Decriminalizing Youths: Meet Their Hurt with Healing
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
— Frederick Douglass
My heart is breaking on this beautiful, late spring day. The 16th anniversary of my crime is approaching. I was barely 18 years old at the time, riddled with traumas I did not yet know how to process or even articulate, and I poured all of that out into the world, causing more harm than I could ever hope to repair.
More than the very real and present pain of remembering the harm I caused, what is bringing tears to my eyes as I write this is the soul-deep feeling of helplessness as I see the next generation of young people being groomed for prison. I hear the pain in their hearts that they haven’t yet learned the words or ways to constructively articulate. And I know, from personal experience, the terrifying ways that unprocessed trauma can turn into interpersonal violence.
I also know that putting children, teenagers, and emerging adults in prison is not a helpful answer. Even as hopeful initiatives are underway to create a continuum of care for criminalized youth in Maine, there remains a gnawing question: What do we do with them now?
The most recent effort to find a helpful answer has begun in Rockland, with the potential for statewide implementation over time. How can we keep troubled youth from causing further and escalating harms without filling Long Creek back up? We have no choice, right? Wrong.
These questions eat at me constantly, because I know the answer is simple, but its implementation is hard and complex.
The answer: find out what unmet needs and underlying pain and trauma are driving the young person’s harmful actions, then support them in developing the ability to meet what needs they can, step in to meet the needs they can’t address on their own, and utilize Dr. Shawn Ginwright’s healing-centered approach to walk with youth on their healing journeys. Help them move beyond merely acknowledging their trauma and guide them into transforming it into fuel to become agents of positive change.
Rather than perpetuating the cycle of harm and punishment, criminalizing young people who themselves have been harmed, it is time for us to listen to what they don’t yet know how to say. Those of us who have lived through the foster system know how dreadfully suffocating and isolating it is to live among families and communities that can’t — or won’t — see us in the fullness of who we are, to live among people who have not lived through what we have, and so don’t know how to show up for us.
Maine can do things differently. Instead of repeating what we know does not work, we can create a new pathway forward. We can hear and meet the needs of today’s youths so they do not become the next wave of incarcerated adults.
From what I can see so far, this initiative in Rockland has promise. Although the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention grant was awarded to the City of Rockland and its police department, restorative and transformative justice practitioners are involved in shaping the work, centering the voices of the young people while envisioning what a continuum of care must look like if it’s going to truly be responsive to the unmet needs driving the harmful behavior.
Bringing about societal change requires more than grant-funded initiatives. It requires business leaders, school teachers, guidance counselors, formal and informal mentors, and everyday community members to step up, step in, and empower themselves to realize that they — you — can make a difference. Instead of seeing “delinquents,” recognize hurt young people who haven’t yet learned how not to hurt others.
Steps you can take right now:
- Read “The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement,” by Dr. Shawn Ginwright.
- Think and be honest with yourself about your capacity to reach beyond your immediate family to help others.
- Realize that people who have nothing to give materially still have the ability to give of themselves (time, energy, care, compassion, understanding).
- Reach out to your local Boys & Girls Club, restorative justice organization, or other youth-serving organization to see if they need volunteers with your lived experience.
Hurt people hurt people, and healing people have the unique ability to help others heal. Individually and collectively, we can choose to see the harmful actions of young people as what they very often are: the outward manifestation of inner pain. We can then answer that pain with support for healing.
My ongoing imprisonment is preventing me from showing up to provide this care directly. I need you to step in where I can’t.
Leo Hylton is a PhD student at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, currently incarcerated at Maine State Prison. His education and work are focused on Social Justice Advocacy and Activism, with a vision toward an abolitionist future. You can reach him at: Leo Hylton #70199, 807 Cushing Rd., Warren, ME 04864, or leoshininglightonhumanity@gmail.com.
