From Miami to Kilmarnock

On two seperate programmes on BBC this week a sad but all to familiar story was heard from two young men.
In Miami Louis Theorux visited Miami's mega jail. Toward the end of the documentary he interviewed a young man who had just been convicted and sentenced. The young man expressed his relief at his future being settled. Initially Theroux thought that he was relieved to have the matter finished and know that he had some kind of release date. Theroux seemed surprised when the young man advised that his releif was at being safe. Safe from what was going on in his life on the outside, safe from his community.
Monday night it was the turn of a similar young man from Kilmarnock expressing his view that prison was the most positive option available to him. He too expressed that in prison he was safe, cared for and fed. In short he was in an environment he could manage. For many people prison is a frightening option yet for both these young men it offered something desirable.
As someone who has spent most of his working life with young people this is a situation I am all too familiar with. The "outside" is full of pitfalls; drugs, alcohol, struggles with family, struggles with housing, struggles with access to work and training all feature largely for many young people.
What also features largely is a genuine fear of the daily challenges that their freedom has, challenges they often feel unequipped to deal with.
For many young people they are ill equipped for these challenges as they were never given a realistic road map of adult life from those who had the responsibility to do so, parents, carers other family members were unable (and in some cases unwilling) to commit to the development of the skills required to manage their world. Often there were compelling reasons for this, parental drug or alcohol problems, issues with their own physical and mental health and their own restricted access to many of the formal institutuions that develop our capacity to manage diverse and challenging environments. If the primary carers expereienced these difficulties it seemed unlikely that their children would be able to learn the skills that they needed to achieve some form of ability of their own.
Of course societal factors play a key role, the structural inequalites of access cannot be overstated both of the young men featured on the documentries came form equivalent social and economic circumstances. In my own expereience there are not too many rich priveleged young people in places like Cortnon vale, Polmont or Barlinnie.
Interestingly there are exceptions for some young people from these family and economic circumstances. Some manage to avoid prison often through education sometimes through a mixture of determination and luck. What struck me the most was young people who had expereienced such poverty of opportunity were often able to articulate their position very effectively. The term "resilience" is often used to describe this and for me it seems that we as a society should consider ways that we can reward this capacity. I often had discussion with young people where the best I could offer was to say "stick in, keep going, there is always hope", many did and it to their credit much more than anyone else's that they did. For doing so brought no tangible reward. Perhaps we should consider how we develop some recognition structure for those who do stick in, for me they often seemed the most disadvanteaged.
A failure to consider this and any other "new" options certainly wont prevent the stories from Miami and Kilmarnock. For me prison also offers the security and safety to young people that is not availble to them outside. Outside the risk of addictions of other forms of excessive behaviours allow escape for the confusing and unsafe world that young people are exposed to.