A Split Second. A Life’s Sentence.

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Whether we’re free or incarcerated, whether we’re law abiders or outlaws, we all have this in common: We all make choices. In youth we make critical choices that predicate the rest of our lives. During those precious adolescent years, we are caught between wanting to obey and wanting to learn on our own. Sometimes this lack of experience leads to a failure to understand the possible outcomes of certain decisions. Some end up trying drugs. It can happen to anyone, any kid, especially now.

What begins as smoking a joint escalates by any number of means into heavier things: a whole menu of pharmaceuticals, cocaine in powder or rock form, methamphetamines such as crank or ice, and of course alcohol. This stuff gets eaten, snorted, and drunk, and before long, smoked or injected. Then it’s game over. For the users.

Walk a mile in their shoes.

You become a prisoner on the prowl for your next fix. You steal from your family and from strangers, break into cars, houses, and businesses in order to score. Before long, the all-night convenience store glows like a beacon with neon dollar signs.

A robbery goes down, and after a few ill-gotten bucks are purloined, you’re on your way to a dealer’s motel room like a guppie out of water, gasping and flapping your way to a dirty puddle without a second thought, without a choice.

Later, after the county jail staff has detoxed you, the kid inside comes out again. Your court-appointed attorney shows you what the prosecutors will enter into court as Exhibit A. It’s a videotape showing you shooting the clerk of that convenience store, grabbing a few bills from the cash register, and leaving in a rush. The camera still-frames, capturing your wild, hollow eyes. You were once a normal person. Now you are a monster, and you find yourself shackled on a bus bound for the Polunsky Unit in Livingston—the Row.

One cannot begin to describe the cost of maintaining hope in spite of everything in the joint. Convicts are told daily by those who officiate over them, by the news media, and by one another what pieces of trash they are. Nobody deserves to be thrown away, yet every day, some piece of the spirit is stripped, seen only in the night by prayer; by dreams crafted from memories of home and the promise of a future without alcohol and drugs; or by death without this lifestyle as a precursor to the beyond.

Death, however deliberate or prompt, awaits us all. It is guaranteed for every human: citizen, prisoner, master, and servant. There is only a small degree of separation between any of us. As children, we are innocent. As we grow, however, a string of tiny choices separates one kid on the playground from another.

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