A Place to Belong, Part 1
Young people imagine a world without prisons and give their advice to youths who may be facing similar battles.
“I feel like they should have more…a world without prison.”
“I can't describe it exactly, but in colors, I can…describing like a vibrant purple and a royal blue...”
“For what I learned about prison is they say that it's a restorative thing, helping them ‘get better,’ quotation marks.”
“...And a hot pink with a light green…”
“But, I feel like they should have more places that they really do that to help people. Because not necessarily, not all people are bad people. They just need help, and they need guidance, because some people are not brought up a certain way, and they don't have people that care for them. So, I just feel like they should have more places where people can go and get help, instead of just be thrown in a cage and treated like less of a person and be dehumanized.”
“…and orange and yellow. A colorful place, a happy place.”
“You could just setup youth centers. There's so much stuff out here that we could be doing but we don't have the supplies, the technology, this and that, certain people don't want to put forth the money or the effort to get certain things established in the city. There's not much to do, especially when you're not in school ... Like I said, how I wasn't enjoying school, I could have been one of those guys that dropped out of school and went and jumped into the streets, like instantly. They have kids like that that don't enjoy school for certain reasons, and they don't have much else for them to do outside of school.”
“Honestly, all the money that be going to the police, I would defund them. Make more shelters. Build more churches. Build the nurse ... I don't want to mess with the old people, but there's too many nursing homes out here and they don't really have no homeless shelters out here... All the people under the bridge, I would just go pick them up.”
“I would replace it for either a homeless shelter, probably make it a food bank. Give away food or something, like once I'm... I want to give back once I have it.... Probably every weekend, the doors would be opened at a certain time and just give out food.”
“People should be getting more help mentally. Because a lot of people go through things, they grew up seeing bad things happen to themselves. So I feel like everyone should be smarter about actions and what they do around younger children, especially younger children. Because of course, they see you. Like my little cousin, his daddy cursing, he going to curse. He going to do what he do because he think it's right, which it's not right. Some people grow up fighting, seeing people fight and all this. All bad things happen around them. They going to do it because they don't know no better.”
“See what the real problem is, like why they doing this? Before you just send them in jail.”
“Like, ‘You don't want to take this route, little brother. Anything you need ...’ I'm always trying to get it to them and stuff like that. Take them to get some little clothes, a little pair of shirt, pants, shoes. And I be trying to do the same thing for my little sister too, so she could know that she don't need no man for nothing. Or have to call nobody. She's still young. You don't have to worry about all that.”
“Start working, don't give up. There's a lot of things that we can't do as teenagers, being 13, 14, 15, you can't go get a job at that point, but you still could find work to do so, so I would've told myself to start working.”
“I plan to like tell my full story, because at some point I want to be a living testimony--once I finish getting comfortable and feeling myself out of course I want to talk to younger kids or telling them that they can overcome and get through anything..It showed me that this is not a place for me. This is not a place that I ever want to be. This is not a place that I ever wanna think about spending the rest of my life. No human being is worth me sitting in such a terrible place where we're controlled by people.”
“One thing I would change, I wouldn't keep them in these cells all day. No, I at least try to give them a lot of freedom while they in there. Some type of freedom instead of having them locked down all day. They ain't proven nothing.”
“You know? So I definitely, I definitely encourage not only myself, but other people to stay out of there including my siblings, because it's not a cool place. It’s not fun.”
“So, there was this video I was watching, and I can relate to it a lot, because ... So, basically he asked the people, ‘Who wants a $20 bill?’ And, so a girl came up, and she was like, ‘Yeah, I want this $20 bill.’ So, he had bent it up and threw it and stepped on it and stuff. So, he was asking her, do she still want the bill? Basically, the end of the story is she still wanted the bill because the bill still had a value to it. I feel like all the things that I've been through and experienced in my life and witnessed, my mom experienced, I've been beaten up. She's been beaten up, and we still came out of it stronger, and we still have a good value. And, I feel like we can make it through basically anything now. There's still hope in the world, just because you've been through something. That don't mean that that's what you're going to go through forever.”
“Keep your head up and don't ever quit. Just got to keep doing what you doing until you get out there. I ain't give up neither.”
“I like my smile. I want to see me, but a better version, without the flaws and mistakes and all that.”
“My plans for the future, like I said, I want to become a cook, so I want to own my own restaurant and I want to figure out a way to stop kids from being able to do other things like that. Going through the situation that I had to go through.”
“Because I ain't supposed to be here right now. I done go through some stuff that some people ... I got shot in my neck. I have friends that they got shot in their back. I know somebody that got shot in their leg before and died. I ain't supposed to be here I now. And that's just up to the grace of God. It show me I'm blessed. And that somebody praying over me. I got angels around me.”
“Happy. I was feeling happy, because going home to my family where I was supposed to be at and not in nobody's system.”