Typically, Christmas is a family holiday spent at home surrounded by loved ones; however, there are some young people who will spend this Christmas incarcerated.

This might be hard for many people to even imagine, but it is a reality for hundreds of boys and girls at Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility.

Many of the youths — staff refer to them as students — must deal with the emotions that come with being away from home and family.

That is why the staff and others seek to make sure that Christmas does not go unnoticed. This entails setting up Christmas-themed events, setting up Christmas trees, allowing those housed at PJCF to decorate their house units and more.

Tiffany Smith, an educator at the facility, put this mission into words.

“Even though they are incarcerated, they are still children,” Smith said. “We still give them that childlike experience with the holidays.”

Chaplain Shawn O’Connor explained, “We are kind of a weird community here. We want the students to know that it is a holiday. There is this common humanity despite this being a prison.”

Residents there do not have to spend the holidays alone. Their families are welcome to visit, even though the facility is stripped down to only essential personnel.

Public information officer Angela Burrows said staff works hard to accommodate visits on Christmas.

“We offer more visitation times than normal on holidays,” Burrows said. “So their families can essentially spend most of the day with them.”

Though some at PJCF will get to see their families during the holidays, many more will not. They might not have the best home life, and Christmas might not have been a priority for them.

“If you had been living on the street since you were 13 years old, you probably didn’t celebrate things like Christmas or Easter,” Lt. Brandi Speights said. “Then you come here, and for the first time in your life you are made aware that those things exist.”

Throughout December, volunteers will be allowed into the facility. They will bring gifts and provide moments of holiday cheer.

Many of the volunteers come from local churches and other outreach programs.

“They make gift baskets,” Speights said. “They give things like hygiene, writing utensils, papers, things of that nature, that the juveniles can use.”

Though these gifts seem small, they do mean a lot to the youths at the facility who desperately need many of these items, Speights said.

“You would be surprised because some of the kids here, that is the most that they have ever gotten for Christmas,” Speights said. “And this takes place all throughout the month. It is not just on Christmas.”

Though many of the children at PJCF might not be with their families and may not be at home, it seems clear the staff and this network of volunteers truly bring Christmas into the facility.

O’Connor summarized it this way: “The staff as a whole work to make sure students, despite the fact that they are incarcerated, don’t feel forgotten and don’t feel like the world is moving or revolving without them.”

[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”At a glance” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]

Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility

9310 S. State Road 67

Pendleton, IN 46064

Warden: Angela Sutton

Established: 2000

Security level: Maximum

Average daily population (2018): 188

Housing campus style: Maximum security housing for students unable to manage their behavior in the open campus.

[sc:pullout-text-end]