Those boys and girls who grow up with two loving parents to guide and mentor them is a rare thing. Those families that appear to outsiders, as near perfect, can be harboring family secrets of alcoholism and abuse. Children of single parents can suffer when that parent is stressed out from trying to support them. If that parent uses drugs to cope, or is perhaps suffering from poor health, the child suffers even more.
There is another segment of youth that is seldom seen or talked about. These children have committed crimes, often gang related; but because they are under the age of 18, and cannot be tried as an adult, they are imprisoned in special juvenile facilities. What landed them there in most cases, is a tumultuous family life. Alcoholism and drug abuse in a poor family can be even more devastating to a child, than to one who is from a middle class family. There may be complete neglect, hunger, violence; or physical, mental, verbal and sexual abuse. Parental figures may be dealing drugs or engaged in prostitution. One or both parents might be strung out on drugs, leaving the children to fend for themselves. The children, in their need to connect, join a gang and begin the journey that propels them on a fall through the cracks of society, where they become nearly invisible.
Some of these children who wind up in prison are extremely intelligent. Had they been provided with opportunity or privilege, they might excel in life. Most heartbreaking of all, are those children who purposely act out in prison in order to have their sentence extended, because they would rather remain in prison than return to the life they knew before. The life they came from was too frightening, too intolerable, or too abusive to endure. It is difficult to imagine the unbearable conditions these children have known in their short lives, that would make them choose prison over freedom. We should not be locking these children up where there is so little hope of them ever having a normal life. In most cases, the remainder of their lives will be like a rubber ball, bouncing back and forth between committing more crimes and going to prison. We need to look honestly at ourselves, at society, and at the capitalism run amok, that has left so many living in poverty. We need to help the children.
