When I was quite small, I delighted in the nursery rhyme �Humpty-Dumpty.� After I�d recite it or hear it, I�d whoop, �Humpty Dumpty was an egg, you know,� relishing the joke and ignoring the lesson in it. I missed the warning that a single second could change everything, that a single second could destroy things so thoroughly that even �all the king�s horses and all the king�s men� could never put them right again. Most children miss that warning. Destroyed forever means nothing until one has a glimpse of what forever is�and it takes years to get a grip on the notion of forever.

The part of my job that often gets to me involves the kids. Sitting across from a thirty year old burglary who is approaching burn-out can be drab and depressing. The man sighs and says, �I�m getting too old for this stuff� although usually the guy uses a word stronger than �stuff.� If the time on the sentence is not very long (although that�s only rarely true these days), the burn out can even be a hopeful sign. But there�s nothing hopeful about a teenage killer who still hasn�t grasped exactly what he�s done and what it really means. Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall but this kid hasn�t gotten the news. Unfortunately for me, I�m often the messenger.

When you look at what has happened and the people to whom it has happened, it is easy to believe that all killers are monsters. I�ll grant you that all killers are destructive. Killing is one of the most destructive acts there is. Most of the young killers I meet, however, are not the type of murderer we typically picture. They are not the kind who plan for months. Most of them can�t plan more than five minutes ahead. They�re impulsive, they lack perspective, and they are at the mercy of emotions, especially anger and rage. Before the act, someone looking at them would have been hard-pressed to predict whether they would be a victim of a killing or a killer. One of the dirty little secrets of many of our streets is that who is the victim and who the predator can only be defined at very set moments in time. Today�s predator is yesterday�s shooting victim.

Whatever I do with my time outside the job, the job itself is just a mop up operation. Some social service agency (or worse, no one) mops up for the victim�s family. I�m one of the ones who does it for the shooter. The trial defense attorney does some of it but he does it while feelings are still raw and there is still some glimmer of hope, if only in the client�s dreams. By the time they get to me, they have just entered the prison system and little is likely to change. Contrary to popular belief, new trial are even rarer than original trials. Most of these kids end up pleading to first degree reckless homicide, perhaps along with other crimes, and getting forty or sixty year sentences. It�s not life but the difference is not apparent to a sixteen year old who cannot picture himself ten minutes from now let alone more than ten years from now.

Humpty Dumpty is no longer my favorite nursery rhyme. Life with an egg is not all it�s cracked up to be�especially when each fall from the wall ruins at least two lives.

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