Dwight E. Abbott

BOOKS NOT BARS WRITES: I Cried, You Didn't Listen is a powerful story. It is shocking, haunting and brutal. Although it is a rare and valuable document, what is exceptional, is not Dwight Abbott's experience, but his clarity and courage in sharing that experience.

Dwight tells the disturbing tale of a very young child, first committed to the care of the state because of family tragedy and bad luck. Once institutionalized, he must learn to live within the cruel dynamics of a system that grants power through violence and leaves children at the mercy of predatory adults. He is continually faced with the need to choose between dehumanizing options: Be predator or be prey. Even in Dwight's description of racialist violence we see the effect that the social system has had on him - cementing stereo-types and prejudices that become self-fulfilling prophesy.

Dwight's account is terrifying. Upon reading it, one must recognize that, faced with the stark choice between victimizing another and being a victim oneself, the morals and values that make sense in freedom fall away. Perpetrating violence appears as the best option for self-preservation. This is the fundamental dynamic at work in Dwight's institutional life. I Cried, You Didn't Listen shows that, within incarcerating institutions, violence in all its forms - sexual assault, cliques, crews, gangs, emotional abuse - is essentially about power and control both over and above one's own sense of self.

Dwight makes it clear that, within youth prisons, there is no social order other than that based on violence. One of the terrible ironies of Dwight's life, and of the lives of so many other young people who have spent their formative years in violent "correctional" institutions, is that the very skills and socialization that are needed to survive inside these institutions are unacceptable - and even criminal - outside prison walls. Dwight's story powerfully demonstrates that an innocent and vulnerable young person forced to adapt to a culture based on violence will be quickly robbed of innocence and empathy and will develop a set of social reflexes and assumptions that - while necessary for survival inside - make him totally incapable of negotiating life outside of institutionalization. This lesson puts the lie to the notion that punishing young people who are in trouble makes sense. In fact, punitive youth prisons essentially institutionalize abuse, add trauma to the lives of trouble young people. Not only is this morally offensive, but it is counterproductive as a policy that seeks to reduce crime and increase safety. No sane person would want to live in the culture that Dwight portrays so vividly, nor would any one wish to cross paths with someone socialized in that culture. Yet for at least the past two decades, politicians have proudly supported and expanded institutions that rely on violence as a means of control and order. Politicians have sent more people into those institutions for longer periods of time, selling these policies to voters as "tough on crime" and good for public safety. More vividly and viscerally than any policy critique or "experts" study, I Cried, You Didn't Listen shows our juvenile and criminal justice system to be inhumane, abusive and counter-productive.

It would be nice if I Cried was nothing more than an alarming historical artifact; if we could read it in the same way we read accounts of witch burnings or other sadistic and irrational practices from a less civilized historical era. Tragically, the violent ecology of prison culture has expanded dramatically since Dwight was first ensnared. I Cried, You Didn't Listen is relevant still - the horrors Dwight describes continues as a fact of life for thousands of young people in California today, and for tens of thousands across the country.

DWIGHT EDGAR ABBOTT NOW WRITES:As I struggle to come to terms with my future - or should I write the lack of a future now that I have been sentenced to four consecutive life terms - there are moments when something as simple as a sound will remind me of the deep well of sadness and isolation in which I existed during my childhood; of a time when I had to grow up far too fast for the sake of my emotional survival.

Even as a preteen, I was aware of the cold indifference of the world, and I understood that strong self-reliance was imperative if I was to cope with the cruelties life would often inflict.

It was between 1996 and 2001, while working with hundreds of teenagers, some as young as thirteen, who were having a considerable amount of difficulty finding their way through this maze called life that I became aware of how capable they are of killing any number of men should they feel threatened, disrespected, or justified.

Most of these young people had been incarcerated from time to time, 99% of them were using drugs (predominantly methamphetamine [Ice]), and most could out-drink any alcoholic I knew, all supposedly without the knowledge of their parents Even I was caught off guard by the enormity of their problems. I became immersed, caught up, and eventually overwhelmed. The Government cannot, or will not, protect these children from the depredations of robbers, rapists and homicidal psychopaths, who are often released from prison after serving less time than fraudulent evangelists who embezzle from their church, or greedy hotel-rich millionaires who underpay their taxes. I feel strongly - am convinced - young people are no longer safe, that "civilization" ceased long ago.

Civilization once existed in tiny units. Within walls of homes were families who shared love and mutual respect so binding that the bond between them could not be torn. Without hesitation, nor question, they were willing to give their lives in defense of one another.

These family units are now, more often than not, dysfunctional - the result of parents who have become alcoholics and drug addicts who have given up fighting the battles for the sake of loved ones. They have become emotionally and psychologically impaired: so scarred that their personal demons have overwhelmed them. "I've my own problems! Let the penal system deal with them." It can't! Your system sucks! Administrators of the California Youth Authority recently admitted during a court deposition that "it has been in over its proverbial head all along, and in fact has been "abusing children entrusted to [us] for decades; physically, emotionally and sexually." Undoubtedly it is now hoped by the CDCR that its long time coming admission will fade into the sunset, as has all proven wrongdoing by it through the past decades.

I grew up in this "system" I write about, that lovingly fosters and defends, from which I've evolved into a man unable to feel.

Until you decide to do whatever you must to make your world one where your children are properly cared for, lovingly shielded from the baggage of your personal drama, and you stop depending upon the system to take care of your children, I am the best you can hope for.

Physically exhausted, psychologically numb and emotionally fragile, your incarcerated children are crying out in their anguish, and you don't hear them, you are "too busy!" They are left to feel they are standing inside a cosmic toilet that you are about to flush!

California's juvenile penal system, especially its California Youth Authority, retitled, I am certain with tongue-in-cheek, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Division of Juvenile Justice, is evil. It is convincing, cunning and powerful beyond measure. It waits patiently, a trap-door spider.

Even more so today than the years I've written about, everywhere inside juvenile prisons, children are forced to experience a never-ending gauntlet of abuse. It is where there begins a process you appear oblivious to, or have chosen to ignore. Boys as young as 8-9 are forced to fight, viciously like wild animals, during their journey to survive a system in which the odds are stacked high against them. It is they, the children, the most gentle and tender of spirits among us, who become the most terrible when fighting to keep their souls.

As they "graduate" from Nelles to Paso de Robles, on to Preston and the newer ones, for example N.A. Chadjerian, they have been deliberately and systematically beaten down; disillusioned, chewed up and spat out.

It is these children you have just read about whose stories are in CONSEQUENCE: the aftermath, and it's not pretty. No longer the children in I Cried, You Didn't Listen, they are now the wolves caged, staring back at you through steel bars. They've reached the "big time," are incapable of recognizing your humanity, for you denied them theirs. They see nothing other than a shape where you stand, and are wondering how to get at it. Their strength is obvious, deceptively predatory. Morality and conscience nothing more than a memory; their souls taken by a failed system, they wait. Soon, they know, their cages will be unlocked and they'll again be unleashed onto an unsuspecting and well deserving society