You’re worthless. You’re stupid. You’ll always be a failure. These were the words Terry heard over and over as he grew up. Longing for love from his father, he instead received emotional and physical abuse. “I became angry and started hating my father, wondering why...
Erik gripped the wheel, his mind racing, and willed himself to continue driving. His destination: the police station. He had decided to turn himself in. “I was so embarrassed and ashamed of myself,” Erik recalls. “The whole drive to the police station, I thought about...
“My life is awesome!” This is not a statement you would expect from someone who is serving a twenty-five-year prison sentence and has been isolated in solitary confinement for the past year and a half. But it is exactly what Crossroads student Buddy wrote in his...
After cycling in and out of jail for half of his life, Ernesto had finally stopped the cycle—on the wrong side of the bars. “I received my life sentence at the age of twenty-five,” he says. “However, it did not stop me from my gang and criminal mentality.” This...
To some, high school is a place to learn new things and explore new hobbies. To others, it is a place to make friends and socialize. To Jason, it was a place to sell drugs. “By sixteen, I was an accomplished drug dealer, using school for my client base,” he says. “I...
