By Saul Estrada
Every year nearly 200,000 juveniles are detained and incarcerated according to the Open Society Foundation. Sharing an 8ft room with no privacy. Some of these kids will have to learn to defend themselves in order to survive. This was the life of Mark an 18 year old kid.
Mark grew up in San Jose CA, he lived with one brother one sister and his parents. At first it sounds like an ordinary family. He said he liked to spend all of his freetime playing soccer with his siblings and outside on rainy days. This seems like a normal kids childhood, spending time outside with friends and family but the shocking truth to why he likes to spend most of his time outside is what caught my attention the most.
Mark said: “My dad was abusive towards me and my siblings. I never wanted to be home because of that. My dad was a drug addict and an alcoholic and my mom was always working.”
Once Mark got to highschool that's where all the problems began. He started to dress differently; he would wear baggy clothes often and was usually mistaken for a gang member. This lead him to get into fights occasionally. This is where all his anger that was bottled up from his childhood was released.
Teachers began to treat him differently. When I asked Mark about how he felt he was being treated by the teachers at school he responded with, “ just by the way I was dressed and how my presence was, I was able to tell they really didn't care about teaching me, they didn't pay attention to me as if I weren't there.”
It all started with small illegal activities but eventually this led up to where he is now. After graduating high school he started to spend most of his free time with his friends, robbing houses and stealing cars. It got to a point where the cops were looking for him and eventually ended up getting incarcerated.
Mark spent almost one year of rehabilitation in "the ranch. The ranch is known to help juveniles who have committed several crimes but still have a chance on being released and not sentenced to adult prison. Mark has now been released and is on house arrest for six months as long as he doesn't break any of his rules.
Unfortunately this isn't the first time a youth has been incarcerated. In the city of New York, five kids were accused of raping a central park jogger. These were five kids of color who were criminalized by the system.
This case is known as The Central Park Five, these five kids were all from the age of 12-15 and all youth of color. These five kids where at the central park in New York throwing rocks to people passing by. When the kids got arrested they had also got a call about a jogger that was left to die on the side of the pavement. Since the calls were about the same time the kids were interrogated furiously but they were not being fed and had no sleep because this all took around the time of 12PM midnight. The 5 kids were all tricked into confessing against each other and at the end they had confession of every single kid being at the scene. Keep in mind they had no clear evidence of the kids being part of this, but they did have clear evidence that matias reyes known as the central park rapist was the person who committed this crime. The evidence was ignored at stored in the evidence room.
The most disappointing part about this case is how the media reacted. Even though they knew these kids were being wrongfully accused they still where recording these kids and calling them “rapist” making this the case of the century.
Many kids in the US are being criminalized and not being seen for who they actually are. Instead of criminalizing these kids we should be seeing the human in them. They have dreams just like any other person in the world they should not be afraid of showing it and we should not be putting them down just because of how they dress.
Every year nearly 200,000 juveniles are detained and incarcerated according to the Open Society Foundation. Sharing an 8ft room with no privacy. Some of these kids will have to learn to defend themselves in order to survive. This was the life of Mark an 18 year old kid.
Mark grew up in San Jose CA, he lived with one brother one sister and his parents. At first it sounds like an ordinary family. He said he liked to spend all of his freetime playing soccer with his siblings and outside on rainy days. This seems like a normal kids childhood, spending time outside with friends and family but the shocking truth to why he likes to spend most of his time outside is what caught my attention the most.
Mark said: “My dad was abusive towards me and my siblings. I never wanted to be home because of that. My dad was a drug addict and an alcoholic and my mom was always working.”
Once Mark got to highschool that's where all the problems began. He started to dress differently; he would wear baggy clothes often and was usually mistaken for a gang member. This lead him to get into fights occasionally. This is where all his anger that was bottled up from his childhood was released.
Teachers began to treat him differently. When I asked Mark about how he felt he was being treated by the teachers at school he responded with, “ just by the way I was dressed and how my presence was, I was able to tell they really didn't care about teaching me, they didn't pay attention to me as if I weren't there.”
It all started with small illegal activities but eventually this led up to where he is now. After graduating high school he started to spend most of his free time with his friends, robbing houses and stealing cars. It got to a point where the cops were looking for him and eventually ended up getting incarcerated.
Mark spent almost one year of rehabilitation in "the ranch. The ranch is known to help juveniles who have committed several crimes but still have a chance on being released and not sentenced to adult prison. Mark has now been released and is on house arrest for six months as long as he doesn't break any of his rules.
Unfortunately this isn't the first time a youth has been incarcerated. In the city of New York, five kids were accused of raping a central park jogger. These were five kids of color who were criminalized by the system.
This case is known as The Central Park Five, these five kids were all from the age of 12-15 and all youth of color. These five kids where at the central park in New York throwing rocks to people passing by. When the kids got arrested they had also got a call about a jogger that was left to die on the side of the pavement. Since the calls were about the same time the kids were interrogated furiously but they were not being fed and had no sleep because this all took around the time of 12PM midnight. The 5 kids were all tricked into confessing against each other and at the end they had confession of every single kid being at the scene. Keep in mind they had no clear evidence of the kids being part of this, but they did have clear evidence that matias reyes known as the central park rapist was the person who committed this crime. The evidence was ignored at stored in the evidence room.
The most disappointing part about this case is how the media reacted. Even though they knew these kids were being wrongfully accused they still where recording these kids and calling them “rapist” making this the case of the century.
Many kids in the US are being criminalized and not being seen for who they actually are. Instead of criminalizing these kids we should be seeing the human in them. They have dreams just like any other person in the world they should not be afraid of showing it and we should not be putting them down just because of how they dress.