I Survived Childhood Trauma—So Did Every Man I Meet in Prison

Childhood trauma is the invisible thread running through the lives of most people in prison, shaping their paths long before they ever committed a crime.

Traumatized children are the seeds of society’s malevolence. Untreated, they will become the victimizers, predators, and murderers of tomorrow. This future isn’t a fact, but if you dig around in any convicted felon’s childhood, you’ll find much trauma. Not just one type of childhood trauma, but multiple traumas; chronic trauma over a sustained period. Sure, there are felons who don’t have a history of childhood trauma; but their number is so small, it doesn’t even register as a percentage when taking into account those who do. Prisons are filled with men and women who society failed a long time ago, when they were traumatized children. Whether by their parents, teachers, social workers, congregation, police, or politicians, they weren’t protected. That’s a truth society isn’t ready to accept. So, let’s deal with some acceptable truths.

The Deep Connection Between Childhood Trauma and Crime

The National Child Trauma Stress Network ran a survey in 2001 in collaboration with 17 sites and 150 centers where young children either visited or were housed. Led by UCLA and Duke University, 2,000 children were surveyed. Here were some of the results:

50% reported being emotionally abused by a caregiver
Nearly 50% had temporarily lost a caregiver to jail and/or treatment programs
Nearly 50% reported witnessing domestic violence
25% were victims of sexual and/or physical abuse

Let’s go deeper. In another survey focused on inner-city children in high-crime areas, conducted by Bell & Jenkins (1993), they found:

65% of school-aged children reported witnessing serious assault
33% of them had witnessed a homicide
23% of them were threatened with a knife
11% of them had been shot at

In yet another survey of sixth graders in high-crime urban areas (Campbell & Schwarz, 1996), they found:

46% of them had witnessed a robbery
55% of them had witnessed a stabbing
24% of them were caught in gun crossfire

Why Society Fails the Children Who Need It Most

It’s clear that society has a problem protecting its children. While most of its attention is on protecting borders, elections, and personal wealth, ignoring or failing to protect its most vulnerable is its most profound delinquency. It’s a consequence of the individualism this society continues to embrace and identify with. It’s no longer, “We the people.” It’s, “Me, You, and Them.”

Let’s imagine we cared less about the immediate now—instant recognition, instant money, instant pleasure—and instead, we were focused on our future as a society. Understanding that we have to protect our children, we must focus on areas in most need, where the problem is most urgent, where help and support can be most effective.

If we connect the dots from the statistics to the fact that Blacks make up 40% of the prison population in this country, yet make up only 12-15% of the residential population, the picture becomes clear. The percentage of Blacks living in high-crime urban areas is substantial.

The Lasting Impact of Childhood Trauma on Incarcerated Adults

Let’s take a step back The link between childhood trauma and adverse adult behavior can be fully clarified through the statistics. In a study by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority Center for Justice Research and Evaluation, 163 women in an Illinois prison were surveyed, and 61% of them met the criterion for PTSD. The WestCare Foundation conducted a similar survey with 163 male inmates, and 24% met the criterion for PTSD. 99% of the men had experienced at least one traumatic experience in their lifetime, and 61% had witnessed at least one. In the county jail, 97% of male inmates reported personally experiencing at least one traumatic experience in their lifetime.

In a 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Justice, 37% of people in prison have a history of mental health problems. More than 24% have been previously diagnosed with major depressive disorders, 17% with bipolar disorder, 13% with personality disorder, and 12% with PTSD.

You might say that incarcerated people are susceptible to traumatic experiences due to their location, and these statistics don’t specify childhood trauma.

Witnessing the Effects of Childhood Trauma Firsthand in Prison

I’m a board-certified Peer Specialist and Recovery Specialist in a Pennsylvania prison. A certified Peer Specialist in Pennsylvania must perform 75 hours of training before becoming certified, and must receive additional, monthly educational units. We are the most well-trained in the country.

In 2020, at the start of the COVID lockdown, I was assigned to the Intake/Quarantine block at my prison. Every 15-20 days, we received a new shipment of inmates, some from classification, and some straight from their homes. We had a detox cell where some of them had to be placed and watched as they came down off of a high. We were on a 22-and-2 lockdown [22 hours locked down, 2 hours out of cell], but I was allowed out of my cell throughout the day to talk with guys who needed someone to talk to. If needed, I could get my fellow inmate out of his cell and take him to a small room where we could talk in private. The officers were well-accommodating and made my job easy. Because we were on lockdown, everyone wanted to talk.

Over that two-year period, I probably spoke with more than 100 inmates. The inmates were from just about every demographic. At the height of the pandemic, men coming into the jail were so emotionally raw, and surprisingly eager to open up to me. I’d say 95% of those men at some point in our discussions expressed to me that they were molested as a child.

I was so stunned by what I was hearing that I actually contacted a nearby college, seeking support to do an official survey. It hit home because I was also abused as a child. White men, Black men, Hispanic men, rural, urban, middle class, poor, drug dealers, drug addicts, type A personalities, type B, and everything in between. We all had similar experiences. I felt like I was among kindred souls, all of whom had been on the same life trajectory as me, which began with early childhood trauma.

High-Poverty Communities and the Roots of Childhood Trauma

In a 2003 study by Stein, Jaycox, Kataoka, Rhodes, and Vestal, they found, “The vast majority of youths living in high poverty settings were exposed to severe forms of violence in the community either directly or indirectly.”

High-crime, urban areas need to be the focus, and more importantly, the children in those areas. If we want to tackle crime and mass incarceration, work must begin at the point of impact. If the home is supposed to be the primary place for a child’s protection and nurturing, what happens when the home is a crack house? Or a hub of domestic violence and drug use? Or when the single parent isn’t around because they’re too busy working an 8:00-6:00 job, making just over minimum wage? Or when the single parent is a child of trauma, and is emotionally detached from the child? How does that child get what it needs to become a healthy adult?

Ideally, the whole of society would provide children in these situations the tools necessary for them to succeed and recover from childhood trauma. Such is the case when money is sent to an impoverished nation consumed by war and famine. That’s a good thing, no doubt. But when the conversation shifts to inner cities, the voices go mute. $1 trillion! I wonder how much $1 trillion could do to improve the lives of traumatized inner-city children?

Art and Education: Tools to Heal, Not Punish

Art is an excellent, cost-efficient way to help children recover from trauma, and at the same time improve their lives and enrich their futures. Elizabeth Catlett wrote: “I don’t believe that art can change things. But art can prepare people for change, it can be educational and persuasive to people’s thinking.” Alixa & Naima wrote: “Creativity is the antidote for violence and destruction.”

Public schools in high-crime, urban areas need to focus more on the reclamation effect of artistic expression. Public schools need to become more like schools for performing arts, where equal attention is paid to artistic intelligence as academics. Trauma silences you, disconnects you from yourself and the world around you. Art gives you multiple voices. It connects you to that self that childhood trauma stole from you, and to the world around you. Acting, dancing, and various arts need to be part of the curriculum in these public schools to compensate for the lack of opportunity and effective ways to recover from the trauma many children face on a daily basis. Bessel Van der Kolk wrote: “The greatest hope for traumatized, abused, and neglected children is to receive a good education in schools where they are seen and known, where they learn to regulate themselves, and where they can develop a sense of agency. Schools can play a significant role in instilling the resilience necessary to deal with the traumas of neighborhoods and families.”