I have no pictures of wolves or hyenas

At my previous placement, I made a point in not knowing my students' crimes. It wasn't my business, and I did not want it swaying me. (Colleagues would tell me if the boy were a molester so that I would not be alone with him, but we did not swap this information otherwise.)

At my present facility, this is sometimes impossible because I already knew of their crimes before coming. They were headline news. I know their crimes because they were fearmongering fodder for months. I know their crimes because you know their crimes. (Search for an above-the-fold juvenile crime in the last few years, and I have met them.)

We know that our residents have committed monstrous acts -- we would not otherwise have met them -- but this does not mean that new acts of monstrosity, particularly those enacted under our supervisions, do not provoke shock and distress. Confidentiality and professional ethics demand that I give no details. Still, I see no harm in saying that society would term you a ghoul for doing this to an animal, to say nothing of a fellow boy who had done you no damage beyond existing in a state of vulnerability.

I pretend that my facility is a pound, that most of my students are dogs who have nipped a person too many. I do not have the actual statistics, but I do not feel it is hyperbolic to state that more people have occupied graves owing to my student than occupy the units at any point. Not all the residents have been convicted of or facilitated homicides -- brutal assaults and robberies are sometimes why a boy is sentenced to a few years in this system. On average, though, they have each killed more than one person.

We imagine them neutered, if only for a little while. They may bark, but a bite is rare. What happened reminds me, though we may put a puppy through his paces in hopes we can housebreak them, our population contains wolves, wild things which only bide their time until reverting to the savagery of their packs. For all concerned, they might prefer a generous cage and regular meals.

Wolves did not precipitate this latest incident, and we were naive to hear their cackles, high and nervous, and not call them hyenas instead.

My favorite student asked if I had instructed anyone I believed could not be fixed. I don't have to think more than a second before pronouncing that my decade with the state introduced me to three, whom I tried to help any way I could, but knew they could not receive that grace. We live in a compassionate society -- or I would like to think we do -- and the right thing to do for them would be supervised care in a secure mental health facility for the rest of their lives.

My student thought this was too many, that either everyone can be redeemed, or no one can. He meant that he feels judged -- he had parole that day -- and that the world will not believe in him enough for a second chance.

I scoffed. "I do not have a solitary doubt about your redemption if you keep wanting it." He is smart and, despite himself, sweet. He shed blood, yes, but he was not out for death. It is not for me to call grievous assault justified, but he is honest enough that I understand it and believe it need not reoccur. If he hurt anyone who had not hurt him first, I think it would break his heart.

My job requires a degree of compartmentalization that might be pathological. My paperwork does not come home. I have recently shared with my friend my glory with my mentee but prefer to keep negativity within barbed wire fences -- and I am generally cheerful at work. These new stressors shake me. I notice this well of irritability and perseveration on what had happened that eclipses my ability to focus on what I am doing from moment to moment, leaving me to question myself aloud until I remember. I need my job to stay in its box to preserve my sanity. I tell Amber that this feels like when my mental health is slipping, only I know this concern is genuine.

My only solution is, as always, endurance, a war of attrition. The days to come will pile up until this one is crushed to powder beneath, its substance scattered. I am given no remedy other than teaching as usual, as though I had not been so starkly reminded of how broken some of my students are. Broken and unable to be fixed ever again because second chances lose their relevance after the tenth one covered in blood and spit, after making clear that nothing is stopping you but men with handcuffs always at arm's length. Even my hope that their brains will settle come twenty-five, but how much rape and torture, how many bodies made bloodless by their hands, must precede this?

I knew shame and horror early enough. What teenager misses these lessons? I understood the shape of guilt intimately. Some, the hyenas, do not have this in them. Their adult brains will settle only into the patterns they established when they first joyed hurting another person. Their crimes were not anger or necessity but sublime pleasure.

When one student harms another -- any gaggle of boys seems to fall to horseplay in short order, and this inevitably goes too far for one of them -- they are far from perfect victims. We live in a culture where punitive rape is a steady punchline on children's cartoons still. Few hear "murderer of a child was assaulted by an arsonist over a favored TV seat" and can rally even a mote of sympathy, no matter how babyish their faces remain.

last watched: Brooklyn Nine-Nine
reading: Harrow the Ninth