Prison Reform

“My father died when I was six. He drowned on a fishing trip. My mother had to raise five of us in North Philadelphia. I remember being twelve years old and going to a market on the corner. My mother had sent me with a note, asking for some credit so we could buy some food. The owner made me wait. There were other people in the store, and they were paying, so this guy is just skipping all over me. He’s making me beg in front of everyone. He’s saying things like: ‘Your mom still owes me. She never pays.’ My mom was my queen, and he’s running her down in front of all these people. It was degrading. I hated that he had that power over me. Like he had water, and I was thirsty. So I screamed at him and stormed out. I kept thinking: ‘One day I’m going to buy that store.’ But then I calmed down, and I realized that I just spazzed on the one guy who could help us. So I walked up to some of the dope boys on the corner, and asked them to let me earn. They thought I was too young at the time. They wanted to protect me. So they just gave me the money.”

“I tried to make some money the honest way as a kid. I tried shoveling snow. I tried a newspaper route. I stuck with it for awhile, but one day I was collecting money on my route and these older kids robbed me. There were three of them. They were 16 or 17. I fought hard. I told them: ‘I worked hard for this money.’ But they held me down and took it anyway. It was $27. And that made me feel so powerless. And I remembered that I knew someone with a knife. And I thought: ‘I’m going to steal that knife and deal with this firmly.’ I found those boys at an arcade. Nobody got killed. But I hurt them. I wouldn’t say that I felt proud after stabbing them, but I felt like they got what they deserved. I felt vindicated. Even today, I have trouble sympathizing with them. It’s funny how that works. When someone wrongs us, we want the maximum amount of punishment. But when we do wrong, we want the maximum amount of understanding and forgiveness.”

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