True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall

Chapter 7 begins in lockdown, as a fight has broken out between rival gangs. Jimmy explains to Mark that the fight was actually a spillover from gang conflicts at one of the adult prisons. Racially-motivated, these fights are coordinated through gang affiliations, which stretch between prison to prison:

If a group of black guys jump a Latino guy up at Cocoran or Folsom, the Mexican Mafia will say that Latino guys got to pick fights with blacks for payback. And if they find out the juveniles didn't carry out the order, they'll be waiting for you when you get sent to the pen (72).

At Juvenile Hall, while working on an assignment to describe things that have been done for them, stories of the boys' troubled family lives enter into their assignments. Conversations about family lead to conversations about gang life, and its importance for those behind bars. Although aware of the prevalence of gang life in the area, Mark does not, until this point, properly understand the inmates' own mixed feelings toward gangs. Jimmy says: "You're supposed to put the gang first, but if you could listen to most of us when we're talking in our rooms, when it's just you and your roommate and not in front of everybody else, you'd find out that a lot of guys in here are sick of it" (76).