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anyone else.
    Juvenile detention is one of the most dangerous places in your city or county. Some of the kids there will be stone killers who would very much enjoy cutting out your stomach and intestines with a plastic shiv. Other kids will be florid, unmedicated psychotics, which is medical jargon for saying that they’re stark raving mad. Inside, kids yell day and night. They bang on their cells. The stronger ones attack the younger and weaker ones. The only difference between juvenile detention and adult jail is that in juvie the guards are usually not armed and are somewhat less likely than adult correctional officers to beat you when you misbehave.

FIELD INTERROGATIONS
     
    With the improvements in computers and data transmission, you can wander into the criminal justice plantation even without getting arrested! This is due to something the general public never hears about, a little bit of police routine called the field interrogation reports (FI). Patrol cops are required to make notes about everyone they talk to when they respond to a call or make a street stop. They note your name and address, your appearance, what you’re wearing, and where you’re going. These reports are cross indexed and filed. When a crime is reported in your area, police can review FI cards and instantly know everyone they have encountered in the neighborhood. Back in the old days, FI reports were handwritten on cards. Today, in most cities, they’re computerized files and instantly accessible.
    As you can imagine, FI reports are extremely useful to police. They might not be so useful to you. Let’s say you encounter police. They stop their cruiser, call you over, ask for your ID, and quiz you about where you live and where you’re going—all typical questions whose answers go into FI reports. Let’s suppose you’re wearing a red T-shirt, blue jeans, and a baseball cap. All this gets noted down, and with the miracle of computers and wireless database transmission, the information becomes accessible to every cop in the city almost before the police cruiser gets out of sight.
    “So what?” you say. The police didn’t arrest you, and you go on your way. But what if a crime is committed later in your neighborhood, by a guy about your size wearing a red T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap? You can bet the police will be at your doorstep within minutes. (Remember, you told them where you lived.) Now the cops are not cruising. They’re investigating a recent crime and looking for a fleeing suspect. They’re tense; they’re edgy. They can arrest and hold you as a suspect. Even if charges are later dropped, you will have an arrest record.
    Some of the police problems that minorities attribute to racism are actually routine police use of FI cards. You are likely to get arrested if you
encounter police and become the subject of an FI card
live in a neighborhood where crimes are being committed
somewhat resemble the description of a criminal
     
    I’ll discuss this further in a section about why you don’t want to chat up cops. Remember, the essence of staying free is staying away from cops and out of the system. The system is designed to arrest you, not to help you.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE? THE SOCIAL SERVICES PLANTATION
     
    Guys, listen up! The worst thing about getting arrested as a juvenile is that an arrest dumps you onto yet another plantation—the social services plantation. In most cases a judge will order you into the custody, or at least the care, of social workers and their contractors. These people can ruin your life trying to help you. Next time you hear someone waxing sentimental about how it “takes a village”—meaning a village of social workers—to raise a modern child, you should run, preferably screaming as you run, as far away as possible. Many well-intentioned people, especially those whose income, education, and jobs mean that their children will never encounter social service workers, imagine that probation