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KaCeyKal! for Vox
When Sylvester Shockley was 9 years old, he says he was arrested for breaking into businesses and sent to an “all-boys reform school” — what he later realized was a detention center for “juvenile delinquents.”
It was 1959, and his career as a defendant in the criminal justice system was just beginning. By the time Shockley was 14, he had been placed in a juvenile detention center for a second time, for another break-in. Shortly after he returned home, he says, he was back in the system again following a physical altercation with a white student who called him the n-word.
But it was during his time in an adult facility — at age 15 — that Shockley says he “entered the world of violence.” He was placed in a facility with men who were accused or convicted of violent crimes, forcing him to quickly toughen up to protect himself.