This building we're in right now was actually built in the mid 1990s
When people were starting to respond to youth crime
With adult consequences and people were describing kids as juveniles super predators, so they were building
Adult like facilities like this part of the Bon Air campus
Because they thought that was the right way to respond to kids and they forgot was they were kids
How y'all doing today?
How'd you get into acting?
- But I had come up? - Actually I used to be a background dancer
After I got cut in my face on my 25th birthday
Like directors and photographers is like they found the scar
Striking I guess what would you saw yourself when he was like 15 16?
I was clueless the drugs are already like starting to plague me I didn't think I would live to see 30
That's the life. That's the world. We live in. That's where you stand
how you been in?
two years in jail
I got to do like
I got to do a long time
My charge is two accounts of
second-degree murder and one account of
malicious wounding
I was just young man, I was really young
And of course I don't need to say it like that. They don't get to know your whole background
They just care about the time you did and not why you did?
There's always a reason for everything
How did we come to this decision to treat mistakes that an adolescent made with adult repercussions?
People were getting elected and running for office at the expense of kids in the system
And they were judging kids too much by
What they were doing rather than who they were and the circumstance they were in and their age when I became the director
All we had left in Virginia was two facilities that were like this
Not only were they built in the wrong way and too big
But they're also miles away from where a lot of kids come from so you can't do the underlying work
You need to do to make sure they go home to a better situation
Family Matters
Exactly and the other thing about places like this is that they eat up a lot of money
But we run probation offices across the state so
the kids in the facilities were fewer than 10% of the kids we worked with but they were eating up 40% of our budget and
They were
Reoffending at very high rates when they got out so we closed a facility that looks a lot like this earlier this year
So we're building treatment programs all over the state so that hopefully more and more kids can get what they need before they
Get here or they get you
how much does cost a house a kid in here?
- It's per kid, today is more than $200,000 a kid per year, which is a huge amount of money? - Yes, sir
And that's okay if you're spending it on the highest need
highest risk kids in the system to get them on the right track, but the thing is making sure that
almost every kid is someplace else and
the only kids who are here are kids who there is no other place to safely work with them
I got here kind of on the heels of the recession and budget cuts and a lot of the programs
We used to have for kids here have been cut so young people were spending way too much time
In their rooms good work doesn't happen when they're in their room good work happens when they're out engaging the staff
Going to school doing work, so we have made a big priority of expanding the program in here
We got to make sure they leave us better off than when they came that would be the goal
Can you tell me what what life was like before you got incarcerated?
The hood I was living in Freshwood, Virginia. It was
It's not too good of a neighbourhood, so it was a lot of Violeta gang stuff like that
You know how it be, you know, you from the streets. You know how it be so I had to fight to make it
I mean if I didn't I mean he's a predator or a prey
I did make a crime and I know I do have to pay a price, but the cost you know
We never thought it'd be the rest of my life
When I first got incarcerated,I got real mad and stuff, I didn't talk to anybody
You know eventually I got over like, the situation. I made the best of it
so what are the things you have gotten that's on a good note from being in here
the resume I got built up such talents and tools like I've learned to strip floors with the machines
I've learned to cut hair with the
therapeutic portion looks like we learned here -
slowing down and processing a situation and saying I really didn't want to fight or anything like that you just
Misunderstood where I'm coming from and I apologize
Like and I'm seeing I'm like I never seen that a day in my life on the on the streets
Do you really think that putting that much time on an adolescent is fair?
Kids are very different than adults, and and and we can't make
Life-altering decisions based on things that they do
When they're young it's not that they shouldn't be held accountable. No not that the safety concerns
We need to address
but saying
This is what the rest of your life looks like for something you did when you're 15
is at odds with science, and it's kind of at odds with all the experience we're having with kids
You know people often ask me about the kids who are here they say well you're down to 200
Those must be the worst of the worst
But you met him today did and they're still kids with dreams, and they're still kids with talents
And they're still kids with hope and potential if kids end up in a place like this
Number one it should be after we've exhausted all other
opportunities and number two that
From the moment they wake up, which is the moment they go to bed, they're doing something
That matters to them that's gonna get their life in the right direction and that we're doing all we can
You know to keep hope alive