I came to prison as a child. 

At sixteen-years-old I was on adult turf with a knife in my hands, hoping nobody tried me. Walking through the door was hard. My last memory was going to my eleventh-grade Spanish class to see my girlfriend, Paulena. But now I was walking into a dayroom full of grown men who stood around ready to kill at any moment.

I heard stories before I arrived. People who I was chained next to on the prison bus warned me:     

“Don’t let nobody say anything crazy to you.”      

“Watch out for the guys who stare at you with a sparkle in their eye.” 

“Don’t accept anything from anybody for free.” 

They told me everything they could think of that I could use to keep myself safe. Did I listen? Yes. That’s why I was standing on adult turf with a knife in my hands hoping nobody tried me. Could I do it? Could I stab someone if they tried me? Yes. But would I became an entirely different scenario.

Having these thoughts running through my head was terrifying. Why did I have to think like this at sixteen years old? Why was I surrounded by all these grown men ready to defend myself at the blink of an eye? I’m sure it was any mother’s nightmare for her child. No mom could imagine her baby boy standing in prison around career criminals, ready to die at any moment. But there I was. And unfortunately for me, I had no mom to worry about me. She had died when I was six, killed in a neighborhood that is burned into my memory to this day. Sometimes, when I lie in my cell, all I think about is what my mom would have thought when she thought about me being locked in a prison with adults.

______

In prison, RESPECT is the key to survival. 

If you make people respect you, you’ll find yourself in less trouble. The problem with this, though, is that you’ll find yourself in trouble with the law. It’s a catch-22. You earn your respect amongst your peers and get left alone but find yourself in and out of solitary confinement. Or you turn out like a sucker, lose respect from your peers, and find yourself in a world of trouble every time you turn around. Either way you go its drama. But the better route in prison is to earn your respect amongst your peers. This is the social dilemma behind bars.

Is this a Social Justice issue? For sure. Children should not be placed in prison to have to figure out how to become the lesser of two evils. Yet many children find themselves stuck in this cycle every day. And it seems that nobody cares. From politicians to prison officials, there is no outrage about children being placed in prison with adults.