Evaristo Salas Jr.

So it helped because it gave us a certain amount of time to kind of, you know, to get used to that kind of environment if you can.

And as a juvenile, I was grateful for it.

I still didn't trust any of them.

I still was kind of weary of them all, you know.

But here they are, you know, making sure that nobody does anything to me or takes anything from me.

So that's a good, that's a blessing.

And then I think it was like three or four months into that,

They passed a new law where they weren't going to have juveniles housed with adults.

So what they did is they took all the adults out of that unit and then just brought in all the juveniles from around the state that were already housed in other prisons.

And then the ones that were just being convicted and placed us in this unit right here.

So we're segregated.

And the reason they did that is because prior, I think, 94, 95, a lot of these juveniles were being, you know, raped, raped.

being preyed upon, being turned in to do things, all that kind of stuff.

So they had to, just like the county jail, they had to find a way to protect us.

And so they segregated us.

And then they started just piling us in there.

There was juveniles coming from all over different counties.

I mean, I was 16.

The youngest one that came in was 14.

And he had 20 years.