What happens next?
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” Bryan Stevenson
I don’t know about you, but I have done plenty of things I’m not proud of. I’ve hurt people, made stupid mistakes, put myself at risk. Luckily, none of these actions resulted in irreparable harm, and I’ve had the chance for plenty of “do-overs,” opportunities for second and even third chances to get it right. Then again, I grew up as a middle class white girl in a loving and supportive family. What if my life had been different?
In his recent book Just Mercy, attorney Bryan Stevenson recounts stories of individuals, many of them teenaged or younger, who are convicted and incarcerated for crimes committed under the influence of powerful effects of long-standing trauma, mental illness, or cognitive impairment. Some of these individuals are actually innocent of the crime they are charged with, others were involved in the crime but had lesser responsibility, some were fully responsible for the act they were convicted for. The point is made repeatedly that ignoring the underlying factors that lead a young person to commit a crime is ultimately counterproductive when it comes to making the community safer and giving the convicted person the best chance to change their life for the better.
Which brings me to the case of a 16 year old boy in our County who was recently convicted of two brutal crimes — rapes of a 23 year old woman and an 11 year old girl — that he committed when he was 15. Looking at his mug shot in the press, I was compelled to wonder: What happened to this young man to make him capable of such acts of violence? Although there are undoubtedly some sociopaths among us who carry out acts like this despite being raised in loving, nurturing homes, experience in the world of juvenile and criminal justice reveals that, more often than not, people who act abusively toward others have themselves been victims of abuse, or have experienced severe trauma such as family violence, abandonment, mental illness, etc.
A great deal of research demonstrates that childhood traumas have lifelong effects on health, mental health and social functioning. In fact, the groundbreaking Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES) conducted beginning in 1995, found that some of these effects can be transmitted from mother to child through changes in the mother’s genes. In other words, the child of a woman who experienced trauma may experience the effects of her trauma even though he has not experienced the trauma directly.
None of this is an excuse for criminal behavior. The young rapist should be punished and held accountable for his crimes. But whatever his sentence, he will one day be coming out of prison. He will be coming back to the community he violated as surely as he violated his victims. What happens to him during his prison term and beyond can make it more or less likely that he will re-offend, easier or harder for him to become a productive member of society. For his incarceration to have a positive effect on him and for our community, it is essential that the services available to him in prison are based on an understanding of what has happened to him as well as what he did.
What happens next to the young man from Mt. Vernon is important for him, but it is also important to the rest of us. Luckily, young people are at a developmental stage where they are more likely than older folks to be able to take advantage of positive opportunities for change. I hope we don’t lose the opportunity to help him reclaim his life and rejoin our community.
