Susan Madden Lankford - Born, Not Raised: Voices from Juvenile Hall

Yale (boy), age 15

For my daughter Polly

E DITORIAL
Susan Madden Lankford, Lydia Bird, Anne Marie Welsh

D ESIGN
Susan Madden Lankford, Polly Lankford-Smith, Anton Khodakovsk

P HOTOGRAPHY
Susan Madden Lankford, Polly Lankford-Smith

Copyright 2012 by HUMAN EXPOSURES PUBLISHING, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise), in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Lankford, Susan Madden
Born, Not Raised: Voices from Juvenile Hall

Usage Rights:
Photograph of Albert Einstein, , photo by Philippe Halsman / Halsman Archive
Head On c. 1920, - All Rights Reserved
Photograph of Gertrude Stein, , Estate of Horst P. Horst / Art + Commerce
Photographs of former Angola Prison Death Row Inmates,
, photos by John Ramsey Miller / John Ramsey Miller
Drawn timeline, initial design by Diane Campbell, M.D.

The names of the youths have been changed to
protect their confidentiality.

Criminal Justice / Juvenile Justice / Social Justice / San Diego (Calif.)

This book was produced in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.

Cover Design: Anton Khodakovsky and Humane Exposures

eISBN: 978-0-9792366-4-8

Waters (boy), age 15

Contents

Seda (boy), age 15

Foreword

With all thy getting, get thee understanding.

Proverbs

In this closing volume of her piercing trilogy on the realities of human development underlying three dramatic forms of failed lives, photojournalist Susan Madden Lankford, again working as an urban anthropologist, takes us with camera and tape recorder to the beginning of it all, what others don't want to see: life experiences in childhood, illustrated by the lives of the children in San Diego's Juvenile Hall. The very title of this book is our beginning insight into the major role of failed or absent parenting. We are readily reminded of T.S. Eliot's quote, In my beginning is my end.

Susan Lankford shows us in her photographs and recorded conversations from Juvenile Hall how early teen pregnancy, drug use, violence, and gang membership are the markers for far more serious, uncomfortable, and pervasive social issues. They are much like the smoke that indicates a house fire: obvious, sometimes lethal, but not the essence of the problem. The problem with mistaking the byproduct for the cause is that it leads to well-intended but ineffective solutions. Currently the United States has the highest percentage of its population in prison of any developed nation, and its lead is increasing. Might we be missing some basic point?

Born, Not Raised breaks through social taboos against exploring the family origins of delinquent juvenile behavior. Who ever read in the media anything insightful about the families who created the Columbine shooters? The objective evidence Mrs. Lankford presents is interspersed with excerpts from interpretive conversations between her, her daughter, Polly Lankford Smith, and psychiatrist Diane Campbell. Dr. Campbell helps us understand not only what is going on, but why.

This is an important book, and surely not a comfortable book. It clearly illustrates the vast gap between what we believe of ourselves as a successful society, and the dark side that contains our failures, which we prefer to lock up and overlook. We repeatedly see that in addition to their manifest problem behaviors, many of the adolescent Juvenile Hall inmates are incapable even of coherently expressing their powerful thoughts and feelings in writing, and the reasons underlying that inability. The personal as well as the economic implications of this are enormous.

Ultimately we realize that any book about the human condition is a book about relationships. This unusual book, like its two predecessors, is built from the author's carefully documented relationships with this third category of society's untouchables. There is much to be learned in Born, Not Raised: about the major social problem of children in the juvenile justice system, about human development and our profound need for attachment to stable caregivers during the early years, and about ourselves. This book is an important starting point, the closest the rest of us will ever come to seeing and understanding what underlies the interpersonal, social, economic, and health failures in the lives of these young citizens.

Vincent J. Felitti, M.D.

Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program
Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego

How did these kids get into this mess?

Has society lost interest in these youths
because we can't find easy solutions
for stopping the crimes that lock them up?

Martinez (boy), age 15

Gordon (boy), age 15

Could the answer

lie in parenting, education,
and learning to raise our children
responsibly in today's world?