Alright… I have been having long conversations with “Dave” (Again – there is no one that I know actually named Dave…if you don’t have any idea who Dave is… go back and read “The Smile” post and then jump back over here) while walking the track together the past few nights. I have found these conversations incredibly insightful, heartbreaking, eye opening and feel my perspective on our society broadening with every hour that passes.
Dave has had an extremely rough life… some certainly self imposed but when you have a childhood like he did… it is hard to expect much else. I asked him if he would be okay with me writing about his background and he gave me permission so I wanted to share in hopes that it can provide some insight into how some of these “felons” get here and hopefully start the conversation around how we are going to help people like Dave upon his release. Because if we do not… him and many like him will undoubtedly return within a year or less…
Dave was born in Arizona and his Father abandoned the family when he was 3 months old. His mother attempted to raise him and his older sister but decided it was too much and put them up for adoption when he was 4 years old. His grandmother begrudgingly agreed to adopt him and moved him to live with her in Texas. However, she refused to adopt his older sister so she entered the foster system (Dave has no idea where she is today). His grandmother hated that she was “forced” to adopt Dave and was extremely emotionally and physically abusive from day one. He remembers hiding outside by the trash cans at night in hopes that his Grandma would pass out before she found him so that he could sneak in and avoid the nightly beating. By the time he was 10 years old… his Grandma had decided to join in on the abandonment and no longer wanted Dave so she sent him back to Arizona to live with his Mother.
Unfortunately, his mother still did not want to actually be his Mom. Dave was left alone to raise himself and in his words, “basically just do whatever the f*ck I wanted. I was alone. All day and all night.” And what he “wanted to do” was smoke weed and drink… both of which he started to do when he was 11 years old. He explained to me how he despised kids that had a healthy family life and was in trouble with the law by the age of 13 after he was walking alone one night and came across a house with a family that was sitting down to dinner in their dining room. He said that he stood across the street and watched them through their dining room window (I was picturing a movie scene as he was talking). He became overcome by rage and ended up throwing a brick through the window while this family was eating. Obviously, quickly followed by his first arrest.
From there, he was in and out of juvenile detention until the crimes became more serious and he was tried as an adult at the age of 17 and sent to a high security penitentiary in Atlanta. Six days after arriving at the Penitentiary… he tried to kill himself in his cell. He was unsuccessful but the attempt left him severely injured and placed into some variation of solitary confinement for the next 18 months.
I will fast forward through his prison journey… almost 30 years of essentially constant imprisonment to the present. To the “Dave” that I am getting to know today. A broken but hopeful man. Hopeful that he can find some semblance of life when he is released. But how… what can society provide him that will keep him away from the only life he has ever known…a life of crime or prison. He has no family ties… no friends that are not involved in crime themselves… no house… no money… no car… no clothes or possessions besides the ones on his back…
How can we (as a society) expect him to get out and somehow find himself a job, place to live, health insurance, transportation etc etc with no system in place to assist this process? And on top of all of these practical hurdles, the willpower that it will take to avoid every single person in his life and the only way that he has ever known how to earn a living because both these people from his past and that lifestyle will do nothing but get him arrested (again) and send him right back where he started. I was (and still am) lost for words in regard to what to tell him. What advise can I give him without regurgitating the standard empty words, “You’ll figure something out man… you just can’t come back here…” But without real help… he will be back here.
Unfortunately, this is an open conversation that I would love to get input on from anyone out there that has any to provide. Feel free to write me and hopefully, over time, we can collectively try to begin working together to develop a solution for Dave and so many just like him in here and incarcerated across the nation.