Category: Juveniles

Troy David writes about how juvenile crime can grow out of insecurity, peer pressure, and a desperate need to fit in. His story shows how…

Teenage prison guards and the incarcerated teenagers they’ll oversee share more than proximity — they share the same vulnerability to a system that has never…

I may know how Ethan Crumbley's life in prison is going to look better than anyone, anywhere. Almost two decades ago, in very different circumstances,…

Every inmate eventually witnesses a prison murder and has a story to tell. This is mine. Seventeen-year-old Damico Watkins lived upstairs in cell #144 of…

The law, legislators, love the word culpability. As in, how much blame, or guilt, actually resides on the offender of a crime? When someone does…

Spending a long time in prison, you learn to read the way that people walk and move. It becomes both a survival instinct, as well…

Daniel Harris interviews three inmates who say their experiences in abusive juvenile group homes made them the criminals they are today. David Wayne Besom was…

It was 4:45 a.m. on an eerie fall morning when a sudden jolt of strange energy went through my body, waking me up. I woke…

In April of 2008, my son was arrested for accidentally killing a Columbia graduate student while trying to impress a group of shallow friends who…

During my time in freedom, I recall parking in airport long-term parking lots. I recall the thick layer of dust that turned into dirt on…

Another mentally deranged kid marches into a school and mows down nineteen other kids and two teachers with an assault rifle. How the hell do…

This is a comment left on Chris’s story about school shooter Ethan Crumbley’s life in prison. His response is below: Chris, you are an exceptional…

  I hope this finds you and family well during these trying COVID times. Thank you for allowing  me the opportunity to address Arkansas’ juvenile…

As a young boy in adult prison, my first visitor in prison was my dad. Looking back at the picture I have from that day,…

Heather D'Aoust has written 30 tips for Surviving Prison. Here is Tip #6: Surviving Coed Gangs in Juvie Prison. I got arrested at 14, facing…

At the ripe young age of eleven, in the fifth grade of elementary school, I was arrested and transferred to Mount Sinai psych ward for…

Nicholas Laumann from Wisconsin writes about how an unlikely mentor saved him behind bars. I thought I was destined for prison long before I ever…

We went to the room. He had a pipe and some alcohol. We smoked. We drank. I talked. He listened. We ended up laughing. Next…

Outside, the chow hall door opens. Spacemen enter. Gas masks and shields. Six black "fire extinguishers" fog the air, sending men scrambling. Human bug-spray.

There is a distinctive “ting” when metal snaps: a sharp, high-pitched note reverberates through the air long after the metal stops vibrating. “Shit,” I grumbled…

Sometimes, after my roommate has gone to sleep (or has left the room, or when no one is looking), I grab my pillow and hold…

First days are sitting in an inflatable life-raft in the ocean while the winds whip around you in a hurricane. Giant waves crash violently around…

We might have been crazy, and they certainly said that about us, though they said that about all the youth. Every child who came to…

When I was thirteen years old I was arrested for distribution of a simulated controlled substance or in laymen’s terms; fake dope. I had attempted…

Let me first off start out by saying that I’m not one of these prisoners who thinks that prisoners are awesome or that most are…