Ellington

It's class time at the Hinds County Detention Center, and Sheriff Malcolm McMillin is taking a reporter to see how it works. The county holding facility is one very lengthy drive down Highway 18, just across the street from the exit that leads hundreds of young people to Hinds County Community College every morning. There is, perhaps, irony in the location. Some young lives not destined for one direction often take the other.

Sheriff McMillin pulls his vehicle up to the perimeter fence of the detention center and waits for the fence to get pulled open. "This building here is the biggest bad money deal the county taxpayers have had to pay for," McMillin says, staring up at the drab walls and flat roofing of the building. The enormous structure is built of brick and cinderblock, though McMillin speaks of it as if it were composed of phlegm.

"I'm not saying we don't need it," he says. "We definitely need a detention center, but the company that put this thing together put it together too fast, and they built it with junk. I spent a long time trying to convince the supervisors to sue the builders."

A massive steel door sits across the lobby floor from the entrance. It's rigged on welded sliders that could probably stand multiple poundings from a bull. The doors themselves are electronically controlled. You have to wait for somebody you can't see to push a button and send the portal sideways, and leaving the administration section of the building is like exiting the air lock of a spaceship. One door has to be fully closed before the door across from you comes open.

It's doubtful that any prospective escapee has seriously contemplated a jailbreak using the front door.

Once in the hall, McMillin falls silent. "Hear that?" he asks, cupping a hand to his ear.

Nothing can be heard beyond the rumble of a distant heating unit.

"What, you mean the heater?"

"No, the silence," McMillin says patiently. "When it's quiet that means the staff runs the jail. When it's noisy it means the inmates run the jail. That quiet means the inmates aren't in charge here."

"Where are the inmates?"

"Let's go meet a few," McMillin offers, heading down the hall and into a room that looks nothing like a jail cell.

The room is lined with education paraphernalia—mathematical figures, historical information, geology maps, a table of black computers sporting Pentium 4 microchips and more than one anecdote offering wisdom on bettering yourself.

Also filling the room are about 20 teenage boys and one teacher. The students are of various ages and sizes. Some wear jumpsuits of gray. Some wear jumpsuits of brown. One student wears a jumpsuit of bright red.

"Red means a capital murder offense," the sheriff explains, lending little confidence to a newcomer seeing the inside of the jail for the first time. "None of these kids are in here for truancy."

Beyond the jumpsuits and the distinct lack of shoes (inmates shuffle around in beige house slippers), there is little to suggest that the young people in this class are waiting for a jury to render a verdict on them.

Actually, there is one drastic difference between this class and many public school classrooms—the students here are on their best behavior. There are no voices beyond the instructive readings of Dr. Cynthia Corkern, followed up by an occasional question from a kid who didn't get it the first time.

Corkern is nothing if not doting on her students. "I've been doing this for six years, and I think it's divine intervention at Jackson Public Schools that God gave me this job," Corkern says.

The kids are part of a high school education program, devised by the Hinds County Sheriff's Department in cooperation with Jackson Public Schools, to educate minors who would otherwise be sitting in a cell, staring at a wall.

At McMillin's request, the students sound off a laundry list of suspected offenses that landed them in this place.

"House burglary," says one. "Conspiracy to commit murder," chimes in another. "Possession," says a third, who is joined by at least three other admissions of possession.

"Ca-jaeki," says No. 7.

"What?" McMillin demands. "Speak up."

"Carjacking," the boy repeats more clearly.

"Kidnapping," continues No. 8, followed by No. 9, who says "armed robbery." But then comes No. 10, an underweight young boy, no more than 15, who stares sheepishly around the room and looks entirely too much like my own kid.

"Armed robbery," says the child.

"You mean attempted armed robbery," McMillin says jokingly, recognizing the child as a recent suspect who adults subdued at the site of the botched robbery at a gas station. "But for a man your size, you got a lot of spunk. I'll give you that."

"He's working hard," Corkern brags. "Show him what you have in your hand," she tells the child, who then forks over what looks like a list of mathematical equations with correct answers beneath them.

"Well, that looks alright," McMillin says appraisingly. "That looks real good. Did you do that on the outside when you were in school?"

"No, sir," the kid mumbles.

"Why not?"

"I didn't want to learn," the child admits.

McMillin tersely spells out the situation for both the kids and the county.

"Do you know how much more money I make because you're sitting in this room?" he asks the students, passing gimlet eyes over the entire class. "I don't even get a smiley face on my check for doing this. This class means nothing for me."

"Do any of you know me personally?" he then asks the kids. There is a pregnant pause, followed by a handful of shaking heads.

"No? Well then, you'd think you were nothing to me too then, right?" the sheriff argues. "But you are," he adds more somberly. "But you are."

McMillin stares speculatively at the young face sitting beside him at the front of the class. This boy is the infamous No. 10, who has rarely looked up from his lap since McMillin entered the room.

"What I want you to do is put me out of business," he tells them all flatly. "But to do that you've got to make a difference. You've got to do for yourself. Some people think I ought to take you, lock you up and throw away the key, that I should do only what the law says I gotta do—keep you locked down until you go to trial.

"That means no computers, no teacher, no learning, no schooling, and I still would've done my job. They'll still send me a check every month. But see, what we're supposed to do is try to make you different when you go out, because there's a difference between stupid and ignorant. I don't think you're stupid. I think you're ignorant. Ignorant sounds worse, but ignorant you can do something about. Stupid, and you're just hopeless."

Corkern proudly displays a list of improvements one particular student has been making. The numbers reflect staggeringly good grades in both math and reading—improvements that would have taken weeks in a world outside full of video games, street life and myriad other distractions.

"You can't tell me these kids are hopeless," McMillin says later, dodging two bowls and a mop bucket catching rainwater from a leaking roof. "What they need in here, and what they needed in the world outside, was discipline and order. If you get rid of the chaos, you've got a child that can learn."

Don't try to tell Corkern any different.

"These kids are a gift from God, and I try to treat them that way," she says with a hint of defiance. "They are so much victims of circumstance, and I think a lot of people think they can't learn because of a lot of different things—the color of their skin, their environment. I don't believe any of that. I don't care what they've been in. You have to talk up to them, and I think teachers get out of them most of the time what they expect, which isn't much, I'm sad to say."

Previous Comments

ID

79198

Comment

This shows the wonderful side of Malcolm McMillin that I have known for years. My family had a house off of Hwy 18 about 5 miles from the detention center. From 1990 to 1995, my dad struggled with colon cancer. When he was really, really sick (and close to the end), he had come down the stairs to the living room and didn't have the strength to return. My mom called Mrs. McMillin (a good friend of hers) and told her that she couldn't get my dad up the stairs, Malcolm brought over a trustee (very muscle-y guy) to carry my dad back up the stairs to his bed. And when my dad passed away at 5 a.m. the Wednesday before the 1995 St. Paddy's Day Parade, Mrs. McMillin took charge of things for my mom. The McMillins are Godsent, and they are Jackson treasures for sure.

Author

Steph

Date

2005-11-23T18:55:02-06:00