Episode 1: 'I Just Want You to Come Home'

Caught

WNYC Studios

Politics, Society & Culture, Documentary, News, True Crime

4.9 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Z had his first encounters with law enforcement when he was just 12 years old. Now, at 16, he’s sitting in detention on an armed robbery charge—his young life has been defined by cops and courts. Dwayne Betts is a poet and juvenile justice lawyer who, in his own youth, was deemed a “super-predator,” and spent nine years incarcerated. Both Z and Dwayne were guilty of the crimes for which they were charged; their stories are not whodunnits. But together, they introduce the central questions of this podcast: What happens once we decide a child is a criminal? What does society owe those children, beyond punishment? And what are the human consequences of the expansion and hardening of criminal justice policies that began in the 1990s – consequences disproportionately experienced by black and brown youth. Caught is supported, in part, by the Anne Levy Fund, Margaret Neubart Foundation, the John and Gwen Smart Family Foundation, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Listener supported WNYC Studios
0:07.0	I explained to you last night that the bricks were starting to fall
0:12.0	and they were all going to come crumbling down.
0:16.0	All the evidence we've got, We know that you were there.
0:22.6	So that's where we need to start.
0:26.6	And that is where we are starting to. The feeling of getting caught.
0:30.6	That moment when you just, you cannot run, you cannot hide,
0:34.6	and it's time that you face the consequences for what you've done.
0:38.9	Waits you there?
0:41.8	Yeah.
0:46.0	Why didn't you tell us last night?
0:49.3	I was scared.
0:51.8	Scared, young and scared. You know the feeling I'm talking about. I mean, really scared. Thinkred. Young and scared.
0:54.8	You know the feeling I'm talking about.
0:56.3	I mean, really scared.
0:57.6	Think back to it.
0:58.3	That moment when, like, you're hiding in your friend's house or wherever, and you're
1:02.5	thinking, God, if I can just get away with this, if I can just not pay for what I've done
1:07.2	this time, I will not do it again.
1:10.1	After what happened happened, I went to the
1:13.1	bathroom and I just looked at myself and when I looked in the mirror, I felt like I wasn't looking at
1:19.3	myself. And yet, the consequences they still come. So then what? What happens after that? For a lot of
	...

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