This letter is a composite of the letters received from inmates representing the voices of those paying a high price:
Dear J,
How are you?
Your grandma came by last Sunday with that baby boy of yours. Wish you had come along. Haven’t seen you in a while. Can’t wait to get out of here and help you out and bounce that newborn on my knee. That’s all you get to think about in this place.
She tells me that you been messing up some. Skipping school. Hanging with some gangbangers. You got kicked out of school over some fight. Then they sent you to the alternative school, where you got into another fight, and they kicked you out again!
You do better, J. Maybe it’s me your mad at. A psychologist told me I started drinking because I was probably mad at my father for going to prison. I only saw him once or twice before he died — in prison…
When they kicked me out of school, things went downhill fast. I was getting high, hanging with the boys. Your grandma never knew — she was working two jobs, and trusted me.
It broke her heart when I started getting in trouble. Just like you’re doing now. You have to help Grandma out, she’s getting too old to do it all for you and your little brothers. Hope your mama’s doing better in rehab.
J, you get back in school. What else you gonna do? Nothing, but get desperate and end up in here. I was right where you are now. Principal kicked me out for my drinking at school. Was no alternative school back then.
Bam, two weeks later, stoned outa my mind, I find myself in an alley with some other brother — he was out of school too — with some prostitute. They found her lying in a pool of blood with her head beat in. I didn’t do it, but I was there. It’s all a haze now.
Just looking around here, most of these guys are black men too. Some of them been out of here and come back cause it ain’t easy out there. Some’ve been in those youth prisons. Heard one of them say that all he learned there was more ways to get in trouble.
Just about all of us dropped out or got suspended from school. And, like me, some have kids at home — and had fathers in prison. Just goes round and round. You can’t sit around worrying why this happens. Just can’t let it happen to you.
Last two years, I’ve taken some college courses and worked at a job. I’m ready to get out and make sure you get to school, and help raise that baby of yours.
This lady lawyer is gonna file something to get me out sooner. She was talking about how I never should have gotten kicked outa school 13 years ago — that I shoulda had some help with my drinking.
She wants your grandma to call a law clinic over at Central so a lawyer can get you back in school. She says that there’s some recent court case, Leandro, or something, that says you have the right to a good education even if you mess up.
You be the man, J, you hear? Pay attention now. Don’t listen to others. They think bangings where it’s at? Right here is where they’ll be “at.”
J, next time your granny comes here, tell her to bring you too
Love,
Dad
