on in order to go to the bathroom. I can't remember his name....

I was in Unit 2 in early 1988 when I noticed Daniel Smallwood in Intake. He eventually made it through to Unit 2 and then to one of the two boys' Hotel units, the one that was on top of the girls' wing. He seemed to cope well, although there were the inevitable peer insults concerning his weight. He was one of the few people there with special permission to own tools, and I was grateful for his assistance in repairing my Commodore 64 computer's joysticks whenever they broke. My first memory of Smallwood is when my unit was lining up for school in the area where coats were removed and temporarily stored. Daniel Smallwood was loitering there for some reason, and then someone from my unit addressed him as "Albert," alluding to Fat Albert, at which point our group's counselor overheard the guy and immediately sent him off to Investment for a Class 2 "peer pressure" offense.
The guy with the colostomy bag was named something like Greg or David Broshaw phonetically, if I remember correctly. I was in Intake with him and I think he also made it to Unit 2. He had an unusual accent that I couldn't quite place anywhere in the United States; he could possibly have been from another country. I remember once seeing his name on a special dietary list one early morning when I was on kitchen detail, so it's obvious that the place made special provisions to accomodate his medical condition.
Having spoken extensively to several friends who've served actual penitentiary sentences, albeit on the medium- to minimum-security levels, I would bet that they all would rather have gone to PCS. One PCS student who I occasionally talked to, John Case, who in 1988 was experiencing his second tenure at PCS, was one of those court cases who had kneeled before the judge with hands clasped and begging to go to PCS rather than to a real juvenile hall. I suspect that he, too, despite being a tough guy on most other accounts, would hesitate before comparing PCS to any but the most lenient and rare of real prisons.

Ramon
#11
September 1987-November 1988