Fragile, intimate portraits of California’s imprisoned youth

New monograph ‘A Poor Imitation of Death’ documents and humanises the stories of seven young Californian inmates, aged between 16 and 20 years old, who were tried as adults despite being juveniles.

Two decades ago, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ara Osha­gan entered Los Ange­les Cen­tral Juve­nile Hall. He was vis­it­ing a deten­tion cen­tre for the first time with doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and teacher Leslie Neale, and despite fight­ing all of his instincts, Osha­gan felt a sense of hesitancy.

I had a sense of appre­hen­sion actu­al­ly,” Osha­gan recalls. We were going in to pho­to­graph these [juve­nile] pris­on­ers who were tried as adults, sup­pos­ed­ly their crimes were very seri­ous, and they called them vio­lent crim­i­nals. We inter­nalise these things, so [I was think­ing]: What am I going to run into? Are they going to threat­en me? Am I going to be unsafe?’”

But as he began observ­ing and talk­ing to the inmates, he realised that he had it all wrong. The teenagers joked and played around with each oth­er, as mil­lions around the world at that age do, and Osha­gan found their demeanours instant­ly relat­able. One boy in par­tic­u­lar, called Peter, was read­ing the Wall Street Jour­nal, before sit­ting down at the key­board and play­ing a note-per­fect ren­di­tion of Beethoven’s Moon­light Sonata’.

Lit­er­al­ly the night before, I had played the same sonata for my son while I was putting him to bed,” Osha­gan con­tin­ues. See­ing the same music being played in prison com­plete­ly shat­tered this us and them’ thing – these kids are not real­ly that dif­fer­ent from my own son, or myself. I could have been in there under dif­fer­ent circumstances.”

Efrain, Avenal State Prison, Avenal, 2001

Peter’s sto­ry, along with pho­tographs of him that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er took, now fea­ture in Oshagan’s soon to be pub­lished mono­graph A Poor Imi­ta­tion of Death. His is one of sev­en sto­ries of young Cal­i­forn­ian inmates, aged between 16 and 20 years old, who were tried as adults despite being juve­niles when they were incar­cer­at­ed, and giv­en extreme­ly long and harsh sentences.

There’s 16-year-old Anait who was giv­en sev­en years and a first-degree mur­der charge for dri­ving her friends to a fight where a bystander was stabbed to death, and 20-year-old San­dra who was giv­en 27 years after a phone card reg­is­tered to her was found at a mur­der scene. Their sto­ries high­light the real impacts of the USA’s mass incar­cer­a­tion sys­tem, and the years of youth lost behind bars for many who had found them­selves (some­times with a stroke of bad luck) on the wrong side of the country’s jus­tice system.

When you’re young, you try things, you don’t want to lis­ten, you don’t want to be sub­ject to rules and reg­u­la­tions. So if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, you could be impris­oned for 10 years,” Osha­gan says. Being in prison [at a young age] can impact you in a very neg­a­tive way because the sys­tem in there is very ruth­less, you have to belong to par­tic­u­lar groups and pro­tect your­self against oth­er groups, so it’s this seg­re­gat­ed space that can real­ly skew you and how you per­ceive the world.”

Sandra, Chowchilla state prison, Chowchilla, 2001; Handwritten letter by Sandra, 2002
Handwritten poem by Efrain, 2001; Efrain at his bunk, avenal State Prison, Avenal, 2001
Handwritten poem by Peter, 2001; Central Juvenile Hall, Los Angeles, 2001

The inti­mate pic­tures, tak­en in black-and-white, form a way of human­is­ing these young pris­on­ers, who spend most of their time wear­ing iden­tik­it jump­suits and being iden­ti­fied by num­bers rather than their names. Print­ed along­side the pic­tures are words – writ­ings from the inmates that range from poet­ry to let­ters, and quotes tak­en from con­ver­sa­tions with Osha­gan – that illu­mi­nate their inner per­son­al­i­ties, the tough­ness of life in prison, but also added con­text about their lives that high­light where a lack of sup­port from a young age had led them into dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. 20-year-old Liz, for exam­ple, was sex­u­al­ly abused by her step­fa­ther from the age of nine, and even­tu­al­ly ran away from home, but was charged with acces­so­ry to mur­der for being present when anoth­er per­son had stran­gled a teenage woman to death in an aban­doned building.

That lack of sup­port is made stark­er giv­en that the vast major­i­ty of those fea­tured in the book are from BIPOC com­mu­ni­ties. Even though the USA has 5 per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, 25 per cent of the world’s incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tion is in the Unit­ed States,” Osha­gan explains. In this coun­try that’s got this myth of being a free coun­try, it’s real­ly the exact oppo­site for cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties – it’s the coun­try of incarceration.”

Juvenile cell and hallway, Central Juvenile Hall, Los Angeles, 2001
Nancy holding a photo of her son, Central Juvenile Hall, Los Angeles, 2001
Bathroom, Central Juvenile Hall, Los Angeles, 2001
Yard, Central Juvenile Hall, Los Angeles, 2001
Yard, Ironwood State Prison, Blythe, 2002
Yard, Central California Women’s Facility (a.k.a. Chowchilla state prison), Chowchilla, 2001
Ironwood State Prison, Blythe, 2002
Liz in yard, Chowchilla state prison, Chowchilla, 2001
Duc on yard, Tehachapi state prison, Tehachapi, 2002
Sandra, Chowchilla state prison, Chowchilla, 2001
Mayra’s son at home, Los Angeles, 2001
Mayra and her son in visiting room, Valley State Prison, Chowchilla, 2001

A Poor Imi­ta­tion of Death by Ara Osha­gan is pub­lished by Day­light Books

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