Human junkyard

I got "downsized" out of DEC in 1990.  I immediately encountered age
discrimination, which is how I have ended up working where few other people
would have any interest working -- our state prison system.  But my life after
DEC has been the most interesting experience of my life.

Prisons, which we now need more and more of, are where social outcasts
end up -- people no one wants to see ever again.

Many of the inmates I work with would appear to have been outliers on
Apgar's bell curve peak of infants who take their first breath within seconds
after birth.  Many charts contain mothers' comments about oxygen deficiency
at birth.  These comments are mostly dismissed in favour of family
dysfunction and/or prenatal substances abused by the mother.

Prenatal exposure to alcohol and other drugs is a huge but mostly hidden
problem.  Features of prenatal alcohol abuse are sometimes identifiable.  
Most of our inmates are physically perfect, but often disheveled in
appearance.

Alcohol's impairment of brainstem systems has been known for over a
hundred years -- the same systems are vulnerable to oxygen deficiency at
birth.

Many of our older inmates were once classmates at the old reform schools,
or schools for "defective delinquents."  Younger inmates often remember me
as Conrad's mom at the Gaebler School.  I remember them too, as beautiful
children, in school performances, at swimming races in the pool, or sharing a
birthday cake.

Each and every inmate has special skills, if sometimes quite deviant.  The
drawers of the desk in my office used accidentally to lock up.  One "break in
artist" on the unit was always able to get it unlocked -- "Pretty good for a
graduate of the school for defective delinquents, hey?" he would say.

One of our sadder characters has remarked more than once, "I went to the
junkyard school, for junked children."

The problems we deal with are myriad, and include:

Poor educational achievement

Special education

Dyslexia

Autism spectrum disorders

Seizure disorder

Explosive rage outbursts

Psychopathy

Poor fine motor control

Schizophrenic disorders

Macrographia (large labored handwriting)

Perseverative thinking

Unpredictable responses to auditory stimuli

Head injury

Attachment to gangs,

following inappropriate suggestions

Extrapyramidal (Parkinson) symptoms

Sleep apnea

GI disorders

Depression

Diabetes (metabolic syndrome)

Asthma

Poor employment history