"Give me a chance, that way I'll be able to tell the truth," he sang. "I'm rapping for all the kids in prison. I'm rapping for the mothers that's trying to make something out of nothing."

Ricardo's rapping was drowned out by the wall-mounted television clicking on. Three boys climbed onto an upper bunk and leaned forward, entranced by the explosions and the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns in an action movie featuring Asian film star Chow Yun-Fat.

Pierre Sonson, a pensive 10-year-old who is not related to Little Baron, raved about Chow's clothes. He and the other inmates wear hand-me-downs, some with unlikely provenances. The boy next to him was decked out in a "Girls Softball" T-shirt from Sonoma, Calif., wine country.

"They look clean, they look like they smell good," Pierre said of the actors. "I'd like to smell good."
When the movie ended, Pierre and Jenson Germain, 11, talked excitedly about an upcoming holiday.
"There will be bands," Jenson said, his voice rising.

They smiled at the thought, but they were soon frowning. A tall boy with a knife scar on his face had butted roughly into the conversation. "You're not going to be released for the party," he said. "Face it, you're not going to have any fun."
Jenson, who has been imprisoned for nearly two years, gulped back what might have been a sign of weakness -- a tear. "I don't cry," he said a few minutes later.

Little Baron, tugging at his waistband, sidled up next to Jenson. The prison has no pants small enough for him, so he strings a shoelace through two belt loops and pulls it tight. Little Baron thrust his right foot into the air, imitating a karate kick he saw on television. His pants slipped to his knees. He and Jenson fell onto a bunk laughing.

Outside, a woman walked into the courtyard. This was a rare sight -- a mother visiting her son.

Yola Aeme settled onto a bench and stared wordlessly at her 16-year-old son, Antoine Menchy, who has spent a year and a half here. Aeme, 38, still seethes about the day her son was arrested. She was frantic when he didn't come home. No one had told her about the arrest.

"There's nobody I can see or talk to, no lawyer or anybody," Aeme said dejectedly. "I have no hope that they'll release him."
Antoine bunks next to a wisecracking 16-year-old with delicate, curled eyelashes named Rikensen Louis. Rikensen spends great chunks of his free time hunched over a pad of paper composing letters that he tries, always unsuccessfully, to persuade prison guards to relay to a judge.

"How you doing, Majesty?" Rikensen wrote recently. "I already spent 10 months in prison without knowing why would you think of me mister?"

Rikensen, who says he was imprisoned for stealing a radiator, stuffs his letters into a purple shirt. He always writes exactly the same words. Over and over. He's lost count of how many letters he has written.

When he gets mad, he throws out all the letters and vows to stop writing. But weeks pass with no sign of hope, he said, and soon he finds himself writing those same words all over again.

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