Endangered Read Free Page B

there are some common characteristics among them. They are all males, overwhelmingly black, poor, and almost always live in single-parent households headed by poorly educated black women. Psychologically speaking, this is essentially a recipe for disaster. There’s a severe lack of stability and nurturing going on. And as a consequence we are seeing boys who are severely emotionally detached, angry, and violent.”
    â€œI do love my son!” Janae exploded as she hurled the remote at the screen. “You don’t know how it is. I do love him.” Janae clutched her chest. It felt as if some all-powerful fist had reached inside her and wrung her heart like a wet rag.
    â€œWell, Dr. Phelps,” the anchor said, “based on your assessment, I don’t know if we are to pity them or demand the criminal justice system lock them up and throw away the key.”
    The professor smiled. “Well, then I’ve done my job. That’s the conundrum we find ourselves facing, isn’t it? Right now the solution we have is to treat them like adults for committing horrific crimes that, quite frankly, most adults I know couldn’t imagine committing on their worst day.”
    Janae turned the TV off. Tired and overwhelmed, she stared at the black screen trying to devise a plan to help her son. She sat alone, until the room grew dark. Only the moon’s light shone between the blinds’ plastic slats. From the change pocket of her wallet she retrieved a folded paper with her boss’s cell number written on it. If I could just get some weekend hours and work nights, too, I could go to every one of Malik’s hearings without falling behind on the bills. Maybe with some extra hours I could even raise enough money for an attorney. Maybe. She picked up the phone and dialed her boss.

Chapter Three
    THE COURTHOUSE AT 1801 VINE STREET WAS BUSTLING WITH ACTIVITY ON Monday morning.
    Courtroom B was large with a high ceiling, but it still had a cramped feeling. The wooden bench Janae sat on was hard and splintered in spots. The lighting was depressingly dim.
    The room was filled with women in situations similar to hers. They all looked familiar, with their sullen faces. They could have been neighbors or distant relatives. There was one woman in particular whom Janae thought she’d attended elementary school with, or maybe she worked at a store Janae visited.
    A few kids, younger than school age, sat restlessly next to their mothers. A little boy no more than three got loose from his frazzled mom and darted toward the bar of the courtroom. She scrambled to catch him before the court clerk did.
    â€œDo you want to go to jail?” she loudly scolded the child.
    Obediently, he shook his head.
    â€œWell, do what I tell you to do!” She snatched him by his sticklike arm and hauled him back to their seat.
    Two of the mothers were consulting with their private attorneys. The lawyers, in their dark suits, were armed with briefcases thick with files devoted to their clients.
    Janae called a half-dozen defense attorneys. The going hourly rate for a criminal defense lawyer for murder charges was, at minimum, $375 an hour—or a flat fee of $20,000. Even if she worked every shift and didn’t pay her rent for a year, there was no way she could get her hands on that kind of money.
    She was the eighth person in line to speak to the public defender assigned to this courtroom. He had a total of fifteen minutes before the judge took the bench to get through a line of about twenty anxious mothers desperate for a word about their children’s welfare.
    When it was Janae’s turn, the public defender quickly searched for Malik’s file in a large accordion folder stuffed with others just like it. The public defender pulled it out and flipped through the flimsy file. He turned a few pages until he reached the one he was searching for. His eyes shifted back and forth across the page