Oral History Program Brad Bate Interviewed by Don Cavalli 05 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Brad Bate Interviewed by Don Cavalli 05 August 1971 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Bate, Brad, an oral history by Don Cavalli, 05 August 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Brad Bate. The interview was conducted on August 5, 1971, by Don Cavalli, at the Adult Halfway House located at 3370 Washington Blvd in Ogden. Bate discusses his experiences while residing at the State Industrial School and the County Jail. He also explains his perceptions of the Criminal Justice System. DC: Well, Mr. Bates would you mind telling me a little bit about your childhood and where you were born and what year and so forth? BB: I was born in 1953 and I was born here in Ogden. DC: Tell me a little bit about your parents and the size of your family. BB: There, let’s see I have to count, there is Shawn, Brent, Bart, Lezlie and me, there were five and then the parents are seven. And my little brother Bart six, and my younger sister fourteen and my older sister nineteen and I have another brother Brent who is sixteen, and then there’s me eighteen. DC: So your next to the oldest, is that correct? BB: Yeah. DC: Could you tell me a little bit about your parents, their profession, what they do, and so forth. BB: Well, my Mom's a housewife, and my dad works at Hillfield. I guess it’s a good job he's holding now, I went up there to work once and worked in the airfreight terminal loading and unloading planes. There's no boxes under a hundred pounds out there so it’s a lot of work. 1 DC: Well, did you have any childhood experiences that were of interest to you and might have had something to do with your encounters with the criminal justice system? BB: Well, once when I was little, I mean real little, when I needed money, I take it from my old man and my old lady, I'd walk over there and when they weren’t looking I'd take a couple of dollars, and one time when I was about four, five, or six along in there I took twenty dollars from my dad and gave it to my best friend, a whole twenty dollars and ever since I was that high you know once in a while I'd take money from Mom and Dad you know, or I'd walk over and get some money out of mom’s purse. It wasn’t, I know it wasn't right, but I always did it, until I was about sixteen. DC: Where were you actually born, was it in Weber County then? BB: Yeah. DC: What part of the county were you born in? BB: Here in Ogden City. DC: In Ogden City. BB: At the Saint Benedicts Hospital. DC: Right, what school did you attend? BB: Oh man, I lost count we moved so much, let’s see, I went, I've been to Lewis, Madison, let's see how many more. DC: Madison, was that a junior high school? BB: No that was an elementary school. DC: An elementary school. 2 BB: And when I went to junior high we moved once, we moved to Logan so, I went to Logan Jr. High and I've been to Central and T.H. Bell. DC: What year did you live in Logan? BB: Let’s see I was about 9-10 so it was about 1958-59. DC: About 1958. What did your father do in Logan? You mentioned he went to school. BB: Yeah, he did, but that was a long time ago before I was born. He went to school before, my mom was previously married, she was married once and got a divorce and then met my dad while they were in the Navy and started going together and they were married I think 2 years, 2 1/2 years before. DC: Are they still married, by the way? BB: Yes. DC: Great. BB: I don't know if they’re happily married because they always argue but I guess you always find that in married people. DC: I think that’s a common problem. BB: Me and my girlfriends, we try for us to argue about. DC: Yeah, that’s not too unusual, is it? BB: I don't think so. DC: Well, can you perhaps tell me about the first experience, the circumstance surrounding the first experience you had which led you to the criminal justice system or, you know, when you were brought before the juvenile court or apprehended by the police? 3 BB: I don’t know, I was about fourteen, fifteen years old when that started. Most of the time before that I would take candy bars and stuff like that that I needed. I was never brought up to a judge or anything. DC: Did most of your friends do the same thing? BB: They did the same thing when I was little, everybody would say “hey let’s see how good you are,” you know. Go in, steal a couple of magazines, come back out and say “hey man, I got this and this and this,” you add the price and say I'm badder than you man, I got all this. Those were the last, you know when I started all that stuff, about seventeen eighteen years old, every time we'd go in, see, I'd go in with my buddies and the one that come out with the most money, that’s what he got. You know if he comes out with more money than the other guy, that’s what he got to keep. All that was left over they would split up. DC: Oh. BB: So it was kind of good. DC: It paid to be proficient then, didn't it? BB: Yeah, and then, let’s see… Most of the time I was breaking and entering. I got in trouble for it, the first time I think it was, the first time I went to court it was not for stealing something it was for arguing with my parents, see I was incorrigible. See, I wouldn't do what they said. DC: I see. BB: I said “to hell with them.” DC: And they referred you to the juvenile court. 4 BB: Yes, and I went through a bunch of stuff with that. But the judge kept taking me back and taking me back, let me off, let me off, let me off, you know and all that. And then I started breaking into houses but not really breaking in. See, like people most the time, like my sisters girlfriend lives up the street from us, I went up there and they were downstairs, and I was upstairs. I was walking around and all of sudden I looked in her mom’s room and I looked in this jewelry box and there was a bunch of silver dollars there, and so I got that. I didn't get in trouble the first couple of times; see I did it when they were home. One time, the last time I went up there, they had this little thing they put milk bottles in for the milkman, but the other side was coming down and I worked with it. So, I got that undone and reached in and undid the door and walked in, but the next door neighbors caught me. And that was about the first time I went to court. DC: Well, how old were you then? BB: Fourteen, fifteen, somewhere around there. DC: Fourteen or fifteen. And what happened now? You were picked up I assume by the police officer? BB: Well, see, I went home, and I had all the coins and I spent them or sold them and I slept out that night. And the next morning, that night she come down and found out they were missing and the neighbors told her they had seen me get in. So she came down there without the police that night. The same night I came in the house because we were sleeping out, and my parents were all over me and then the police officers came about that night sometime about eleven, twelve o’clock. And finally I said “yes, I did do this.” At first I denied it, and denied it, and denied it, and denied it, and so on. 5 DC: Now, where did he take you? BB: He didn't take me anyplace; he referred me to juvenile court. DC: O.K. so he just interrogated you there on the spot at your home? BB: Yeah. DC: I see. Were your parents at home? BB: Yes. DC: Yes, they were. BB: And after he left I got a little bit from them and then I went to court, and most the time, every time I went to court the judge was as lenient as could be. You know, I'd do something and instead of sending me anywhere or doing something about it he'd let me off. DC: Do you feel he was too lenient? BB: Yes. Because after a while before I went to State School they had all this stuff, all these burglaries and stuff like that and he would just let me off and let me off and finally I decided that I had to quit some time, so I told him. He said “Guess what? I'm going to give you one more chance.” Put me on suspend a commitment to the State Industrial School, I said “No way, let’s not do it, put me there.” DC: So you actually requested. BB: I requested it; I talked to my parents before I went to court and said it’s got to be that way. DC: Now were you ever placed in Detention at a Juvenile Detention Home? BB: I lost count. 6 DC: Is that right? BB: Yeah. DC: Tell me about your incarcerations at the Detention home, you know, and what you think of that, and so forth. BB: Well, I think right now if I had a stick of dynamite I'd blow it up because it’s… it’s just not a place to like. Of course I can see it helped me a little bit, because you get the feeling that place is not very good, I don’t want to go there no more. So you kind of think, well, I'd better stay out of trouble, but then when the time arises when there’s something you want and you want it bad and you’ve got to have it, and you say I've got to have that and you want it bad enough, you’re going to do it. You don't think about ‘they’re going to put me in Detention again and I'm going to rot,’ and most the time I did. The first couple of times I did go into a Detention home it wasn't for breaking and entering, but once in a while for curfew, and most the time, well once I threw a shoe at my brother and they put me in Detention for a month and a half. DC: Was that the longest period of time you were in? BB: Yeah. DC: One and a half months in a Juvenile Detention Home. BB: Yes. Now it’s located, the converted garage down on what, 22nd and kiesel. It’s an old cafe, converted, is it on Kiesel or Grant? DC: Kiesel or Grant, yeah. It’s on one of the two. Well, what kind of activities did they have in Detention for you? I mean, what could you do? 7 BB: Are you kidding? The first place when I was living there you did nothing but sleep, and that’s only to pass time. DC: Now did they isolate you from the rest of the juveniles? BB: Well, the kids that were in there over 24 hours watch T.V. But the food, well, I can't call it food, the stuff they gave you, it's from Ukes café. I feed my dog better out of the can. So the meat is so greasy, that’s where your weight comes from is from the grease, not from eating. Once in a while you get a good meal. The best thing I like there, they give you milk or once in a while pop. It’s none of this coffee, like the coffee up to the jail, I can make better coffee out of tea, it’s that bad. It’s just like taking water, putting in a little sugar and cream, and putting some black food coloring in. DC: What else did you see at the Detention home that you didn't really agree with? BB: The way, see… they feel you’ve got to be there 24 hours before you can do anything, and I don't see that. If you’re going to do something, you’re going to do, rather they, they think they have to get to know you and see how you’re going to adjust to it. But the way I feel, if you’re going to come in and they’re going to put you there, why don't they just let you watch T.V.? You’re there for a purpose, it isn't going to hurt you anymore to wait 24 hours. What I think it is, is just to make you think. But what can you think? DC: Does it work? In your thinking, did that help you or did that hurt you? BB: It made me mad. DC: Yeah, made you more aggressive than you were when you came in. 8 BB: Yeah, and you know, I figure, well, if they’re going to let us watch T.V., I’ve seen a lot of guys come in there and to hell with the 24 hours. They go out and watch T.V, because they know Streble. DC: Well what else besides watch T.V. can you do while you’re in Detention? BB: Sleep and read books. DC: What kind of a library do they have available there? BB: The best comic section in the world as far as I'm concerned, because that’s all they’ve got, comics. And once in a while a couple of good Life Magazines. DC: Well, what about the people who are actually in charge? BB: You know, I’ve never had trouble with people that work there. Lots of times, Streble, Mr. Streble, I don't like him and I guess I never will because of the way he acts. But I've got to know him a little bit better over the period of time I was there. I got to like him a little bit, but I guess as far as I'm concerned I can never like him because of the way he acts when he is there. When he’s boss, he's boss, and nobody else has got anything to do with it. When, like, my probation officer said, he said “I think this guy; you should let him go out and work for you.” He’ll say “Oh O.K. will do that, that’s great with me.” Three days later I’m glad he did that. Once in a while, there was a guy down there, I'm not going to mention names, but while I was down there I did smoke and he'd give me cigarettes, but while you’re down there, you know, you’re not supposed to. That was good, you know, he helped me, and while I was down there I did everything in my power, he'd say something and I'd jump and do it as fast as I could. 9 DC: Now could you tell me, kind of search your mind out, and tell me the total number of times you were actually in Juvenile Detention and approximately the total length of stay that you were actually in Detention? BB: I figure about, I exaggerated when I said I lost count, but I figure about six maybe seven times. And I figure over a period of time, maybe 2 to 2 1/2 months. DC: Now of course, during this period of time, I understand you also worked with the juvenile probation officers. You were placed on probation, and you worked with the probation officers. Can you tell me what you think of the kind of services they provided you with, and what they did that helped you and perhaps what they did that could perhaps have helped more? BB: Well I can't say that they really helped me, because they really didn't do too much for me. They got me away from trouble and got me set up pretty well, and then on the other hand they got me in these group meetings that were every Monday, and we went there every Monday and we talked, all the kids that were on probation. We talked about what we did that week, you know. We were all at home living, a lot more people were there, some of the people were from runaway and stuff like that, dope and stuff like that. And I think that helped me because I got a lot what was bothering me off my mind, you know, like once in a while I'll think about something, and I get really mad and I can't sleep for the rest of that night because I'll think about it and it really bugs me. But on the other hand, when I was out there I'd talk, and talk and talk and then it was off my mind. Then I'd sleep like a baby. But on the other hand, the one probation officer I had out there was just a bear and in no way can I say I like it. I can't say I really dislike him, but there’s points that, that I just didn't like. Like he'd come in when I was in Detention and I said “why don't you get me out of 10 here and help me, get me something and I'll stay out of trouble.” “Sorry, I can't do that for you.” He says you’re a bad influence, I don't like you. You’re not doing anybody any good when you’re out there; he says the next day “I know you'd be breaking into my house.” I said “well if that’s the way you feel...” then I started putting in recommendations for a new probation officer. Finally got it. DC: You finally got it. BB: Yeah, I got a woman probation officer and she helped me a lot. DC: Now, are these the only two probation officers that you had any experience with? BB: Yeah, and I didn't have very long with Mr. Bear because as soon as he started doing that I got rid of him. DC: And how long were you with this young lady, this young woman, your probation officer? BB: I figure four, five, six months, I think. It was nothing really long because after that I was kind of, oh I stayed kind of away from this trouble. Then I was sent to a Utah State Mental Hospital. DC: O.K. now what age now the first experience you had with Incarcerations in Juvenile Detention Home when you were about fourteen, fifteen years of age? BB: Yeah. DC: Now, what was the most recent experience you've had with the juvenile court? BB: Most recent? It’s been within three and one half weeks ago, I was arrested for petty larceny. DC: I see, O.K. now tell me about your experiences in mental health or… 11 BB: The mental hospital. DC: Mental hospital, right. BB: That place, I think that really helped me because I seen, well, a lot of people there live for dope. And for what I was down there for, because I used to steal just to be stealing, you know it, it wasn't to show that I'm good or anything, it was just because I wanted to and if I wanted something bad enough, I wanted it, and I was going to get it. DC: So you didn't need the money. BB: No, I didn't need the money. DC: I see. BB: And I guess they figured that's stupid, why should somebody do that, you know, so they sent me down there for a 90 day observation. While I was there I seen what the worst of people was and what could happen to me, and how people try to cope with somebody and how they turn around and stab them in the back. Like when I was down there, if somebody would help me, I'd do everything in my power to help them back, you know, try and tell him what was going to happen like this one counselor down there. He says he took me into this room and showed me those cards, those little things, you know, I told him and then he showed me pictures and told me to make stories up about them. I'd make stories up about them, most of them were you know, kind of distant, a kid was riding a bike and riding as fast as he could, you know, and looking behind his shoulder, and I said something about yeah he sold a bike and trying to get away. That’s what he did, you know, he was laughing and he said I heard something about that. You weren't going to get out for a couple of months, and I had already been there two months. I said 12 well they only sent me here for a 90 day observation. And he says, well he says “the way I hear it, we might keep you for another six months.” And I liked it down there, I had it made down there you know, everything was nice. I was getting home visits so I wasn't really. DC: Now by home visits you mean, they'd let you go home on the weekend. BB: Yeah. DC: And spend two or three days with your family. BB: Yeah. DC: I see. BB: And I was staying out of trouble and I had lots of friends down there. And they had phases, like when you were in the first phase; you didn't do nothing except stay in the center at school. And then you got in second phase. I got in the second phase faster than anybody else did. That’s when you could walk around and you couldn't go outside and mingle with other people because that was third phase. DC: It was kind of a Behavior Modification approach then, where they reward you when you perform well. BB: Yeah, when I got in third phase I could go outside and talk to people and walk all over the center, and everything. And I made it up the stairs real fast and I had it made, you know, they was sending me home for home visits but I wasn't there that long. He says “Brad, I lied to you, you won't be here. I'm sorry, you’re not going to be here staying any six months.” Because I told him, “that’s great, I don't mind it,” and he says “Well, I think what you'd better do is go back over to your ward,” and I was D2 and I says “What's up?” and 13 he says “You got to be packing, you'll be leaving tonight.” Oh boy did I run over there. I was glad to get out but I wouldn't mind staying there. DC: Then you actually think that at least, therapeutically, that it did help you? BB: Really. DC: And your attitude changed, you think? BB: Yeah, definitely. DC: Now how long did it take you after you were from the mental hospital to change back to your old habits? BB: Well, let’s see, I was out of the mental hospital… I think it was three months. And after that I got back into breaking and entering and once in a while I pulled thousands. Like when John Carlson’s was out here in Ogden out back here, back that way, I'd go out there and I didn't like him too much because somebody had told me something about him and I figured huh huh, I'll put him out of business and I just did. I did, I did I put him out of business. That's why he folded up in Ogden. I never, I only got caught once there, I sold a stereo the last time; it was the last time I sold a stereo. That was just before I went to State School. And before that, let’s see one night, we went in there and I walked out with see, about 150 tapes and 6 stereos, over $1500.00 in cash, over 350 tickets to groups down in Salt Lake and the next night I did the same thing. DC: Wow! Well, when you come into these offenses did you go with groups of people, in other words, did you do it by yourself or were their peers? BB: I always did it by myself. DC: You did it all by yourself? 14 BB: Yes. DC: So you, I see, so you know a lot of times when people commit crimes they do it in groups. In fact, that’s the most common way, you know, it’s seldom you'll find someone that does it on his own. BB: Yeah, and that's why I did it that way. I figured well, he says well, with all this stuff missing maybe he'll figure a whole bunch of people came in and did it, they won't figure on one person. So I go, every time I go in there I go in there one at a time, and I made, let’s see I made twelve to about, I figure about seven, eight hundred, nine hundred dollars on those times. DC: Now, what would you do with the goods and…? BB: I'd sell them. DC: You'd sell them. And what would you do with the money, in other words, did you need the money, or what did you use the money for? BB: Well, for any, to buy clothes because I wouldn't stay at home, I couldn't get along with my parents and I wouldn't ask them for money because of the thing I had when I was younger. I'd take money from them and he says I still owe him money, and so I wasn't going to ask him for any more. I was going to stay completely away from it, you know, so when I needed money I either worked, and when I couldn't work, if I was… I'm lazy. And if I can get out of work I'll do it. And so I figured well, if I do this then I've got it made. And the last time I got busted was at stereo city, I mean John Carlson's and I had it, I had a stereo on me and he sit me down and he didn't find it. DC: And you're saying the officer shook you down? 15 BB: No the guy that was working for him. DC: Oh I see. BB: And he didn't find it, so I got out to the car and he started to come out so I hid the stereo and he come in and shook me down again, and still didn't find it. He told me to stay and then the cop came and I told him what happened and I did take it and got the stereo back and everything. I didn't want to cause a whole mess of commotion and get everybody in trouble and so I got it back. That was three days before I was supposed to go to court for another offense to see if they were going to send me to State School because I had been presentenced to the State Industrial School. DC: So actually, when you appeared in court and you were sentenced to the State Industrial School, he said that there was another offense coming then? BB: He just dropped it. He said that he was going to let me go, and I said, "No, put me out to the State School." He said, "Well, being you got this against you, I'll just drop it." DC: So the judge dropped it. BB: Then I spent eleven months out to the State School. DC: Before we talk about the State Industrial School, tell me about your employment. What experiences you've had as far as employment is concerned? How you got the jobs, whether someone in the criminal justice system helped you get them or what? BB: Well, the first job that I ever had was mostly just odd jobs like walk around and cut lawns and like that. I had plenty of old people around our house, you know, that lived there and I'd cut their lawns and they'd pay me. DC: How old were you when you started doing that? 16 BB: Fifteen. That was just when I needed money like I wanted pop or wanted to go get something to eat. Then I got kind of brave and I started to go out and get stereos out of cars and I'd make three or four hits a night. I'm a night owl. I'll sleep in the mornings and like, I got kicked out of school in the ninth grade and all I could do was sleep. I couldn't stay home because my parents knew that I was going to do that. So, I'd break into my next door neighbors because they worked. Instead of stealing from them, I would go in there and watch TV and eat and sleep. I did that for about a month and one- half until they finally caught me for breaking into his house. DC: Were you referred to the juvenile court for that? BB: Yeah. DC: You never did take anything? BB: Well, until the last time. Then I took a piggy bank, sleeping bag, and a fishing pole. DC: This was the time that they apprehended you? BB: Yeah. DC: So they got you for breaking and entering and what—petty larceny? BB: Yeah. DC: Did you ever hold any other jobs? BB: I worked for Ogden City Schools as maintenance repair. DC: How long were you there? 17 BB: Three months. Then mostly just odd jobs. I never did hold down a job very long because I didn't like it. If I could get out of work, then I wouldn't do it. If I could find an easier way of getting money, which was stealing, I'd do it. DC: So actually the only job you really held was the mowing of lawns, and with the Ogden City School District. BB: Yeah, that was before I went to State School. DC: What was the attitude of your parents and brothers and sisters? I mean, did your brothers and sisters, did they have the same problem? Have they had encounters with the court? BB: Right. My brother has had one thing with the court where he stole a piggy bank from somebody and a radio from across the street from a next door neighbor. DC: So he was apprehended twice? BB: Yeah, but they never did send it to court. He was always let off easy and as of right now, he is kind of messing up because he's been taking chairs off of porches and pillows. DC: How old is he? BB: Fifteen. He's kind of hip on stuff like that but he doesn't smoke or drink. He's pretty straight on that. I told him if I ever caught him doing dope, I'd kill him. DC: But he is the only other member of your family, that you are aware of, that has broken the law to any degree. BB: My sister has. My older sister has to where she went to Grand Central and stole a slip when she was little but that is the only thing she ever did. DC: How old was she? 18 BB: Ten. DC: Well, that's not abnormal behavior. I think that everyone has made that mistake once or twice in their lives. Actually, you're the only one in your family that has had a serious problem? BB: Yeah, really. DC: How do your parents take it? What's their attitude? Have they talked to you? BB: I can't really say because when I did get into trouble, they would talk to me and tell me that I was stupid. My dad told me, he said, "You keep it up, you're going to get a reputation." I started getting that reputation. When anything happened around my house, they would come to me. I didn't like that. DC: You were the escape-goat for everything? BB: Yeah, and I didn't like that. So when he started saying, "You are going to end up in State School..." "Nah, I'll quit first." When I finally did end up in State School, I thought back, and now he is saying to me, "You're going to end up in prison." I ain't telling you nothing, I'm telling myself now. I don't have to prove to him that I'm not going to stay there, I'm telling myself that I'm not going to go there. DC: So it's a matter of the person convincing himself. No matter what anyone else says it still comes out that you've got to make up your mind that you're not going to do it. BB: When I was in State School, everybody says that most of the people that have been there have been back more than once. They said, "You're going to come back." "No, I'm not." They said, "You're saying that, but you're not proving it." They said, "That don't mean nothing." I quit saying to them that I wasn't going to come back, I told myself—never did. 19 DC: Tell me; let's talk about the State Industrial School. Just relate your experiences out there and some of the things that happened. I'm sure that you've had a lot of interesting experiences. BB: I wouldn't call them all interesting. I figured that the first month that I was out there; it was just a matter of trying to get along with the people that were already there. Most of the people that were there, they ran the group. You've got twenty-six guys sitting in a group and what the big guy says goes because they run it. I didn't like that. I said, "Nobody tells me what to do." So, when I was there the first month, most of the time it was either fighting or telling somebody to leach off because you don't tell me what to do. The first month that I was there, I was just mostly fighting. When they told me I was going to do it, I was proving to them that I wasn't going to do it. DC: How old were you when you were out there? BB: Sixteen. DC: What year was this? BB: 1969. DC: You were there eleven months, so you were there until you were seventeen years of age? BB: Right. For that month, I got in a fight with one of the kids and he was one of the big shots and once I proved to him that I wasn't going to do it, if I got him and beat the hell out of him, nobody would match with me. That just proved to them that I was bigger than him and that says it right there. The thing about it is that they got this thing going for them. They said that I took him and I hit him and we started fighting. He came up from behind 20 me and I grabbed him and flipped him on top of the tennis table. He kicked me and cut my eye open, right here. That made me a little bit mad, so I took his head and put it through a window. I cut him up a little bit and he came at me with a knife so I had to take the knife away from him and it cut his arm and that got him a little bit mad, and he cut me. It was just one great big fight. The supervisor was sitting there watching me. That kind of got me mad, you know, he was just sitting there watching. DC: He didn't do anything to try and prevent it? BB: No. When they're fighting, he says, "They've got to learn one way or the other. They've got to get along with each other and if they're going to do it, they're going to do it now." I think that helped me too, because I got along with the guys out there. It wasn't a bad cut. We weren't really trying to hurt each other, we were just trying to prove that he was going to tell me to do something, and I wasn't going to do it. I was telling him that I wasn't going to do it and he was telling me that I was. After that fight, him and me were buddy buddies. We've been buddy buddies ever since. DC: You actually believe then, that the supervisor made the right decision? BB: I did. Like one time I was out there, it was about three months, I think it was, and I decided, well, hey man, these people run me. They stick you in group S for a week and group S was Security Group. Well, I figured, I have to try it once. So everybody else was breaking line and running. We marched in lines of pairs and they would take off from line and we had security guards and I figured I had to be better than that. I figured there's got to be a better way. Most people trying popping locks, sitting down and trying to get the keys, but I said, "I've got a better way." I figured that these guys were going to run this one night. I said, "Well, I've got a way, go out the window." He said, "Hey, that heavy thick 21 glass." and I say, "I got to think, take a bar bell, that we had out there, and throw it through it." So he threw it and it broke the window and everybody went. Not everybody but most of the kids that would go. That helped me. That set me up. That night, they put a wood thing over it. We kept complaining that the sun wasn't coming in and the room was getting cold so they put a new window in. That was my plan. That was all I wanted. When they put a new window, in there, the putty was soft. I had the best plan ever; they said that they should have gave me a medal for that one. I took the putty out, me and six other guys left and put the window back in and then put the putty in and then left. It took them three days to find us. They kept asking how we got out. DC: How many times did you escape from the State Industrial School? BB: Only once. DC: Well, tell me some of your other experiences. Before you do though, tell me about groups. Explain the structure. BB: The structure of a group out there is to get the boys together and have them set so that everybody knows their duties— cleaning the dorm, cleaning the TV room, cleaning the day room. Get them set and get them to work together in school and if you didn't want to go to school, to go out on garbage detail and different details that they needed to be done in the mornings and in the afternoons and stuff like that, working in the cafeteria. The main system to get together is to get the boys to learn what they done was wrong and to change their minds completely of going out there and doing the same thing as to going out there and getting an education and getting a job and settling down, you know, and taking it easy and staying completely away from trouble. 22 DC: What determines what group you are in? BB: The area you come from. Like I was from Ogden so they put me in Gates West. Some of the time, they were messed up out there like they had people from Ogden in different groups. It was really mixed up. It mostly depended upon....see when you are sentenced, the people that are out of state, lawyers comes for your sentence because he, the judge thinks about it before you are sentenced. He says, "Well, we are going to send him to State School, or we are not." They didn't know where I was going. They thought they were going to let me go and so I told them to send me there and so he sent me there and that's why I got the gates, I think. Most of the people in gates, well some of them were from Ogden and most of them were from Salt Lake, Bountiful and Granger. DC: Is there a reason for that? BB: I don't know. I think so if they want to talk and just shoot the breeze maybe they can talk about the same things because they have friends there, like I had a million buddies out there who I knew—they were just in the wrong group. DC: What about group S? Now you mentioned group S. BB: That is the security. DC: Who goes out to group S? BB: Mostly people who can't abide by the rules or they want to do what they want to do. If they can't abide by the rules, then they will send them there or if they run, they'll send them there. DC: Now were you sent to S after you ran? BB: Yes. 23 DC: You were. For how long? BB: Just a day because it was only an attempt. DC: What other groups do they have out there as far as letter type of groups? BB: Well, see, ours was Gates Cottage and it was either G or A and O. One is G and one is A and O. There was Child's West which was called group A. DC: What age are they? BB: Well, see the only one that was varied was, I can't even remember. It was just for little kids, but I can't remember the name of the cottage and that was for the younger kids under fourteen. Once you are over fourteen, they put you in a group, in a bigger group. DC: What was the youngest one out there that you were aware of? BB: The youngest kid was six. DC: Okay, what other kinds of experiences did you have out there, Brad? BB: Well, like we called it the Northern Escape. A couple of other guys went through with it because they wanted to go, but I planned it but I didn't go because I was late. I was held over in school or I might have gone, I don't know. This was another wild plan one. In the kitchen, we worked in the cafeteria—a new cafeteria that was built in '68 and we had worked there for quite a while. I worked there for most of the time I got there. I worked there about six, seven, eight, nine months. Before this, I had been there three and onehalf months. Well, I decided, these guys were planning to run and when you are in a kitchen, when they let you go out and wash windows outside, there was an opportunity. Not very many guys did it from there but it was an opportunity, and some of them when they brought them out from prison, they would go out the back door. Most of the time you 24 never did unless at noontime and you came home from school. They call you out of school over the intercom system and take you over to the cafeteria with the guy watching you. Some of them have gone from there or some of them would have gone from school. This one we had planned. One of my buddies had got hold of a key to the attic and this key was always laying around and nobody would have missed it, and who would think of somebody in the attic when everybody else ran? Well, we had it planned and we had it all set. We were going to stay in there all of that night and work that night in the kitchen. Everybody leaves except for one guy, and this guy happened to be, his name was Crain, we called him Bulldog because he always walked around with his cheeks puffed out a little like a bulldog. We was going to knock him out and carry him into the bathroom and lock him in. Lock the door so they thought we had left, crawl up into the attic, hide in the attic. They come down and chase us all that day but we haven’t left, wait until the next night all the way into the next night and they close down, the kitchen was closed. Come down from the attic, unlock the door again and leave. That way, they would have thought that we had already been out but we hadn't been. We had no worry about starving to death because we were in a cafeteria. DC: They did do it then? They did pull it over? BB: Well, three or four of them did pull it off and I was late at school, so when they got caught, it was my fault, you know and they said, "You ratted." The thing about it was that it had been known from the start. They knew every single move that I had planned. They had everything set. They knew that they were in there from the minute Crain was knocked out. They knew it before; Crain knew that he was going to get jumped. They had told Crain. They said, "Don't fight them, we'll get them." This Jim Baff, my buddy, buddy, 25 buddy had told them and had actually gone with it into the plan, had acted like he was going to run but had told everybody that needed to be told that this run was going to be done. So, it looked bad on me. Nobody likes a rat out to the State School. I had to do something about this boy right there because I didn't like that—getting blamed for ratting when I know damn well that I didn't so I had to take this thing carefully. I planned it out again. I planned it out again, and again, and again until I finally proved to everybody in that group beyond a shadow of a doubt that he done it. I had witnesses that he had been talking to Hood, the head supervisor, I had supervisors that he had told that they were going to run and to let him off because he was helping them out but stick him in group S so it will look like I done it. So we had a little party that night and Jim Baff left us. He went to the hospital because we didn't like that. It wasn't the matter of ratting; it was trying to get somebody else in trouble. He had planned runs and planned runs but he was always doing the talk. I told him that he was just a big talker. I said, "If I plan something, I know that it is going to go through." I said, "If you hadn't opened your big mouth, I could have stuck the whole State School in that attic and they wouldn't have known what the hell we had done." DC: So you were actually made the scape goat and that's what perturbed you then? How badly was he hurt? BB: Oh, we just messed his back up. It wasn't nothing bad. We just put a blanket over his head and beat the hell out of his back. We didn't want to hurt him because hurting him was going to do nothing, but after that, we gave him kind of a silent treatment which kind of put him in a bad place. Once the State School knew what Jim Baff had done, nobody talked to him at all. It was nothing. Even the cafeteria people that I had planned to ran, 26 they let me back into the kitchen, they found out that he had knew about it and told them and he had done this just to get me in trouble, so they didn't let him—they don't like him. DC: Now personnel, do you mean they are people that are not sentenced? They are actually staff people that are hired by the State Industrial School? BB: Yeah, they didn't like him after they found out he did it just to get me in trouble. I have another one planned—I never did this one. See, over the ovens in the kitchen, there's this great big, there's a set-up in the top of it and it cools it like the ones on a modern stove and that, and it sucks up all the smoke and stuff. It's about this wide on the bottom going around and then up like this so that it's on an angle like this and it had screens over it so it could suck up through the screens. I figured if we crawled in there and waited, it's the same thing. We could know what is going on, we could see and yet nobody would ever think that we were there. But, I never did that one. DC: It might be a little bit hot up there. BB: No, with the fans going like that, it is cool. DC: Well, Brad, tell me what you think of the supervisors out there and the kinds of opportunities that are available at the State Industrial School and how you benefited from it? BB: If I had my choice, I would be working out there right now. I liked it that much. The supervisors out there were great. When I done something wrong, they were hard on me but I figure well, if I wouldn't have done it wrong, you know. If I done something wrong, I figured I had to take punishment. But I figured if I done it, I deserved it—anything they gave me. 27 DC: What about school? BB: School—I loved it. I quit ninth grade and out there they gave me the opportunity because well, they figured you dropped out of school and I guess you wouldn't want to go back to school, so we've got these different jots you can work during the day. I said, "No way with the jobs, get me back in school." I finished the ninth, tenth and eleventh grade out there. DC: I understand that they have a data processing system out there by which they know exactly what courses you have taken thus far in your Jr. High School years and if you've gone into high school, what courses you've taken. They also make up a chart of some sort which tells them exactly what courses you are going to have to take through your tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade and eventually graduate. This is what they did? BB: Right, it was really nice. When I was out there, they have always had it, is good conduct reports. If you had done good for two weeks, they write out a good conduct. But, if you had messed up, they write out a, I can't pronounce it because it is a funny word. DC: It's a behavior modification type of thing? BB: Yeah, now they put it through this teletype stuff and it tells how many good conducts they've got and how many bad conducts. In this group, right after I did get out, for every good conduct, it took one of your days away. For every bad conduct, they have bad conducts and they have incident reports. Bad conducts gave you a day, but if you had one of those incident reports, it added a week. So, it was just on behavior whether you got out or not. I know one guy that the minute he heard about this, he institutionalized. DC: Will you explain what you mean by institutionalized? BB: He has been there since he was age six. He is now 22. 28 DC: In other words, he is so much a part of the system that he is dependent upon it? He can't do without it? BB: Yeah. DC: Is there some people that run away, like they run away before the day they are to get released from the State Industrial School just so they can be apprehended and brought right back? BB: Right. The minute he heard this, he started getting bad conducts and bad conducts until he heard that incident reports gave you a week and then he started smoking during school, walking down the hall lighting up cigarettes, swearing at the teacher—anything to get an incident report. DC: What was your attitude toward the system? Did you try to behave well or...? BB: Sometimes you get off like when you are out there, you can get cigarettes. Cigarettes are easy to get out there. You are not supposed to smoke but cigarettes are easy to get out there. So you are always playing sly and sneaking up a smoke and you are bound to get caught once and that's an incident report right there and that's a week. DC: So did you smoke very much? BB: Yeah, I smoked as often as I wanted to. But when I smoked, sly, hoo was I sly. I made sure nobody was around. Kids get in bunches, you know, and start smoking and he just takes down, well, he smokes and he smokes. Me—there's a downstairs part and I run down there. Everyone is outside smoking, that's where they go. Everyone goes outside to smoke. All the officers, advisors and teachers are out there writing incident reports. Not me—I go downstairs. Nobody is in the school and I'm sitting there enjoying a cigarette. 29 DC: If you had in your hand the tool by which you could change the State Industrial School, what would you change? BB: The authority to give the advisors and supervisors out there to take ahold of what happens, like say some kid does something wrong, all they can do is write out the incident report or send them to group S. Now if somebody did something wrong and he took a belt and took it to his ass and whipped him, I think he would learn a lot better than if he is sitting in group S because group S doesn't do nothing. You're just locked up more. DC: Have you ever seen this done? BB: Yeah, and they almost got fired. There was a guy in group S, one of the group S supervisors. There was three of them and all three of them was black Negros but it didn't matter to them. If somebody gave them some bullshit, he'd take it to them. You can't put a person in group S that is already there. So, he would beat the hell out of them and literally beat. The parents weren’t so uptight about it, it was the staff members like Mr. Pratt— that's the one that got uptight about it. He said, "If I give you my permission, you go right ahead and do it." He said, "I should have given you my permission a hell of a long time ago because this kid ran and runs and runs and he is going to be where he is institutionalized." DC: How do the rest of the juveniles out there feel about it? Would they agree with this? BB: Yeah, I think so. DC: Have you talked to them about it? BB: Well, some of the guys out there, they go out there just to serve their time, get it over with, do as good as they can. They are bound to get an incident report or a bad conduct once 30 in a while for something like smoking. I've seen girls out there that swear more than I do and some of the language you hear come out of them is something to....When I'm around somebody and I've slipped once in a while and I've apologized. This one kid that I went out with, he was talking to this girl and this girl was talking back the same way. DC: So he actually had a girlfriend that was out to the State Industrial School then? BB: Most of the guys out there had girlfriends out there. DC: Were they girlfriends before they were… BB: Some of them. Some of them weren't. DC: Were there any girls that got pregnant while you were there? BB: Oh, you wouldn't believe it. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six in three months, I think it was. Some of them got away without getting pregnant, but I know that there was at least six girls pregnant. DC: What happens when they get pregnant? What measure does the administrate take? BB: Makes sure that they have a good baby. Takes care of them. That's about all they can do. Like one guy got a girl pregnant and this really surprised me. Of course, this guy was really different. His girlfriend didn't swear; they smoked and maybe they drank. They didn't use this great big abusive language. He got her pregnant out there. After they got out, they were married and it blew my mind. DC: So she had the baby, she kept the baby and then they got married? BB: Yeah, they got married. DC: Do you know anything about them now? 31 BB: I've seen them quite a bit out here. They live in Salt Lake, as far as I know now. She's pregnant again. They're living good and he's got a good job. It really surprised me. DC: Do you have any criticisms other than just this one that you mentioned where you think that perhaps the supervisor should have the right to use the whip once in a while? BB: The way I see it, Mr. Pratt, he is the big guy out there. What he says goes. It doesn't matter if it is going to help the guy next to him. Like he has got something in his house. Like he wanted his stove moved, he ain't going to do it. Hell, no, he's got boys up here doing work for him, just go up there and get two more and get them to move it. Any time he needed something; he would come up and get us. We really didn't mind especially if he was going off campus. If he goes off campus, we get a free ride down the boulevard and see some chicks and everything. But, I told him, Mr. Pratt, to his face that if he ever tried to take me out because I didn't like the way he ran it at all. DC: You didn't like the way he ran the industrial school? BB: Right. Because, he went by his rules and not by what was writ up. I told him that I didn't like that. So I told him, "If you ever take me off campus, I'll run on you, just to make sure that you get fired and can get somebody in there straight." If I had my way, Mr. Carl Harding, my supervisor at Gates West, if I had my way, like you say, it is changing, he would be superintendent out there. DC: So what you are telling me is that there are rules out at the State Industrial School and they are not always followed. So you don't know always which way to go. The rules are set forth but you don't know if you have to follow them or whether you don't have to follow them? 32 BB: Right. DC: Well, is there anything else that you would like to say about the State Industrial School, about your experiences out there? BB: Well, I was kind of glad that they sent me there because I think it helped me. After I did get out, I stayed out of trouble for at least six months. Before I was in, before I took that stereo and these other charges that my mom was putting against me, you know, for incorrigible, I was out of trouble for a year and one-half. DC: By incorrigible, do you mean a child that the parents can't handle at home? BB: My dad could handle me; he was little bit bigger than I was. What he said, I did, but when my mom said something, I got the feeling like I can't stand to have her bug me. She'd say, "Go do this," and I'd say just a minute. Instead of saying, "Okay," and waiting to see if I done it, she wouldn't. She would be right back there. She'd say',' "Go do it, go do it, go do it." I'd say, "I can't take it," and walk away. Instead of doing it anyway, I'd just leave it and then I'd do it anyway when my dad got off work. I was really glad that I went out there because when somebody tells me that I'm going to come back, I just turn around and laugh. They say, "Well, you'll see, you'll be back. You'll see if I'm here." What do I do, I go out there three months later after I'm out and see the same people back. I went back on a visit and they were there. I go back and I'm sitting there and I say, "Hey man, I thought that I was coming back. See, the joke is on you." DC: Have you found yourself among a new set of friends, people who are not committing crimes? 33 BB: I done that as soon as I got out of State School. I got rid of all the buddy buddies who would say, "Hey, let's go pull this job." The reason that I'm sitting here is because there was an opportunity and I needed some money. It was hesitated because of my age, I was eighteen and I was thinking about, I don't want to go to jail so I will have to be slick if I'm going to do this. But on the other hand, I don't want to do it and I talked myself out of it. By talking myself out of it, I would think twice and talk myself into it. Then I done it. Without thinking of looking to see if he was looking at me, I just done it and he seen me. DC: That is the only offense that you've been apprehended for from you were released from the State Industrial School? BB: Right. DC: Of course this time, because of your age, you weren't processed through Juvenile Court. In fact, you were taken to Weber County Jail where you remained for several days. What was it, three weeks? BB: I figured two and one-half weeks. DC: Then you were brought out to the Halfway Home and right now you are in the process of making the transition from being supervised to going out on your own? BB: Yeah. DC: What about your family? Do you go on home visits on the weekends or... BB: No, because this is the way my supervisor here, Mr. McKean. He says what he wants me to do is to get settled down, stay away from my parents. Believe me, most of my troubles were when I was living at home. When I got out of State School, I wasn't living at home except for sleeping and eating because I was out most of the time with my friends. I 34 wouldn't go there because when I went there I would argue with them, get in fights and everything. The only thing that I did was sleep and eat there. So, we had talked this out and he said that the best thing to do is just move away, get situated to where I can get a job like they're sending me to college this time and going to night school to finish my high school and get my diploma, is to set me down and get me a job and get my own apartment and live there. DC: Be on your own where you make your own decisions and do your own thing. BB: Right. DC: Okay, now let's start back a little bit and let's look at the whole system and let’s take it one step at a time. Of course, the first encounter that you had with the system is with the police officer, right? BB: Yeah. DC: Okay, now you're going to have to reminisce and go back a few years but tell me how you perceive the police officer after the many experiences that you have had with them? What do you think of them and what could they do to improve the manner in which they apprehend the juveniles? BB: As I see it right now, even back then, it is the same way. Like drunks. When you're drunk, you are going to give anybody a hassle that tells you that you're going to go somewhere. When the police, they can't hold their temper, I'm not saying that I can hold my temper, but they take belly clubs to them. Like this one kid when I was in jail, he came in for drunk and they had beat his head open in two different places—fifteen stitches on one and fortythree on the other. What did they say, "Oh, he fell through a bridge." Back then even, it 35 was the same way. Like, okay, I was out of State School. This is a-way back, about four or five months a-way back. I needed some money to get something to eat and I came downtown to get my dad to get some money, my brother-in-law, my friend and my sister were there. I got out of the car and I went to the front door which said, "Use side door." I went around to the other door to get my dad and he was in the truck talking to a friend of his. Earl Nye. He got out of the car and I said, "Dad, I need some money." These detectives are sitting over here and I didn't know that they were detectives. They were sitting here looking at us. This was at night, it wasn't in the morning, it was at night. They were flashing their flashlight and I said, "Oh, somebody is playing their games." and I said, "I need a dollar." The car pulled up real fast and they said, "Don't buy him any booze." It was a detective. My dad looked at him and said, "I wasn't going to buy him anything." And he said, 'Well, don't." Right then, I said, "This is my dad, I ask him for a dollar, I'm going to get some groceries." I said, "Do you have any ID?" I showed them my ID and my dad show him his ID and I said, "Do you want to call me a liar?" He said, "Well, we heard that you were buying some booze." My dad, said, "You're a rotten liar." 'We've got proof that you bought some booze." And my dad said, "You’re a rotten liar.” The first thing that the cop did was jump out of the car and hit my dad with his badge out of his thing. What did he say, "I hit him with my open hand. I had my brother-in-law, my sister, me, my best friend, my dad's best friend, and my dad against two police officers. Now who are they going to believe? My dad said, "I'm not going to press charges." I said, "I'm going to fight you." He said, 'What's your name?" He told my dad his name. He said, "I'm not going to fight you, I'm going to remember you." DC: So what you telling me is that this wasn't a very good experience... 36 BB: I can really see some of the police officers or cops or whatever you want to call them, some people call them pigs and I think some of them are. DC: In other words they over extend the use of authority? BB: Yeah, they think, well, hey, I've got a suit on that says that I can arrest somebody. I've got to be better than them. Some of them, I'm not saying all of them. I know some really nice cops. DC: Have you had any other bad experiences with police officers? BB: Yes. Another one, I called him a cop and he got uptight. He was going to bring me in. I said, "Do you know what it means?" He was a rookie. He said "I don't know what it means, but you guys think that it is something cool." Do you know what it means? Chief of Police—it's an abbreviation. Well, he kind of went red in the face and turned about thirty different colors of blue and then he apologized. Some of them really get away with murder. Like we were sitting on the floor up in the jail. These guys were taking them up to eleven. As they go by, I see the cop hit him with his belly club. DC: You're saying that the ninth floor is actually where you are booked? Then you are taken into jail. The tenth floor; what kinds of people are housed on the tenth floor? BB: Trustees. DC: You also have a kitchen on the tenth floor? BB: Yes. DC: The eleventh floor is… 37 BB: Some of them, there is one room for trustees on the eleventh floor. There is the Hole on the eleventh and there is.... DC: What's the Hole? BB: That's where you go when you are a bad boy. DC: So that's solitary confinement? BB: Yes, but it really isn't that bad. Because if you've got cigarettes, you got a magazine, you've got your own self, you got plenty of light, you can sleep and they feed you twenty times better. DC: In fact, some people even request to be placed in the Hole. BB: They don't request it. They just do something wrong to get there. DC: Now, the twelfth floor. BB: The eleventh floor is also for felonies. DC: Not serious felonies, right? BB: Yeah, and the twelfth floor is where the big guys go. DC: That's maximum security? BB: Yeah. Like I was up on the twelfth floor with a guy that was wanted by the FBI for the most wanted five and another one for the most wanted ten. DC: You were placed; you were detained on the twelfth floor? BB: Yeah. DC: For committing petty larceny? 38 BB: Yeah. They put me on nine and they found out that I was going to stay there the night, so they put me up on twelve because ten and eleven were full and nine is just to wait until you get bailed out. They found out that I wasn't going to get bailed out until the next day or night so they put me up there. DC: How many people were housed in the same area that you were housed in, that you had contact with? BB: There were only six guys up on twelve. DC: There were six guys in the same room that you were in? BB: Yeah, but up on twelve, there is a cell in the middle that will sleep eight. There is one on each end that will sleep three or four—four. It wasn't crowded up there. On eleven, on ten, they are always crowded because most of the guys are getting out and going down on trustees to pull two for one. So it is hard to get down on ten. DC: When you say two for one, you mean that they get two days for every one day. That means because they are on good behavior. BB: Yes. DC: Okay, well tell me about the Weber County Jail. Tell me what you think of it and some of the experiences that you had there. BB: I can't say any experiences I've had that were good. I can't say that anybody that stayed there were good. As they said on TV just now that they are going to build a new drunk tank, if you ask me, they should have torn that building down three hundred years ago because it had been there about that long. It's there a long time. They clean it. The floor 39 crew on ten, they did the best job that's why they stayed there so long on that floor crew. Nobody changed from floor crew—they did a good job. DC: These are trustees? BB: Yes. You know, there is so much you can do with what you've got to work with and there is nothing there — there is anything. Those cells, I think, they remodeled back in 1829. I'm serious, that is when they last remodeled it. DC: What is there to do? What kinds of activities are available? BB: Well, the best one that I have seen so far is sleeping. No, I can't say that because once in a while you've got some books in there, you know some little big books. DC: The library brings these around don't they? Or are these donated books? BB: These were donated back when it was built—some of them. I brang in a couple. I brought in a Reader's Digest; I think it is still there. It was a big one. There was a Gift from Vietnam; it was called "Kim." There was one, "I Prison." Some about great escaped, some about different prisons. It was a real good book and it was about that thick so when you read it, if you were only going to be there a week. You know for drunks, it is either seven and one-half days or fifteen dollars, so I would rent it out to the drunks for a quarter. The drunk would read it and by the time they would get done with the book, they're out. DC: So you are saying that you can read if they have books, you can sleep, you can play cards. BB: Play cards? Yeah, if you've got a deck. DC: What else can you do? Are there any other kinds of activities? 40 BB: There's nothing. DC: What could be done up there if you had a tool in your hand that you could make change in the Weber County Jail, what would you do? BB: First of all, I would change the bunks in there—the way that they've got it set up. I'd change the cells. The whole thing would be remodeled as far as I am concerned—the whole thing. Not just the drunk tank, the whole thing. DC: More room, you are saying. BB: More room and I think that they should give pillows because if you're going to stay there, you should at least be comfortable, you know. When guys get out, we make them leave their blankets so we can use their blankets as a pillow and use the other one to keep us warm. Once in a while that place gets so hot that we take everything off completely—strip down. It was that hot. Then you get towards night and you about freeze. DC: What else would you change? What about the library? BB: That definitely—I would have a library in there. DC: What about arts and crafts and an exercise yard? BB: I can see that but not arts and crafts because what you're saying is it's a playground now. You're saying, let's go there and build a lot of this stuff to it and make a playground out of it. It's not a playground. It's put there to make you think about it and keep you away from it. Like I seen one drunk go in there and I talked to him and he quit. I got him to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I put him in there and I made sure he went. I talked to him and right now that guy is sitting back on a nice job selling Kirby Vacuums. He's pulling a hell of a lot of good money, you know. 41 DC: So, you are saying that the jail is a deterrent but there is a lot of things which need to be brought in like a library, an exercise yard so they can maintain their physical well beings… BB: And better food. That's all I'm saying, like I think that I lost fifteen pounds in there. DC: It wasn't because you didn't eat then? BB: No, it wasn't because I didn't eat. We had seconds and thirds. It's nothing to stick to you. It just goes in you and you use it up as fast as you got it. DC: Fifteen pounds on you would be quite a bit. BB: I weigh 150. When I went in, I weighed 165. DC: You're about 5'9"or 5'10"? BB: 5'9 1/2" DC: Is there anything else that you saw happen in the jail, Weber County, that you think should be changed? What about the personnel that are there? How do you feel about them? BB: There is one person; I think he has a reason for being the way he is because he was jumped and knifed and everything. He locks all the doors now; he won't talk to very many people. DC: You're talking about Mr. Butcher? BB: No, Mr. Jackson. I have feelings for that, you know. I can see his point right there. Like, on the other hand, I see this one kid come in and he was feeling kind of bad because he was in there. First time in there is kind of scary. You kind of miss home right away. He figures, well hey, can I make a pi call and Jackson jumps all over him, "What are you, some kind 42 of a baby? What are you crying for?" I told Jackson to shut his mouth and get out of here, I said, "Go on upstairs, you're making me sick." DC: What was his answer? BB: He left. He didn't say nothing. I put him down. I really put him down I went to this meeting up to this probation thing when I was going Mondays. DC: You were going to group therapy? BB: Yeah, and we went up to Weber State College. I was up there with my probation officer and this cop's up there putting down all of these guys. He is saying, "You'll never see any of these teenagers up here making it in college." I was taking a course up there then, in Data Processing. I took it out in State School and I was just finishing it. I was doing all of this and then this cop was saying, "You'll never see any of these guys from State School and prison making it, you'll never see them up to this college room making it." Then I stood up and I said, "Let me introduce myself. I'm Brad Bates. I've been in various places in the jail; I've been to State School. I'm pulling A's and B's up here now in Data Processing." That guy turned about thirty different shades of red. It really made him bad to see somebody make it. DC: Don't you think that there is some truth to that, that there is very few people that go through the system that really do make it? BB: Really. They’ll think why should we? We've been through all this stuff and everybody is treating us rotten because we done something. We was wrong, we started out wrong. They've put us through this but nobody has helped us. They just keep sending us on until 43 we get to prison and then we do something bad enough that they kill us; they hang us, shoot us or put us through the electric chair, gas chamber. DC: What you are saying is that by the time that they get around to doing something, it's too late? BB: It's too late. If I had my way, if they are going to start somewhere, are going to start right from the Detention home. When they get into the Detention home, that is where you should start and work on them. DC: What could they do? How could they work with the juvenile? BB: First thing they should do is get them a job, get him some money in his pocket. Some of them might be doing it just for the joy of doing it, but the way I feel, most of them are doing it for the money. They need money just as bad as anybody else does. DC: Don't you find that most of the juveniles who break the law are probably from low income families, families that are on welfare and parents where the father or mother drinks, smokes, pretty heavy maybe. BB: You're describing my family. I can't say that it's my dad’s fault that I would steal. It was my feeling that he had something to do with it because he affords to give me money, and I didn't want to take money that he might need. DC: Most of these people that we are talking about, the juveniles that break the law, falls into that category? BB: Right. DC: So you are saying if we can get them employed, maybe youth camps, and this kind of thing and get some money in his pocket that he won't have a desire to steal? 44 BB: That's what I see. DC: We've talked about the drunk. You mentioned during your conversation that the place where the drunk is not in the jail, that he ought to be taken some place and rehabilitated. BB: Right. DC: What kind of place and what can we do for him to rehabilitate him? BB: The first place I see for a drunk, especially for a drunk who is drunk when they bring him in, is a hospital. Get him fixed up especially if...in the second place, I wouldn't have a cop bring him in. Say maybe a police officer he him and have them call an ambulance and have them bring him from there. DC: So you wouldn't process him through the jail? BB: Right. I could see having him under police supervision once he is in the hospital watching him, but not to bring him up there because some of the guys, I would be in worse condition when they got there then they were when they left them in a hospital and get them taken care of. Then take them to court and instead of giving them seven and onehalf days, make it stiff like six months. DC: You want six months in jail or six months in a halfway home? BB: A halfway home. Jail isn't going to do them no good; they'll just sit on their ass. DC: There's no rehabilitation at all in the jails there? BB: No, there is nothing. What are you going to do, sit and read books? If you stuck them in here they are going to have to work to get out. If they are caught drinking, they are going to get in trouble. 45 DC: Do you know of adults who are here in this Adult Halfway Home who are alcoholics? BB: I talked to this guy and he said that there are three other guys in here who are alcoholics. They are not no more. DC: It is helping them then? BB: Yeah. They quit drinking completely. DC: You might be interested to know that we have submitted an application which is called “Behavioral Modification of Chronic Alcoholic Offenders” and it is from the Mental Health Center and it is for the establishment of the exact thing that you are talking about. First of all, he is detoxified at a hospital. After he is detoxified, he is taken into a halfway home where he would reside and spend whatever time it takes to get him back on the job and be a productive citizen. BB: You can't cure an alcoholic overnight and they are trying and when they stick them in the drunk tank, the one they got there, there is no blanket, no pillow and there is no bunks, they are on the floor. Most of all, there is no shitter. They take them up and throw them on the floor and the next morning and they go to court, they don't get them fixed up and they put them in sloppy clothes that I don't think are any good and send them upstairs or send them down stairs to the court looking like Monday's Morning Blahs, you know. Really, no combed hair, no nothing. DC: So, you are telling me that if you go downstairs appearing before the courts sloppy, you look like a bum.... BB: You get treated just the way that you look. They don't let them shave… DC: Where if you go down with a suit and a tie, then you get treated a lot better? 46 BB: Yeah. You go down there and you've shaved. Say right after they got out of the hospital, they take them and get them shaved and cleaned up, get them a suit and take them over to court and then they can punish them...I still think that they should get punished no matter how hard it is. I really can't call it punishment because if you're an alcoholic, your punishment is right there. All you're doing is getting drunk to run away from a problem you've got that is still going to be there when you come out of it. You're going to have a bad head but you are still going to have the problem. DC: What about the drunk driver? BB: If I had it my way, like those new cars that are coming out, you turn or the key and you press the buttons and if you are not sober enough to get the rig numbers, then you are in trouble—your car don't start. I think those should have been out a long time ago. If a guy is too drunk to remember some numbers, he is way too drunk to drive. DC: So you are saying, let's not have compassion with the drunk driver. BB: I think that if somebody is convicted of it within a shadow of a doubt, then he should get the stiffest sentence that he has ever had. In fact, if I had it my way, if I was a judge and somebody was drunk driving, I don't care if he had cat, I would give him one to five. DC: As far as Juvenile Detention is concerned, have you seen the new Juvenile Detention Home? BB: No, but I've heard about it. It's pretty good as far as I've heard. DC: Let me just briefly describe it to you. What they have out there is multi-purpose room where you can play basketball, shuffle board, ping pong. They also have an arts and crafts room for those who aren't interested in athletics. They have cells where they will 47 house the juveniles separately or if preferable, they can house two together. They have one wing for the boys and one wing for the girls. Hopefully, they will have adequately counseling services. BB: Let me ask you a question. Do they have windows in this house? DC: Yes, they do. BB: I mean to see outside. DC: Yes, they do. They also have an outside area that is fenced in that you can go outside and get some sunshine and do whatever. BB: On the door, is it just one little window on the door like down here? DC: Yes it is. BB: That's okay with that window that's all I really care about with that window because that right there puts it right in his mind that I wish that I was out there. Now why did I do this? When you are sitting in a cell, you can go to sleep and you don't have to think about it but when you are in a cell and there’s a window you've got to be looking out that window because you can hear people out there having a good time, driving by and laughing. Then when you are in there you wish that you had never done it. That's psychological right there. DC: It's good then? BB: I think it is. This one out here, most of the time what I would do is where the little window is? I sit there and listen. When somebody was laughing I would wonder what he was doing. I would figure, wow, what a bummer, I am in here. It would really make me mad. 48 DC: You really have never been out to the State Prison of course, and if you realize that if you create another offense, there is a good chance that you might end out there, what's your feelings toward that? Are you concerned about that? Do you think that you've got it licked? BB: See, right now, when I was in jail, Mr. Holmes came out there. I talked to him about my family. I cried out there, I was that sincere. I told him. He said, "As I looked at your record, it is just one great big step ladder." See I’ve gone from Detention all the way to State School and now to here, to jail and to here, and there is only one step more to prison. I've been following that ladder ever since I was that high, so it kind of looks bad in my way. And I told him, I said, "Let's get something straight. You don't think I'm going to make it. I'm not going to call you a liar and tell you that I'm going to make it. I'm telling right now. I'm full of it to here." I said, "I can't take any more of it. You get me out there. I screw up there, then you get me back into that place but not until then." I walked out of the door and he said, "You've got it made." He said, "We'll have you out of here in a week." And he got me out. DC: How long have you been here? BB: Four days. DC: How long do you anticipate being here? BB: I got sentenced six months. I'm pulling two for one here too. So, the maximum would be two and one-half months to three months. DC: You plan on attending Weber State College? BB: Yeah, in electronics. 49 DC: Getting your high school degree? BB: At night. DC: Then going on and working for a professional degree in electronics. BB: Yeah, and if possible, when I do join the army, go into the signaling corp... DC: Well, Brad, there are a couple of other areas that people are concerned about. You might or might not have had any experiences in these things but they are of concern and yet I think the public is quite unaware if these things exist and to what degree. One of those things is the drug scene as far as the institutions are concerned. Is there such a thing as the drug scene? At the State Industrial School? BB: The biggest. DC: Do you want to talk about it? You know, nothing incriminating, just tell me a little bit about it. BB: I can talk about it because I could care less. When I was out there, I never did have any drugs out there. I never had any drugs until I was out of State School and that was the first time. Out there, you wanted something, you got it. Like cigarettes, if you wanted cigarettes, you could bring cigarettes in. As long as Pratt didn't know about it, it didn't hurt anybody. DC: Supervisors would allow it? BB: Supervisors would allow it. It was run good out there. You kept it clean. There was three stools, three different pots, you know and stalls, and there was only three back there at a time. 50 DC: What was that measure for? BB: That was just to keep it clean, you know. If everybody is jam packed in the bathroom and everybody is smoking, there is going to be a pile of smoke coming out of there and you want to keep it cool. DC: What about other drugs besides tobacco? BB: Okay, you had tobacco, if you wanted weed, you could get it. Weed was the easiest thing to get in. DC: Weed? You mean marijuana? BB: Marijuana. Acid; that was even easier. Acid is so little, like when I was in my group, a guy came back from his home visit, six cartons of cigarettes, three lids of marijuana and over 250 hits of acid—different kinds of acid. The supervisor didn't know anything about it. If they did, they would have taken it away. It was easy to get in there. DC: What would he do with the drugs? Would he sell them or give them out to his friends? BB: Say we didn't have cigarettes, a carton of cigarettes sells about three bucks right? So this group's got cigarettes and we've got acid. We'll give them some acid for a carton of cigarettes. Sometimes, if you were good buddies with the one that had it, you've got it made man, and you can get a hit for nothing. DC: So the guy who has a lot of drugs has a lot of friends? BB: Right. Now if they would have offered it to me, there is no way that I would have took it, especially in jail. See, if you're on a bad trip and you're locked up, you're in trouble, you're really in trouble. 51 DC: Now acid, you're talking about LSD, of course? BB: Not necessarily, acid is a part of LSD, it is not LSD exactly but there is different kinds. There is pink acid, purple microdot, pink microdot, pink swirls. You name it, they got it. Each one gets better and better and better, until you build up to LSD—just straight out LSD. DC: What about depressants? Are they readily available? BB: Well, not very many people use them out there. If you wanted to get really stoned, you took six hits of acid and you were gone for the week. DC: Were any of the juveniles out to the State School ever reprimanded for using drugs? BB: Yeah, there was plenty. I was going to count them but I couldn't. They would go to group S but even group S and there is nothing that group S don't know about they think. There is cigarettes, there's weed and there's acid in there. It's just like any other group. They've got a fence built around that thing—all the way up to the roof and over the roof so that there is no way you can get out except the doors and they still get out. You can't keep somebody locked up that wants to get out—there is no way. Where there is a way there is a will. If it takes killing a guy, they are going to do it. There is one of my best friends, one of the best supervisors that I know, stabbed out there three times. They jumped him at Gates, the same one that I was in, and beat him up with pipes—beat the hell out of his back. DC: It wasn't because they didn't like him, though? 52 BB: It wasn't because they didn't like him, it was because they wanted out and he had the key. Everybody that came back apologized because they had done it and said that they were sorry to him and paying him back was that everything he said they did. DC: Who was it? Can you remember? BB: It was a new guy. When they jumped him, he let us stay up. It was passed our bed time and once they say, you go to bed at 9:30, you go to bed at 9:30 and you are asleep. He had our dorm doors open, we was out watching TV, listening to the radio, wandering around our group. It was about twelve o'clock. It was his first time; he didn't know nothing so they got him. Everybody that came back said that they were sorry and paid him back. They just wanted out. DC: What are the reasons for running away from the State Industrial School? BB: It's the thing of being locked up. I can't stand to be locked up. Even here, my minds caught here, my body is free just about to do anything that I want. In jail, your body, your mind, your soul, everything is locked up. In State School, when you are in a group, your body, your mind, and your soul is locked up. When you think about it, you say, "Man, I've got to get free," especially when they first bring you in. I was so homesick after the first week that I was there. I was triple homesick after three months and that's why I ran. DC: So you think that the majority of them run because they are homesick? BB: Right. Okay, this one kid out here, George Pearson, he had three brothers and they were in a car and they got killed. He didn't know anything about it and it comes over the radio. What you going to do? You want to get home and you want to get home fast...He put in for a home visit the day that he had heard about it. No home visit, they turned him down. 53 He went to Pratt and Pratt told him no. He said, "It's a death, you said that we could get one." He said, "I'm sorry, you're different." He almost killed a guy to get out but he got out. DC: Now, there are other kinds of people that run, right? BB: Yeah, there was this one guy, Marv Griffeth, and they said, "You get released tomorrow kid, either tomorrow or in the following week." The next day, he was gone. DC: He was institutionalized? BB: Yeah, he had a better life there then he did on the outs. He was out of trouble and he was getting good food. He got plenty of recreation. We played football, basketball, you name it, we played it. In here, he was earning money and going to school. They pay you to go to school kind of like. If you're good, you get cards out there. Each day you get different points for assignments and things like that. Every point is good for a penny, so you got five and you get a nickel and it adds up after you are there for a while. So you've got money, you can work in the cafeteria for a quarter an hour and you are going to be there anyway, so why riot work? It's fun to work in the cafeteria. You eat a lot better than the people do on the line. When I was working breakfast I would get up there at six o'clock in the morning and go down there and fix breakfast. These guys had eggs, bacon and stuff. Me--Spanish omelet, ham, sausage. If I wanted it bad enough, I'd fix it and they didn't care. DC: You've told me about the drug scene out to the State School and from what you said, it's bad. What about the Weber County Jail? Is it there? BB: Oh boy, no way. That thing is tight. That would be the worst place of all for anybody, even a drunk. Like this one guy was up there and he was having this DDT. He was all over that 54 place. He wanted out, he was hearing people calling his name, he was telling us that this guy has got $2400 worth of bench warrants in his hand telling him to come out. He sat up there and talked to himself. He would never go to sleep. DC: What do you mean by DDT? BB: You know, after you've been drinking, you can't get it in one night, it's got to be over at least a week of straight drinking—not letting up at all and then all of a sudden you quit drinking because you're broke. It's just like acid. It's like taking acid and then going up real high and then start coming down and it's bad. The first time that I ever took acid and the last, I took it and a car would go by and zoom out of the engine. It wouldn't be a car when I heard it and I was coming down. It would be a rocket ship. I was sitting up on top of the wing and yet I was still coming down. I was so stoned that my eye, the black part, you couldn't see the color of the outside of it. You know the hazel green part right there, that was all black. It was just black and white. I took three hits and I was so scared because I was by myself and I was so scared that I thought that I was going to die. DC: Is that what made your decision to give it up? BB: Yeah, right then and there. Most people that take a drug, I say, "Well what happens when you do it?" and he says, "I took it once before with people and it was fun." You know as long as you've got people with you, you can talk, everything seems funnier and you talk about cops and things and everything seems funny and you and everything is going real nice when you're with people, but then it ruins your minds and your kids and everything else. Then you think back and he said, "If you ever think that acid is going to mess you up, do about two to three hits by yourself with nobody else with you and then if it scares you real bad, then don't do it no more because you're not made out for it." Like some 55 people can do it. I can show you people that can do acid and keep doing it and doing it and he is not getting far out. He is as smart as ever. He gets the same thing only it won't affect him. He has built up a resistance to it. DC: The only time that it will affect him is if he gets caught and he goes through the system and ends up out to prison? BB: Right. DC: You say that Weber County Jail is tight, so there is no real problems with drugs there and, of course, no matter where you are, you are going to get them in once in a while. BB: I could have got it in. But, you think, I went to court and they brought me straight up from court to the ninth floor and made me change clothes. They figure well he's been in here already, maybe we ought to shake him down. Like, if I would have had some on me, they wouldn't have got it. If I would have had it I could have gotten it in. You think back, well if I would have had it, they probably would have shook me down. It's only at the time that you got it that you get shot down. DC: There's another area that I want to talk to you about and it is one that is a real concern out to the state prison and it's been one that has been on the new media lately and that is homosexuality. Does this exist out to the State School and is it serious? BB: I've never seen it in any of the cottages that I know about. They talked about it. They call them a whore and a bitch and tell them to come here and you know just playing games. Just to be talking, but I've never seen it out there. DC: So in your opinion, it just doesn't exist out there? 56 BB: There's this one guy and like I said, he was institutionalized. His name is Gary Watson. I think that he is kind of abnormal because he masturbates to a picture. DC: To a picture? BB: To a picture of a girl—a naked photograph. DC: Does he do this in front of… BB: Put it this way, yes he does. He ran from State School and was caught masturbating in from of Wangsgards reading a dirty book. DC: In the bathroom? BB: No right by the stand where the book was. DC: But those things are real unusual then? You really don't think that is a problem? What about at the Weber County Jail? Is it more of a problem there? BB: Same thing like out there. They fool around and talk about it. DC: What about up on the twelfth floor? BB: I don't know I didn't stay there long enough. I wouldn't know about that. DC: See, one of the problems with the jail, as you probably well know, is that they can monitor sounds but they can't monitor images. They don't have a video tape recording system so they can’t see what is going on up there so they can do anything that they want to do, really, as long as they don't make too loud of noises so that they can hear it downstairs on the monitor. BB: Yeah, but at night, everybody says, like this one guy was up there, a nineteen year old wino. Nobody knows his real name. We call him Geraldine. He was an A-l bitch. We'd just 57 fool around with him. It was just something to pass the time away—to talk about, but on the tenth floor there was nothing, and on the ninth floor there was nothing. As far as the concern on eleventh, it was just talk. On the twelfth, when I was up there, see most of my friends were on the twelfth. See, I knew a kid from State School that was up there named Jim Thomas. He escaped from the jail once already. DC: Was that a couple of years ago? BB: No, a couple of weeks ago. Another kid came in from State School named Mike Lee and a kid named Craig Green from the State School, and another kid from State School named Glen Horspool, so we were having a great big reunion up there. DC: So homosexuality isn't really a problem up there. BB: No, to tell you the truth, when they say prison, man, I get scared. That's the first thing that I think of. My dad says that one time when they start doing this stuff out there telling you to bend over, say no. The first time that somebody says to do that and I'm going to be out there for murder. Like I seen this one show, I can't remember the name of the show, but it had that in there and these guys are dressed up as chicks and they took over the prison. DC: Let’s take the whole system. Just kind of give me an overview of how you feel of the whole system as it is and just any improvements that can be made anywhere along the line. BB: If they improved everything, if they'd start from the lowest thing and improve all of it. There is one or two things wrong with the whole system in everything—State School, Detention. You start at the lowest thing and you work up and you'll still find something wrong. 58 DC: You still think that Detention is where we ought to start? Right when they are young and they first get started in the life of crime. BB: If you're not going to stop them then, you are sure as hell not going to stop them when they get up to prison unless they've wised up. DC: How many wised-up ex-cons do you know? BB: Two that I know of. DC: Few and far between. BB: Two out of, I guarantee over 50… DC: Once a person has gone through the system and they've gone out to the State Prison then it is really tough. BB: That's another thing. When I started Detention, first thing that they asked me is, "what are you in for?" I said, "Oh, petty larceny." They said, "Oh, you're square man, you're not doing the big stuff." What you are doing is you're going to a criminal school teaching you what to do and how to do it, and how to get better at it. DC: So you are saying that your experience at the State Industrial School also taught you how to commit- crimes, or a more professional way of doing it. BB: You take the craziest things, like a show, and they throw it on there and boom it works. You not only learn from peer groups but you learn from TV. I think that with a good show the way he has got it worked, it might teach them something but it also teaches him that he is coming out of prison and he is getting a better job, he is learning to steal, but for the United States of America. You know, he's helping us. He ain't hurting us; he is doing it to help us. 59 DC: He's got an honest reason behind it. Are there other shows that you have seen that have impressed you or at least given your ideas on how to commit crimes? BB: Yeah, I've seen one or two on how to steal a car and like that. Like when I was out to State School, we had cars out there arid we were working on them in auto mechanics. We didn't have a key for them. The teacher taught us how to hot wire them. I can go out and get any car that is made and hot wire it without a key. Like my cousin, one night, within one night, just a night from about nine o'clock on stole seventeen different cars, crossed seventeen state lines. DC: Was he ever apprehended? BB: No. DC: What about Halfway Out homes? The State Industrial School recently instituted a halfway Out home. Do you think that this is a good approach? In other words, they let them go off campus a lot more and maybe even go to school... BB: When I was there, they did it but not as much. It helped some of the kids. Of course most of the kids that tried to get out there would bring drugs and that back in. I figured if they took it just like the prison does, I mean like the jail does. They shake them down completely even if they have to strip clean them. They said that back in '55. That's what they were doing out there. They would take them and put them in a room, take their personal clothes, completely strip them down and send them into another room and they would put on State School clothes. DC: They don't do that any longer? 60 BB: They don't do it any longer. They think, well we've got to give them a chance. They're taking advantage of them. They think well we're helping them and the kids are stabbing them right in the back. Every chance I got out there I would stab those kids in the back when I was first out there. Then I found out that they were helping me. I figured, "Hey man, they're going to help me get out of here, I think that I better buckle down.” I don't think that there is a person alive right now. I don't care if he has been busted in his life that hasn't had temptation. Like when I was in jail, I said to Mr. Holmes, I said. "Somebody could sit $2,000 down there and I wouldn't touch it." Then I thought back on it and I said, "Maybe I would. I might, but in the position that I'm in now, I wouldn't." DC: You would do everything that you, physically and mentally, not too. BB: Yeah. DC: It's because you realize the consequence, right? BB: Yeah, most of the time when I done anything I didn't think about it, I was thinking about the good part. Wait until I get that money, man, then I've got it made. Most of the time, I would try and buy my friends, you know. When I was little, I would try and buy my friends. I'd say, "Hey man, I've got twenty bucks to blow, come on down and we'll go somewhere." I didn't care about how much of it I got. I was always handing out to him or her. Then, I found out that they started, "Hey, man, let's go get some money. Can't you get some money, I need some money." I'd say, "Well hey, man, you know where you can get it." I'd think well I don't need you any more man to buy any more. I've got friends now. I've got friends right now that say the minute, like when I got put in jail; thirty-five of them came down with $350 to bail me out. Money helps, you know. I handed this kid over $350 that I worked for. I figured, well, I'll get it back sooner or later. He said, "I'll pay you back in 61 three weeks." Three weeks later, he paid me back. He gave me $410. You've got to charge interest. It really blew my mind. Like this kid, I bailed him out, you know, and he could have split easy and that would have been my money. You can't put people down for that. DC: That's 100 percent honesty. BB: Another thing, people put down people for long hair like the guy upstairs. I told him, "My brother-in-law has got long hair." He said, well that cuts him off for three weeks. I think that maybe he was kidding a little but I don't know. I said, "Well you might as well cut my dad off because my dad has got long hair. He combs it back, but he's got long hair." It's a fad and people think because he has long hair that he doesn't take a bath. I used to have hair clear down to here and I use to take more baths than people thought they could. DC: Don't you think that it is because that the people that use to wear long hair a few years ago were the ones that were so slothful. They didn't want to cut their hair and they didn’t want to take a bath. BB: I can't stand being dirty. That's why I cut my hair when I was in jail. It was hot. It's hot now. When it gets into the winter, I'll grow my hair back long. I'll never let it grow past a certain extent. I can see people down here and maybe there, hair looks good down to there. I know a kid that has long blond hair down to there and it looks good on him. He looks better with long hair then he did with short. Then I know another kid that walks on the ends of his. You know that is ridiculous. DC: What percent of those with long hair, do you feel are really abusers of drugs? 62 BB: The way I see it, maybe half and half. People say I wear long hair, people think that I use drugs and I'm cool then. Like when I was little, if you used drugs, then you were okay, but if you didn't then you were a bad guy man, you were square. If I grew my hair long then maybe they would think, maybe he uses drugs. DC: Then you would be accepted by your peers? BB: Right. So I figure half and half, maybe sixty forty. DC: How bad is the drug scene in Weber County? BB: Oh, you wouldn't believe it. Like I can see people right now, they've got a whole thing going for them. They say well, like one of my buddies, they sold him some heroin, he shot it up and it killed him. Everything is going bad now. They were getting acid and they are cutting it down and cutting it down. It's been through 350 people and by the time it gets to you, it's no good. It's getting so bad in Ogden; I'd say that it is getting as bad as Salt Lake. It's almost as bad as Tijuana and down there it is legal. There's Chicago, there's New York, there's Salt Lake, and then there's Ogden. Gut of all the states, Chicago, New York, Salt Lake, and then there's Ogden. DC: How hard is it to make a buy on heroin, say? BB: It depends on how much you want. Like, I could get you two pounds in about five minutes if you've got the money. DC: So it is readily available if you have the money? BB: Yeah. DC: Is this true with any other kind of drug—LSD.... 63 BB: No, it depends like some people would keep it around. Other people will say, "Well, you got the money and we'll get it for you." Then they call their contacts and they have it up here but there isn't that much in Ogden right now. Ogden is going dry. It is really going dry. DC: Is it because we have a narcotics task force now and they are putting a lot of heat on them? BB: They are putting a lot of heat on them but that doesn't matter. They're going to do it anyway. Like this one friend of mine, his name is Sheephead, he got busted for it and they got him because they thought he was going to sell it, with the intention to sell. He is facing five to life. DC: They are really socking it to them aren't they? BB: Really, they're going to it. I think Sheephead deserved it. I feel sorry for some guys. I wished he wouldn't have got five to life, but on the other hand, I think that he deserved it. I think that by the time he is going to get out, it is going to get worse. This dumb problem is never going to end—not completely, there is no way. The only people that are going to change it is us. The older generation is going to try, but the only ones that are going to do it is us. It's our problem, you're going to fight it but we're resisting. DC: As long as there is a demand, supply is always going to be there. BB: I figured right then if they would have legalized marijuana, there would have been 40 percent that used it right now. It's just that it is against the law and if we can get away with it, "we are cool." DC: It's like beer a few years ago. 64 BB: Yeah, beer was illegal. If you had it, you got in trouble; it was just as bad as heroin. You could go to the pen with it for five to life. They legalized it and there isn't that many people that use it. I told my mom, I said, "If I knew the guy who invented LSD, he would be dead right now." If I knew that he was going to invent that, I would have sacrificed my life. I would have killed him and maybe stuck it out in prison because I know numbers of guys in Nevada that took it and then they are not the same. They're bird out. DC: By the way, the guy that did invent LSD did die. He died from taking an overdose of LSD and killed himself accidently. It kind of tells a story. BB: Okay, this kid in Chicago, his name is Billy Graham. He dug his eyes out because he was seeing that bad. He was seeing things that he didn't want to see so he dug his eyes out. Like right now, I took an acid and because of that time that I took three, I move my hand and I see three behind it. It's going to take 25 years to get it completely out of my blood. It's just a little bit. DC: You didn't realize this when you first took it, is that correct? BB: Yeah, I didn't realize it. DC: Had you have, would you have got involved with the drug scene? BB: That's one thing that we have never had in my family. I'm the only one that has used it in my family. My sister is nineteen. DC: What would you do if you found that one of the other members of your family was using it? BB: I don't know if I'd beat them up or kill him. This is another thing. My little brother is only six years old. If I ever see anybody try to give him something I don't care what it is. I don't 65 care if it is something like aspirin, if it is going to hurt him, I feel sorry for the guy that done it because I can't see this. They go into parks and little kids come around and they give them acid and things like that. I know three dealers that have quit because they heard that their buddies had gave acid to a six year old boy and the boy ran himself into a car and killed himself. Six years old! DC: I guess that as long as they've got the money, it doesn't matter what age they are. BB: Yeah. Like a little kid, you walk in and your mother's purse is going to be around and you get one with a two and a zero on it and you bring me one back and here is some candy. Like that one commercial, he says that little kid cuts him down and says "isn’t this supposed to hurt you." I think that if they could do anything to the little kids when they are in Kindergarten and stuff, start teaching them right now what it will do to them, how it will affect them. Some guys it will shock them out if a six year old boy were to tell him what it was going to do to him. DC: So what you are saying is that the better informed they are, the better informed their parents are, then the better chance they have of staying away from it. BB: I never knew what weed was. They said grass. I asked one guy, "Hey do you want to smoke some of my grass?" Then I got down to the lawn. I didn't know what it was when I was little. He said "My feet hurt. What should I walk on?" I said "Walk on the grass. No not that green stuff, walk on the brown. We smoke that green stuff." DC: What about out to the State Mental Hospital. Was there any drugs out there? BB: Off and on. Not real bad ones. Once in a while, they would bring weed out there but I've never seen acid or anything worse than weed. 66 DC: Do they use drugs for therapy out there? Like some people are hyperactive so they give them tranquilizers. BB: Yeah, but it is completely locked up under lock and key with three supervisors sitting inside the office making sure. DC: And only qualified personnel are allowed to… BB: Right. I could have got to it. I had all the keys but I never thought about it. I didn't really care. DC: You weren’t concerned too much about drugs at the time? BB: I wasn't concerned too much except getting out or finding out what was going to go on. DC: Well, we've covered a lot of areas tonight, Brad. You've got a lot of interesting experiences. You know, I threw a lot of general questions, but is there anything else, any other experiences that have affected your life that you might want to relate to me that you feel that is important and could be of interest? BB: I can't think of any right now but I know I've got some--somewhere. DC: What about your perceptions of the entire system. Do you have any more ideas of how we could change it? BB: Okay, like this once, when I Was busted for this coin that I took. They arrested me inside the coin shop. My buddy told me to run but I figured if Iran away, it was going to be that much worse so I stuck around. They didn't give me my rights when I went in. They say, get off on habitus corpus, but they don't give you your rights. You know, everything that you say can be used against you. They didn't do that. I told the judge, "I'm not going to fight it in court. I won't because I know that I'm guilty." He said, "You tell that officer, I have 67 his name and H.s badge number, fine that officer $50 for not giving him his rights." It almost suspended him. DC: They did fine him though? BB: Yeah. I figured if somebody is going to do something, they've got to tell them that. I could have got off on this easy. I was sitting easy but I knew that what I done was wrong. I knew that I shouldn't have done it. I knew it then but I didn't think about it then. I was just thinking that that was a good coin. I wasn't really too interested in the money. That was a nice looking coin, and if I get one that is worth $10 now, I'll save it for 20 years and I've got it made. DC: So actually, you wanted to be punished because you knew... BB: Right there, I knew that I had done it. I didn't want too. After I thought about it, I thought that it was pretty funny and stupid. But, I had already done it so it was too late. DC: It seems to me that if anybody is rehabilitative, it's got to be the one that knows when he does something wrong and is willing to be punished for what he has done. BB: Yeah, there is not that many people like that. Like you say, "Hey man, you done that and you've got to be punished for it. If I done it, I would have got punished for it." He says, "To hell with you man, I'm not going to get punished for it." So they fight the establishment. DC: In other words, they blame it on the establishment because the establishment has done this or this or this. The escape goat is the establishment. BB: Part of it might be the establishment because of the background and things like that and something the way the establishment is run. I can't go too far in giving good words for the 68 establishment. I can put some good words in there but not too many. I don't fight it, but I'm not joining it. DC: In your opinion, you've known a lot of young people who have gotten in trouble with the law, I'm sure that you've know a lot of people who have gone out to the state prison, what is the reason for it? Is it environment? BB: I can't say that because I know a lot of people right now, I know one, his name is Jerald West. His dad is a doctor. He is one of the richest men I know in Ogden—nice boat, nice car, and he went down and bought him a '71 Cougar, brand new. DC: His father did or he did? BB: He did. He's rich, he don't need his dad. He made all this money himself and what did he do in his spare time? He sold drugs. DC: Why did he sell drugs? Just for kicks? BB: I don't know. I can't say. Like, I know that most of the guys that are rich will go out and steal just to see if they can do it; to get away with it. See they’ve got everything that they want by money. They want to see if they can do something real neat. You know, stealing. DC: What happens to that person when he gets caught up by it? BB: It depends how much they get him with. If he is that rich like Jerald West was, Jerald West's dad got him off so easy, it was pitiful. DC: So you are saying that if one does have money, then it is easy for him to get out? BB: Yeah. You can bribe any judge to a certain extent. You say, "Hey man, I'll give you half-amillion dollars." You ain't going to turn it down. 69 DC: Don't you think that it's not so much that they bribe him with money. It's just the idea that here is someone whose parents are in good stature. BB: Yeah and if you screw them up, they are going to screw the city up because they are putting out more money for the city than anybody else. DC: Of course, maybe they think too that his parents have the money so they can help the kid, and if money means that they can be rehabilitated, maybe the parents can provide services to the child. Like a lot of lower income people can't do that. BB: Right. DC: What about other juveniles? What reason, you've got a lot of friends that got involved. What about religion? BB: I don't know any juvenile right now that is taking anything that goes to church... I go very seldom. I believe my church more than anything else—I'm a Mormon. I smoke and once in a while, I drink, but I still believe in my religion. DC: Is religion important then? BB: I think it is. Our old Bishop smokes and drinks, and he's a Bishop and he goes to church as regularly as he can. It doesn't say that you are not supposed to smoke and drink in the LDS Ward. It just says to learn the Word of Wisdom and to live it. It doesn't say anything about smoking and drinking. It just says that it is bad for your health. If everybody moves down to Tijuana, you know, they can do it down there legal; they can go up to Canada and smoke it legal. DC: So they are just going to push it out of this community into another. 70 BB: Yeah, that's stupid. If they want it, they're trying to do it, just to do it because if they wanted to do it legally, they can go there or to Tijuana or to Canada and its legal. DC: Don't you think that abusing drugs is a symptom of a problem? Don't you think that when you drink, you try to get rid of problems? And when you take drugs... BB: You are just trying to cover up problems. It's just like drinking. DC: Maybe we ought to get to the source of the problems. BB: Yeah, that is the same thing that I've been telling my friends. I say, "If somebody takes drugs, it's to cover up something that they've done that they don't like that is bugging them and it covers them up good.” At first they get bird out because if they get bird out, they don't think about it anymore. DC: Of course, usually it just covers up for the time being and then afterwards it is a little bit larger than it was before? BB: Yeah, but then, they just keep on going. I've seen a guy go on for three weeks straight on speed. DC: How can they support the habit? BB: It goes right back to stealing. DC: You're forced to do so aren't you? BB: Yeah, that's what I say. That right there is the whole main thing right there. DC: What percent of burglars that break into pharmacies and business are actually on drugs? Are actually committing a crime in order to get enough, money to support the habit? 71 BB: Like when I was in State School, most of them when they did jobs, broke into drug stores, it was to get drugs or to get the money for them. DC: What percentage would you estimate? BB: Sixty. DC: What about the Adult Halfway Home. That is something that we haven't talked about. What do you think about it? BB: As far as I'm concerned, as long as I've been here now, I think that it is a good thing. It's going to help me right now--put me in college, get me my high school graduation. I think right now that it is the best opportunity in my life. I figured that it had to come sooner or later, I just didn't know when. DC: This is a big break for you then? BB: Yeah. I figure if I blow it now, there's no more breaks. I might get my high school diploma out to prison, but once I get out of prison, college degree or no college degree, I'm not going to get nothing. Like Bob Sea, his employees don't know that he is a con. DC: If they did, he probably wouldn't have a job. BB: Yeah. Like there is only one guy, I went looking for a job; there is only one guy that I've told that I was from the Halfway House. I told everyone, but only one guy said, "That's a good plan out there that I heard about, we'll see if we can get you on." DC: What did the rest of them say? BB: "Well, put your application in and I'll call you if I need you." DC: And you haven't heard from them since? 72 BB: I haven't heard from nobody except the one guy that I told you about. DC: You do think that this is a good idea? BB: Yeah. DC: Have you see it working with the other residents? BB: Yes, because like me and Sulsbury, this other kid up there, he's 24 years old. If he wanted to buy a bear, he could buy it. He's got the money and I got the money. He said, "I want to tell you, no drinking." He said, "Here, no drinking." We've never touched it. DC: So the idea is just to be as accurate as you possibly can. BB: Yeah. You are doing the same thing that you are going to do but you smoke and drink. Of course, that is your life. So if you want to live it that way, they ain't going to change that. DC: So, if parents would place more emphasis upon religion, when their children are young— .not force them to go but encourage them, would this help? BB: I think so. DC: So, you would recommend that parents do that a little more than they do now? BB: Yeah. DC: What else can we do to help the juvenile? BB: Mostly, I can't say too much about it, because I'm not sure, but if you got them a job and you sit down with him and you worked out his problems, I guarantee you, 40-50 percent of it would be just that he needed money or he wanted to see if he could do it. DC: Who should work with him? Should it be the responsibility of the parents or the Juvenile Probation Officer, or social worker or who do you think? 73 BB: All of them. If it is going to start with him, the family has got to be involved for one thing. So they know what is going on. If the social worker gets along with all the family and works out that problem. My problem was mostly in the family because my dad doesn't make that much. When he smokes and drinks, it isn't helping me to go over and ask him for money because he is going to turn me down especially if he wants drinking money. So if you get your dad in it and your mom in it and find out financially it goes and if he's making good money then he just wanted to find out if he could do it. DC: So better group therapy with the family so they can better understand each other and learn to interact and talk to one another. They are doing this in the juvenile court right now but it is still to a limited extent. They are starting to make it almost mandatory for everyone, but it has a spread throughout the state of Utah. So maybe that is a real key. Well, Brad, can you think of anything else that you would like to tell me about as it pertains to the Criminal Justice System that might be on your mind right now? BB: Not right now. DC: Any more ideas on how we could improve the system? You've gave me a lot of real good idea. BB: I'm really criticizing them bad because things that I've seen happen to other guys. I've seen guys get busted for things that someone has done and that really makes me mad because the guys that did it are walking around free and they've got some other guy in there sitting it out waiting to go to court and they're going to find guilty. If they're trying to get you for illegal sales, they'll do everything in their power to prove that you are guilty. They could care less if you're innocent or not. Like this one District Attorney in California paid three different witnesses to testify on the stand against an innocent guy. The guy that 74 done it had hired the lawyer for the other guy. The one that had really stole it had done that man. You've got to put people down for something like that. DC: Whose fault is this? Is it the one that gets himself in the position so that he can be picked up for committing a crime, or is the establishment because the system is not adequate because it needs to be improved? BB: I still say that it is the system. DC: Do you have any ideas on how we can improve that part of the system or is that just an inherent problem? BB: I think that that is going to be as long as there are people on the face of the earth. The only way that they are going to work that out is to get that drug problem down because if they get that down, everybody is trying to be on the police force, everybody is trying to get the drugs and pull it down and they are going to pull it down a hell of a lot but only to a certain extent because there is no way. DC: You're doing it on your own. It's because you don't want to and you know that if you screw up then you're out. BB: That's just it. It says, one time here, you screw up; you go back to that jail. I couldn't stand it. No way, I couldn't stand it. I'm straighter than that, you could draw a straight line and I would be seven times straighter than that. I couldn't stand it over to that jail. If I thought that I was going to mess up and go back to that jail, there would be a slight chance that I wouldn't go nowhere. I think that I would rather be dead than go back to that jail. DC: Of course, you are not going to screw up. BB: Right. So I have nothing to worry about. 75 DC: Well, Brad, I think what we ought to do is leave it at this now. Let me go over the tape a little bit and pick out some real key points. Things that maybe we have missed you know, in our conversation today. Then maybe another time, in the next seven or eight days, maybe you and I could get together again and then maybe you can be thinking about sane of the experiences that you have had and reminisce a little bit to yourself and maybe jot down a few of the experiences that you've had that might be of interest. Maybe, jot down a few of the improvements that we might could make on the Criminal Justice System. I'll think of a few things too that I would like to ask you that we've missed tonight and then we'll get together again and go over this, okay? BB: Okay. DC: I really appreciate this. You've had a lot of great experiences. 76 Summary This is the interviewer speaking. I have arrived at home and I would like to describe the situation which existed at the time of the interview. I had been awaiting the arrival of an interviewee who had made an appointment with me; however, he was unable to appear because his job detained him. He had to stay longer than he anticipated. So there happened to be another resident of the Ogden Adult Halfway Home present. He was speaking with myself and also with the social worker who was in charge of the Adult Halfway Home for that evening. We chatted for about minutes. I got to know him and I built up a certain amount of good rapport between he and myself and we discussed several things including what he was doing there, what he anticipated doing during the next several months and kind of got to know each other. I let him know what I was doing, what I anticipated doing in the interviews. Then I asked him if he would be interested in being interviewed. He indicated that he would. So I told him that sometime during the next six or seven days, we would sit down in an interview situation and go over his past experiences with the Criminal Justice System. A few minutes more went on and we finally found out that the interviewee, with whom I had the appointment was not going to be able to make it and therefore, I asked the interviewee on this tape if he would be willing to sit down with me for two or three hours and talk about his past experiences with the Criminal Justice System. He said that he would be very delighted. We went down stairs, this is in a motel, but it is now leased out to the Adult probation and parole northern district for one year during which time it has been turned into an Adult Halfway Home. It presently houses, I believe about 13 ex-offenders, who have either been placed on probation or parole by the board of pardons, by the district court, or the municipal court and have been granted the right to become the resident in the Adult Halfway- Home for a probationary 77 period. While they are at the Halfway Home, they, of course, are given a two for one which mean for every two days that they stay at the Halfway Home, or for every day that they stay at the Halfway Home, they have two days deducted from their sentence. They are sentenced out there for six months and they stay at the Adult Halfway Home for three months without incidence, then they are allowed to be placed on probation out in society and have only to apply to the probationary service. We then went down stairs into what they call the conference room. It's where they hold group therapy, also family therapy and other training sessions which are usually held on Tuesday evenings. Myself and the interviewee both sat on a couch approximately about three feet apart. The tape recorder was to my right. It was hidden from the interviewee so that he could see neither the tape recorder nor the microphone. I was able to lay the microphone on the floor because it was carpeted. There were sounds coming from outside because the motel is located on the main street of Ogden, which is called Washington Blvd. Therefore, there were a lot of horns honking and the sounds of motors, automobile motors, and of course people yelling, and the air conditioner up stairs. So we closed the door in order to do a/ay with a lot of the outside noise. The room was approximately 12 by 14 feet. There were several chairs in the room. The reason I chose the couch was because it was a very comfortable couch. We were able to get close enough so that we could build good rapport and I was also able to place the tape recorder in a position so that it was obscure and out of sight of the interviewee. The interview went extremely well. The interviewee was very cooperative. There were no additional strains or stresses. He had a bottle of pop and foe drank from it on occasions. He smokes, but he didn't smoke during the interview although after the interview, he did pull out a cigarette and smoke it. Perhaps a small indication that he might have been a little more nervous during the interview then 78 he would have been had he been smoking. On the other hand, it displayed a great deal of interest on the part of the interviewee. He was so distracted and so involved during the interview, that he had no desire to smoke a cigarette. They were readily available and he was informed before the interview that smoke was not offensive to the interviewer. All in all, I guess the interview could be summarized by being almost a complete success. A great deal of information was provided by the interviewee. Although this was the first interview conducted by the interviewer for the purpose of the Utah Oral History Project, it was very successful and a great deal of good information which can be used and will be used by the interviewer was gathered. 79