Setting it off prompts a quick frisking. Bags ride through a scanner, and are frequently opened and searched. Past the main lobby, guards sweep regularly through the halls to encourage people standing without a purpose or a direction to find one, and soon. Most visitors retreat into the small, brick-walled waiting areas, filled with rows of benches, just outside the courtrooms. No one talks much.
Parents keep their children close.
They're just kids. Only sets of glass double doors, partially covered by paper signs, separate these spartan rooms from the inner sanctum, the courtrooms. Third-year Law School students Randee Waldman and Laural Jin have been through these doors before. Since early 1996, Kevin has been in a medium-security youth prison. Conyers and her students are appealing the delinquency ruling, but today they're fighting a different battle.