Word: antwan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Then Antwan got his first break. A juvenile-services worker sat down beside him. "Are you sorry for what you've done this evening?" he asked the boy. "Yes," mumbled Antwan. "Have you learned a lesson?" he asked. Another soft yes. Alongside the boy stood his mother Syrita, 30, an attractive woman whose soft face belies the rugged ghetto life she has led. The worker decided to let Antwan go home -- he had no prior arrests -- so long as she brought him to court the next...
Syrita had tried repeatedly to warn Antwan of illicit goings-on at the playground. But such warnings carry little weight for a kid growing up on society's margin. Antwan lives in a storefront apartment just blocks from the drug-saturated playground. His mother and grandmother survive on public assistance, and his mother is battling depression with medication and counseling. His father is long gone...
...next day Antwan and his mom show up at juvenile court, which is crammed into the basement of Clarence Mitchell. The building's massive columns, vaulted ceilings and dimly lighted corridors conjure fleeting images of a dungeon. Children wander the hallways, a few in tears. The water fountains are too high for most to reach. Lawyers, their arms spilling over with folders, bustle about. Sheriff's deputies cast jaundiced eyes...
...Antwan gets his second break. The defender's office assigns his file to chief public defender David Fishkin, a gentle giant who looks like a bearded Ichabod Crane. More than anything else, Fishkin decides, efforts must be made to keep Antwan "out of the system" by placing him in a "diversion" program, which offers counseling and individual attention rather than harsh penalties like incarceration. Like everyone else in the courthouse, Fishkin knows that once a kid falls deeper into the justice system, he may never get out. But the lawyer is worried that the prosecutor on the case may have...
...third break for Antwan: McNamara, who worked as a night bailiff to get through law school, is actually on Fishkin's side this time. She was born and raised in New Jersey in a blue-collar family; her hard-nosed reputation is a reflection of a strong sense of outrage at the inner-city disaster. "Sometimes," she says, "I get home at night and I think my name is 'Bitch.' They stop being kids to you after a while. Some of them are vicious and nasty. They'd shoot you in a heartbeat...