The day a 17-year-old boy strangled himself in the
Miami-Dade County Jail, Xavier Cortada left the sterile concrete lockup west of
Miamis airport, drove to his studio and, with tears streaming down his face, took
his rage out on canvas.
With bold, brooding strokes, Cortada painted the boys body dangling from a bed
sheet, swinging back and forth like a pendulum, the thrashing weight cutting an angry red
gash into the floor.
To the Miami artist, lawyer and community activist, the floor might as well be the
conscience of Florida, wounded by its policy of giving prosecutors the power to turn
children who do bad things into adults with nothing more than the stroke of a pen.
When Cortada painted the image for a Miami-Dade Art in Public Places exhibition running
through March 26, he did not know the dead boys name. Or that he was transferred to
adult court after his first arrest on drug charges. Or even how he killed himself
that he was so determined to die, he knelt on the floor, made a noose with a sheet, tied
it to his neck and a pipe under the sink, then pulled until all the life drained out of
him.
But Cortada already was on a mission with the Miami-Dade Public Defenders Office to
enlist the 140 boys, confined to the second floor of the Turner Guilford Knight
Correctional Facility, in a collaborative mural inspired by the states direct
file law. The mural is part of the ArtCARE: Outreach to Juveniles Being Tried
As Adult exhibit, which includes photographs of boys who participated by Tim O.
Walker.
We say we love our children, but its conditional love. We love them unless
unless theyre threatening, unless theyre poor, unless they need our
help, Cortada says. The direct file policy is proof of that. We do
it so we have a clear conscience. So we can say, Well, we dont have to love
you. Youre an adult.
Expanded after teen robbers killed a number of tourists in the early 1990s, the
direct file law gives prosecutors discretion to charge juveniles as young as
14 in adult court without a hearing before a judge. The number of transfers has been
plummeting since lawmakers beefed up the juvenile justice system in 1994, but Florida
consistently leads the nation, and Miami-Dade leads the state, in the number of minors it
christens adults.
Last year, 2,077 children under 18 were bound over to adult court, 415 of them in
Miami-Dade. The overwhelming majority were not accused of murder, but of burglary, robbery
and drug crimes.
Prosecutors defend the system, saying they use transfers to protect the public from kids
who are either too old or too dangerous for the juvenile system. After all, they say, the
juvenile court loses jurisdiction of youths at age 19.
Many criminologists, psychologists and juvenile judges have long argued that the
adult crime, adult time mantra that guided Floridas get-tough approach
to spiraling juvenile crime in the early 1990s is doing more harm than good by giving up
on kids.
Science backs them up.
Every study on the subject, including one sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice for
the state Legislature, shows that kids transferred to the more punitive adult system
commit new crimes more violently and more quickly than similar youths punished in the more
rehabilitation-oriented juvenile system.
Scott Bernstein, a Miami-Dade juvenile court judge, says the reasons are obvious.
The only thing I can guarantee about every child I see is that, over time, they are
going to change, Bernstein said. They are going to grow up. Now, who do you
think will get the best results teaching them to be adults? A trained counselor who works
on anger management, life skills, appropriate behavior? Or adult criminals in our
jails?
Cortada is pretty much alone in turning to art to spread that message. He began using art
as an agent for social change in the slums of Soweto, South Africa, where he lectured on
drug abuse for the U.S. Information Agency in 1994.
He became an expert on drug abuse and other anti-social behaviors in much the same way he
became an artist circuitously. After graduating from the University of Miami School
of Law in 1991, he joined UMs psychiatry department to lead prevention programs for
juvenile violence and delinquency.
Thats where he picked up the pro-social message that propels him to
paint murals about AIDs, poverty, racism and other social ills. Working with sociologists,
psychiatrists and doctors, he learned that kids who turn to crime and drugs usually lack
positive bonds with families, schools and communities.
It wasnt, though, until he stood in a community center in Soweto that he realized
art could help build those bonds. The New York-born Cuban-American who grew up in Miami
couldnt quite connect to the bedraggled Zulu boys. So he loosened his tie, dispensed
with his translator and fetched his sketchpad.
As if by magic, the barriers evaporated. The boys grew interested and animated. Cortada,
now 37, was transformed.
That process has translated into what I do now, Cortada says. I had
always doodled and drawn but it wasnt until then that I said, Wait a minute. I
am not a professor. I am not a lawyer. I am an artist.
It was his legal training, however, that propelled Cortada to turn his sights and
paintbrush on Floridas practice of treating some teens as adults in court.
When he walked into the jail for the first time late last year, he expected the kids there
to be different from those he had worked with in juvenile programs. He thought they would
be scary, threatening, hard-core, the very picture of the fearsome
super-predators who had inspired the get-tough juvenile laws.
But he met were pimply-faced boys swimming in oversized jailhouse jumpsuits and
adult-sized woes. Cortada thought of them as convictims part convict,
part victim.
Cortada spent very little time there doing the stuff most people think artists do. He
didnt paint or sketch. He gave pep talks, told stories, asked questions, listened,
learned and encouraged.
The boys responded, writing rap songs, poems and essays. They jotted down what they would
write on the back of their jumpsuits, eagerly pasting their words on the mural that will
hang in the lobby of the public defenders office. One of the jumpsuits hangs in the
exhibit. A person with feeling, not an animal, one boy said. Dont
throw me away. Ive got potential, another said.
Ranging in age from 14 to 18, each had a different story, but shared some similarities.
Few knew both parents, or could count on them for guidance or support. Most lived in
neighborhoods awash in poverty, violence and drugs. Until their arrests, some had never
had three meals a day or the same bed each night. They rarely thought about consequences
or the future.
But perhaps the most striking similarity was their resemblance to the boys of Soweto. With
few exceptions, they were black. Thats not unique to Miami-Dade. Although blacks
make up roughly 27 percent of the Florida juveniles arrested every year, they represent
more than half of the transfers to adult court.
Im not saying these kids didnt do wrong. Im not saying they
shouldnt be locked up, Cortada said, but the truth is this place is full
of kids without expensive lawyers, without the means, without the support systems, to get
them out.
Most had many chances in the juvenile justice system, but failed when they were returned
to the same environment where they found trouble. One youngster with an engaging smile, a
thick brow and a way with words was typical. The boy, who turned 18 in jail, has a drug
abuse problem and rap sheet for breaking into houses and stealing other peoples
valuables. His mom married when she was 13; his dad was too busy losing his battle with
alcohol to work, leaving his son to be man of the house.
Sometimes my dad doesnt do what a man should do you know, get a job and
make money, the boy said in his cell. So I did what I could. Id give my
mom money, tell her it was from helping people move. She didnt believe me, but she
took it because we needed it.
But Garry Petit-Frere never had a crack at the juvenile system, and in Cortadas
opinion, is the ultimate convictim. The 17-year-old Haitian boy whose last
name means little brother in French was arrested for the first time last July
for possession of cocaine and a shotgun. Because of his age and his charges, prosecutors
bound him over to adult court. He quickly bonded out.
A few months later, Petit-Frere was re-arrested on another drug charge and, four days
before Christmas, in the county jail. Less than 10 hours later, he was found kneeling in
his cell, his head under the sink, a noose tightly knotted around his neck.
Little brother, Cortada said. His name says everything. Hes our
little brother and he died on our watch.
Maya Bell can be reached at mbell@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5003.