Constant calls from the principal kept piling up and attempts at counseling failed to understand my situation. After all, someone who went to college with no experience or someone who didn't even look like me could never understand my pain. After realizing that those adult figures didn't have time to focus on me and empathize with me, I figured I would be better off seeking what I was looking for. I went to the streets to see if I could find a sense of belonging. Mind you I had no proper understanding of the importance of family, morals or values, what's socially acceptable behavior. I was gullible, easily influenced because I wanted to feel accepted. I hung around the people who society would label delinquents. They understood my feelings of abandonment, hunger, and despair or so I thought. Eventually small things added up to bigger things. As much trouble I was into I was fortunate enough to never be caught into the system. Until my first charge in my life happened. I committed a Robbery 1 at the age of 15 and was tried as an adult. It shattered my world and would be the most impactful thing to happen to my life. This period after my stay in Green Hill Facility life was so depressing and hard to fathom the hand I was dealt, I had no self-worth, never valued others, and all the while was lost looking for love in all the wrong places. The things I did back then were signs of a kid looking for help or guidance but, home would never be my refuge.
Jarrod
The pressure that my peer group had on me was to keep up and uphold the image or identity of being this person who would be ready and down to do anything, whether it’s stealing a car, burglarizing a house, selling drugs, partying, fighting, etc. Also, I had the added pressure of surviving by any means possible, because I did not have any legitimate means of income or a place to live, so crime was what I resorted to.
Billy
In 1997, at the age of 12, I got jumped into my gang. I didn't know any better. All I knew was the few square blocks of my neighborhood. So, what I saw and learned in my own living room was totally different from how people acted on the block. I would see my dad wake up every day at 4am for work. But my older homies wouldn't wake up until 2pm in the afternoon, yet they had all the stuff I wanted. My parents struggled to buy us school clothes from Kmart and thrift stores while my big homies put guns, drugs, and money in the brand-new clothes that they bought (or maybe stole) for us from Macy's. My parents didn't raise me like that, so I knew that that lifestyle was wrong. But it didn't matter. I was a young and ignorant kid that had my mind made up. I was going to be just like my big homies. So, it should come as no surprise that I caught my first case at the age of 15. Three felonies stemming from a robbery that would follow and haunt me for the rest of my life.
Felix
One of my friends at the time had a sister whose boyfriend sold weed. My friend would get some and we’d smoke before going to school (5th & 6th grade). The boyfriend wanted us to find others at our school or their people who wanted to get some weed as part of giving us weed to smoke and we were eager to do so. Still in 6th grade, I met a 17-year-old girl who became my girlfriend. We would do what girlfriends and boyfriends would do sexually even though I had no clue what I was doing. Doing petty crimes, smoking weed, and having sex at my age created a false sense of a “bad ass” that I felt I had to maintain given my surroundings. This false image that was being developed was not helped when the police arrested twice at school (6th) in front of my classmates. It only applied more pressure to maintain the act.
James
I didn’t know at the time, but as I got older, I realized that what I was being taught was for prison yard combat and prison style politics. It was these older individuals that had taught me how to “survive” through difficult and sometimes violent situations. In the moment, I believed that these learned habits were how life was supposed to be lived. For a huge part of my life I was led to believe that being a criminal was the only option I had.
Ralph
[My mom’s boyfriend] and my mom took us to house parties. The people in those parties gave my sister and me alcohol and drugs. I have one specific memory. There we were at a house party. In the bedroom there is a sex party going on. The door is opening and closing, so we can see everything when the door opens. We are sitting on the couch with a man and a woman. The woman passes us each a shot of alcohol. They are laughing, kissing, and carrying on. The guy busts open a piece of paper, emptying the contents of white powder onto the table (cocaine). The woman chops it up with a poker card. She takes a sniff out of a rolled-up dollar bill. She pushes a little pile over to my sister, and then to me. So, my sister and I being between the ages of seven and nine, got all hopped up on cocaine and booze, I was smoking a cigar, the music was playing, her and I decide to dance like the others are doing. I have this big cigar hanging out of my mouth and I accidentally burned my sister just above her chest. I’m sure that she still has that scar.
Brandon
The streets were the only place I was welcome other than in the system; growing up in the streets of Tacoma means that most people you know are criminals, there is no escaping one type of bad influence or another. After a time I found that the bad influence was me, but I’m not sure when I realized it.
Nathan
Most of my life, my peer influences were older kids from similar family circumstances. They had parents that suffered from poverty, addiction, and abuse. I admired the gang members, convicts, and drug dealers the most. These were the people that I wanted to be like and spent my time emulating. As a young teen I joined a native street gang. The older kids pressured me to put in work; this meant that I needed to be willing to commit violence against anyone at any time, that I needed to sell drugs to make money while participating in other criminal activity that would benefit them or our group.
Augustus
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