Dreams Deferred

I'm going to do something a little unusual in this post.  I'm going to talk just a little bit about my job as a prosecutor.  Specifically about the thing that bothers me the most in my job.  It's not what you think.  You would think that it would be seeing hardened criminals beat their charges or the destruction that victims of crime suffer in their lives as a result of the crimes perpetrated against them, but it's not.  The worst part of my job is seeing young men and women constantly come through the court system throwing away any chance they had at a successful life all for what is in the best case a fleeting benefit.

Most of those we see come through the court system fit into a pretty common pattern.  Most of them drop out of school usually around the 10th grade.  Almost all of them have single parent homes, if that.  Many of them have parents and other family members who have been to prison.  It is not surprising that most of these young people end up wearing an orange jumpsuit, sometimes it seems they are almost destined for it.

However, today I was struck by two young men -- boys really -- both of whom had thrown their futures away for some short term gratification.  Unlike most of those that we see, both of these young men had been given a clear path out of the dead end future facing so many of our youth in our impoverished locale.  One had graduated from high school where he had excelled in football, earning a scholarship to North Carolina A&T, where he dropped out after one year to return to the same streets from which he had escaped and now had been caught selling drugs.  The other had been a good student at his high school, earning honor roll awards and had been a member of his school's ROTC program.  Instead of taking advantage of the path to success that all of those combined had, he instead broke into an occupied home late at night earning him a first degree burglary charge and an almost certain trip to a long prison sentence.

I once heard that the only thing awaiting young high school graduates in rural Southern towns were the three "M's" -- marriage, military or mill.  Now the mills are all closed, the military is becoming more and more selective the worse the economy gets and it seems that nobody gets married these days.  The three M's have been replaced by the three "P's" -- prison, pregnancy and pharmaceuticals.  We are slashing spending on education on both the Federal and State levels.  Class sizes are growing.  Good teachers are being laid off and many who dreamed of going into the profession are finding the school doors closed to them as there are no jobs for them.

When you look at everything that is wrong with our educational system, you can almost understand why selling drugs are burglarizing residences may seem like a reasonable career move for young people.  We cannot continue this trend. 

I don't come here with answers, only questions.  What can we do to provide a brighter future for our youth?  What can we do to get these young people to realize that there is more for them than prison, than crime, than dead ends?  All of our children are worth better than what we are giving them.

I'm tired of seeing kids who once had a future being sent off to prison because they can't see their own worth or their own path to success.  Let's as a community do more to help them before they are standing on the opposite side of the courtroom from me.