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Cabbie Curtis Ray Edwards, Debrow's victim.

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But he has known love. A woman, in fact, has been the center of his existence. "My mother is my life, she is my world, and my pride and my joy," Debrow recently wrote in a letter. They are moving words, attached to a woman so much maligned.

It was Seletha Debrow who recently urged a San Antonio legislator to transfer her son somewhere closer to her, and Edwin was moved from an Amarillo prison unit to Beeville, south of his hometown, just a few weeks ago. She writes him, occasionally sends money. "My mother was my caregiver," he writes. "The truth is that I have never really been able to understand my father."

Debrow had her love -- and an attitude -- to bank on when he went to TYC's West Texas State School in March 1992. At 4-foot-8 and 79 pounds, going to a place filled with Crips and Bloods, he figured he had no other choice. "I sure in the hell had my mind made up about one thing," he wrote, "and that was that I was gonna stay down for mine and don't let nobody punk me."

We attended group everyday except for on the weekends. Everybody had to go around and say this little speech that had to be memorized: My name is Edwin Debrow and I had a good day today, used my skills for the last 24 hours. ... I met another inmate whose name was Carvae. He ... had a 30- year sentence for murder. ... Me and Carvae hung around each other every day and he was my true homie. He was also a member of the Crips. ... Me and Carvae became like celebrity type inmates. Everybody at West Texas knew us. We were known for fighting and assaulting staff and we gained our respect. Nobody wanted to fuck with us.

I liked West Texas State School. ... We had riots after riots and when it did go down it lasted a long time. ... Everyday after school me and Carvae would go up front to the dayroom and watch tv. We would talk about the free world. ... We figured that we could act a damn fool and still get a good recommendation from TYC. ...

[Edwin recounts finding out that Carvae had been viciously beaten by rival gang members.] The first thought that came to my mind was to kill them mutha-fuckers.... I decided to get 4 big Duracell batteries and put them in a sock. When the opportunity presented itself I would retaliate by getting me an innocent bystander who was a blood member.

One Friday night I was in the dayroom and this Blood fool was up there too. ... He could pay for what his homies did. ... I pulled out that sock and batteries and went upside his damn head. He was trying to run but I grabbed him by his robe and kept hitting him. He fell on the floor and balled up. I continued to hit him until I seen blood. By this time the staff tackled me. He held me on the ground for about 2 minutes. He knew why I did it.

Debrow's journal of TYC days is a numbing list of gang fights, attacks on staff, riots, busted windows and escape attempts as he is shifted around from school to school.

When Debrow was 17, he was called to account for that tally of behavior. Based on interviews, pscyh evaluations and records, TYC's Special Services Committee, not surprisingly, recommended that he be sent up to adult prison to continue his sentence.

Debrow was surrounded mostly by kids with sentences of just a few months, kids who could see a way out. Under the law, Debrow, too, had a way out: He could have been released on probation when he turned 18, if he had kept a clean record in TYC. But Debrow couldn't see that far.

That hopelessness about his future, he says, eventually snuffed out any impulse to work toward a positive change. After a failed escape from Brownwood, he had all night to think, hogtied in his room. "I had 27 years and I didn't give a damn," he writes. "I had nothing to lose."

I learned one thing about TYC and that was that they were a firm believer in rehabilitation. They strongly believed that they could change the meanest inmates. They taught you politeness skills and things like that. They wanted you to have remorse for your crime. My caseworker Mr. Hill once asked me did I have remorse for what I did. I explained to him, how could I have remorse for something I planned.

I could change if I wanted to but I wasn't ready to change. I wanted to enjoy my life the way I wanted to. ... I thought I was losing my mind. I continued to misbehave and I was always thinking about violence. ... I wanted to stay in trouble. Being in trouble helped me pass my time.

January 15th [1997] had finally arrived. I went to see the exit committee. ... I knew I had a vote of 12-0 all in favor of my transfer to the Texas Department of Corrections. ... I knew that wherever I went I would be the same Edwin Debrow Jr. I wouldn't change my ways for no one.

At the hearing, TYC court liaison Leonard Cucolo testified that Debrow had been dispatched to lock-up 178 times, including a time when he threw a glass flower vase in the face of a teacher, fracturing her cheek and knocking her to the floor. He claims she made a racial comment.

When Debrow "felt like being destructive," he'd kick his steel toilet until the screws loosened. Then he clobbered it until became disconnected from the wall. When the staff moved him to another room, he did the same thing.

Debrow told the judge that he was constantly mistreated by TYC staff, and that a 12-year-old had to do whatever was necessary to survive. Debrow's father pleaded for his son to be released into his custody. "No one wanted to hear" it, he said. Edwin Debrow Sr. still sounds angry. He finally realizes he is shouting into his cell phone. "My son was a victim, too," he says. "My son's heart was not that calculating, like he was pumping cold water instead of blood." Even today, with his son's baggage of emotional disorders, Debrow says he'd take him back "in a heartbeat."

As Edwin Jr. had expected, he was punted to adult prison to continue his sentence. More jarring than the sentence, said Andy Logan, who represented him at the hearing, was the boy's metamorphosis. "When he went in, he was a kid -- a kid with problems who needed help. When I saw him at 18, he was transformed. He was so hardened it was unbelievable."

The husky young man with the broad shoulders and dimpled face keeps talking, while the guards shift uncomfortably beside him. By now, his knee is bouncing rapidly.

The drugs help some, he says. He's on trazodone today, an antidepressant sometimes used to curb aggressiveness, one of numerous psychiatric medications prescribed for him over the years.

Debrow knows he is mentally ill. "I realized long ago that something was terribly wrong with my behavior," he wrote in a letter. "It has to do with the mood swings. A big part of the responsibility lies with me. I've been learning to control and channel my anger."

He's in a high-security prison unit because he fashioned a shank from a piece of chain-link fence, hid it in his pants, then used it to stab a rival gang member some years ago. "I had so much hate built up inside me," Debrow wrote, "that I could take it out on the world."

Has he changed? He says he's disavowed gang activity and learned to value life. He's applied himself diligently since his TYC days: reading; writing his life story, a project he started in 1998; writing letters to his little brother, urging him to forsake gang-banging. He hopes to publish his manuscript some day, he says, because he wants to make a difference in someone's life. There may be another reason for the changes, too. He recently discovered that his appeal of the murder conviction wasn't filed properly in 1992 and was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Therein lies a little hope -- but even his defense lawyer admits the state's case against him was strong.

If and when he gets out, maybe somewhere in middle age, he will pocket his $50 endowment from the State of Texas, pull on a set of cheap civilian clothes and venture back into the world he hasn't seen since he was 12.

His mother, if she lives long enough, will no doubt be waiting.

Bill Everett is sitting today in a rec room at the prison system's Clemens Unit in Brazoria, dressed in prison whites. Now 20, he's just been turned down for parole, and the exact words of the parole board are burned in his mind: "a vicious, brutal criminal with no thought to the rights of others and society." The parole board has its own pressures, he figures. What do they know?

Everett and Diana Coates know better. They know that nearly a year after his graduation from the Youthful Offender Program, he has a spotless record in the prison's general population. That he's learned to put up with the taunts of cellies who have contempt for him, who look down on his goody-goody record and his newfound commitment to Christianity. He's used his size to stand between a sexual predator and his intended prey, he says. He's spent his time learning a trade -- plumbing -- that he hopes to parlay into a useful life if he gets out as expected in early 2003.

Unlike many of his fellow inmates, he unequivocally takes responsibility for the behaviors that got him there. "If someone goes around blaming everyone but who is responsible for his crime," Everett wrote in a letter. "he will never change or solve the problems that brought him here.

"I see guys all the time who want to blame the judge or the DA or their lawyer and in the next breath talk about how when they get out the first thing they're going to do is sell some dope or rob someone to get back on their feet."

Everett doesn't think he'll be one of those. His father, though, remembers Bill the liar. "A model inmate--I believe that they believe that," he says. "He can be the biggest little brown-noser you ever saw. The parent in me hopes it's true."

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