By RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
Last week I had the chance visit Martin Hall Juvenile Detention Center in Medical Lake, where boys and girls who've been accused of a felony stay for a few days up to a couple of weeks while they wait for a hearing.
The place is similar to other jails I've toured – blank hallways, limited daylight, a lot of locks – but for one striking detail: Everyone who works there seems exceptionally cheerful. This isn't to say the fine folks at Airway Heights Corrections Center or the Pine Lodge Corrections Center for Women (RIP) have been inhospitable but let's face it, you don't go to prison expecting to meet Fred Rogers, and I was prepared to see the same stern visages on the staff at Martin Hall.
Instead I was greeted by Larry Gardner, principal of the alternative schools program and a soft-spoken, amiable guy. He led me around the place, exchanging pleasantries with an energetic custodian and a few smiling corrections officers, before showing me the cell block. He explained that the new administrator, Robert Palmquist, has changed things up since his arrival last November and offenders are now allowed to hang out in a common area more often instead of being cooped up in cells all day, which seems to be having a positive effect on their behavior.
But as we passed by a door set off from the rest of the cells I heard the muffled yelling of an 11-year-old who Gardner said was being kept to himself while he settled down. He told me it's unusual to see such a young offender with such a big attitude, that they're typically frightened and prone to silence when they first arrive. I realized then how difficult it must be to maintain a positive outlook when day after day you see children brought into jail wearing handcuffs, many strung out on drugs or screaming obscenities like hardened criminals.
What heartrending childhood has caused these kids to become so jaded on living? How has the system failed them so completely at such an early age? What chance is there for lasting rehabilitation when you see the same offenders coming back two or three times before their 18th birthday? Any career path that comes weighted down with such cumbersome questions requires a pretty stout heart and a lot of credit.
Later, during a roundtable discussion with Martin Hall's three teachers, I got a glimpse of the outlook that keeps workers there from calling in sick every day. For various reasons Deb Hinthorne, Jamie Woods and Barb Thompson all took paths that led away from an apple-on-the-desk sort of classroom and into those with high windows crossed with chicken wire and a guard posted outside.
I asked them about the job's negatives and they all had examples – the 12-year-old who came in easy to please and returned a few years later with a rigid face and gang tattoos, the kid who said with confidence that he was going to turn his life around only to show up in a holding cell a month later – but it's not long before the women flipped the switch and were sharing examples of the graduation notice sent by the ex-gangbanger, or the former student who was spotted holding down a steady job to support his family while attending college classes.
It's then that I got the reason for all this optimism. As often as they might see the same young faces returning to this place year after year for offenses ranging from truancy to drug dealing to murder, the staff at Martin Hall seem to hold fast to one simple certainty – no matter what these kids have done in the past, there's always time to turn it around.
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