Young offenders
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He’s baby-faced and trapped in an adult body. I look up to speak to him and notice that he doesn’t even have stubble on his chin, just a little peach fuzz and his skin is unblemished.
He speaks with such enthusiasm and smiles a full set of white teeth. His pupils dilate as he tells stories of playing ball at the park , weekend get-togethers with his boys, and all the girlfriends he used to kiss at the movie theatre.
He tells me that once upon a time he had a job deep frying McDonald’s fries. To him that was a lifetime ago. I look at this overgrown kid. I feel badly because he is only a boy. Yet here he is in the big house.
He has a Grade 7 education and when he was 16-years-old he spent a full year in jail. Canada is tough on crime, even on kids. He was introduced to a face-full of teenage knees and knuckles within five minutes of landing on the unit in a youth facility. In a Y.O. joint (young offenders facility) only the strong survive. He shows me the scars. They are nothing compared to those that he has underneath his skin. His experiences as a boy were horrible. Now he is 18 and in Bath Institution.
What were you doing when you were 18?
I was in high school enjoying life. Ah, the good old days. It was all about sports, girls and homework. Life was grand, my dreams were many. I had my first car, a Honda Accord. I would wash it twice a week, and Armour-all the tires. No eating allowed in my car. I would cruise around town, my windows down, and my hand out playing in the wind.
I was free.
Sure, at 18 we are old enough to vote, to pay income taxes, to open our first RRSP’s. Some of us get our first apartment, our first paycheque. Some experience our first love. There are many firsts.
We are absolutely not thinking about a first time in the pen. Because no matter what, even at 18, we are still kids.
But in Canada in the year 2014, for some 18-year-olds, the penitentiary is their life. This is because young offenders at that age are exposed to prison at a time when they are most vulnerable and in need of society’s protection, and guidance and help. New laws do not provide alternatives and definitely do not give any second chances.
After a year in a youth facility, these kids are destroyed. Then what happens? They come to the pen, which used to be a place reserved only for the most hardened men a decade ago. Men with beards.
But not anymore. So on your way to work, when you pass by the castle that is Collins Bay, or Joyceville or Bath, just know that it is now filled with kids.
There has to be something wrong with this. What is happening? Kids fresh off their 18th birthdays should be enjoying their lives and not pushing weights in a prison yard.
They should be going to school or playing ball at the park or kissing girls in theatres.
The average age of a youth charged with a violent crime is 17. Canadian children in big cities like Toronto are experiencing their first bullet at age 15. That sucks.
Most of these kids never had a fair shot to begin with. Most live in high crime/low-income neighbourhoods. Most are first-generation Canadians. Why not get these kids to perform more community services or work with victims of crime? Instead of interventions, instead of mentorships or internships, the government is turning their back on these troubled kids, locking them up, throwing away the key.
I am pretty sure that given the opportunity most of these youths would never make the same mistake again. They could put their lives back together before coming to the pen and they would be left with some hope.
But the country is now manufacturing a population of young and seasoned convicts. I see it all around me, every day. Is filling the pen with baby faces the only answer? Or will society recognize that these youngsters my learn from their mistakes and help to put them on the path to achieving their dreams.
They are the future of this country, after all.
Jose Vivar is an inmate at Bath Institution.
