I cannot post my students. This suffices.

To the consternation of my extended family, I skew liberal in most matters. I believe in taking care of the citizens of one's country or what is the point in having them? I became a teacher to foster the potential of children (and to talk about books and writing all day -- this was a mistake).

I teach adjudicated minors, making them functional members of society, with rare success. The staff hopes grains of lessons and skills are enough to push them over to the right side when it counts.

Still, society would be better if some of my residents - maybe one every two years - were never allowed back onto the streets. Weighed against the children they will rape and kill - and I am not saying that hyperbolically - it is hard to pick them.

These few don't even have the quality that would make them malevolent about what they are going to do. They aren't destroying out of anger or in revenge. They are doing it because they are so broken that destroying is all they can do. Blame genes, drugs in the womb, upbringing, poverty, constant physical and sexual abuse. The result is someone in whom compassion and empathy are absent, though it exist in some brought up with those conditions or worse. It is not easy to acknowledge, but my heart can't bleed for the ones who will cause atrocities. I must consider their future victims. I must want innocent people not to be raped and murdered. This shouldn't be a difficult position to take, but this job twists one in to pretzels of morality.

The irony is that I wouldn't have said this about my boys who made sensational headlines. Those kids had the potential to stay on the right side of society. I rooted for them. I hate those boys more after because I liked them when they were my students. While I graded their tests, I never wanted them segregated from society in adulthood. They were broken, but they never seemed irreparable. They understood consequences, but still made horrific decisions. Aside from one, I still harbor small hope that those students turned murderers can find their way back to society someday.

Those whom I clock as true predators usually reveal their nature before their crimes involve too many victims. In ten to twenty-five years, depending on their ability to rustle up good behavior, the correctional system will release them uncorrected. The best thing is that they return to the safety of a cell for something minor, robbing a liquor store and not mutilating an infant.

We are not always that lucky.

When conservatives want to fearmonger, these young men provide the perfect posterchildren-scapegoats. Don't give yourself the relief of imagining them slimy and violent. They don't have the passion for that. They could crush a baby's skull and not care either way. They could hold a gun to the temple of a preschooler without even wondering if they would get caught. They could break into an nonagenarian's house, rip the oxygen canula from her nose, and rape her while she suffocated under them. They can commit acts that you wouldn't fathom and not understand that other people will punish them. To them, there are not "other people."

(The above crimes are not literal or specific to the aforementioned residents. They have, though, done adjacent acts or have expressed the desire to commit them.)

We cannot predictively imprison them because they give me a bad feeling. That is fascist, and inaccurate. I don't have a "bad feeling." That is too hot a description. I understand them, their programming, better than most. They will never let themselves be rehabilitated, only contained. I don't cherish this conclusion, but I don't doubt it much either.

There are cats that linger in senior homes and cuddle with the next to die. They smell the coming death in a way humans and machines cannot approach. Likewise, some in my field sense when there is a lack of a soul in a boy, for want of a less mystical phrase.

It is triage. Most of our boys can be helped. These rare ones are sucking chest wounds and four missing limbs gushing blood; trying to save them is going to result in the death of boys who can be saved from gangrene and gunshot wounds. If no one else needs the bandages and medicine, you could entertain yourself trying to staunch the bleeding -- if you could pick a place to start. There are so many who need the attention more, who could recover and live.

I still try my best to reach them to find the boy beneath the beast. These boys are beyond that. There is no boy there. I do not believe in evil but they are the closest I can come to approximating it. I keep on my unflappable professional face. I use all Redl's Interventions drilled into me during twice annual trainings. I help them on projects. I know what it is to be a teacher, and to keep a consistent and hopeful demeanor. I do it for the benefit of my other students, so they can see that we try with even septic flesh so poisonous that the maggots steer clear.

My students - the ones in whom I can have some faith that they have a place in the light - believe themselves to be monsters. They need to know that adults believe in their potential. (We mostly do. Even down one teacher, those that remain devote as much time and faith in these boys as we can.)

Soon in Xenology: Sanity. Writing. Summer. The Sheet.

last watched: Jessica Jones
reading: The Men Who Stare at Goats