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Young people see what it's like inside of jail cell
Program shows students how bad choices could affect their lives later on
Journal Photo by Jennifer Rotenizer
Ruiqi Lu (left) and Ellis Ader tour the jail cell set up inside the Choice Bus.
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Published: June 19, 2009
Yesterday, Amir Jackson's day at summer camp included stepping inside a jail cell.
"When I stepped inside, it wasn't really a pleasant feeling," said Amir, a rising sixth-grader at Clemmons Middle School.
It's not an experience he ever wants to repeat, he said. Amir's plan for his life calls for getting a good education and becoming a geologist, something he's wanted to be ever since he "started to look at rocks deeply."
The other young people who squeezed into the 8-foot-by-8-foot cell set up inside the Choice Bus and checked out the metal bed and combination toilet/sink made out of stainless steel expressed similar sentiments.
Amir's twin brother, Ahmad, called it "a cruel space."
"It's not a place you want to be," said Deonte Hanna, a rising seventh-grader at Mineral Springs Middle School. "It's just too crowded."
"There is no way I'm going back in there," said Jeremy Bottoms, a rising seventh-grader at Walkertown Middle School.
The young people were some of the 20 rising sixth- through eighth-graders attending the first week of the Teen Summer Day Camp at the Central YMCA who trooped out to the Y parking lot where the bus was parked.
The bus had come up from Birmingham, Ala., the home of The Mattie C. Stewart Foundation, which created the bus as a way of emphasizing to young people the importance of getting a good education while showing them the possible consequences of such poor choices as dropping out.
Since the foundation put the Choice Bus on the road in October, 50,000 young people in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina have gone through it, said Phil Christian, the foundation's executive director. Visits here and elsewhere in the state, such as the stop in Statesville later in the day, were sponsored by the N.C. Bankers Association, which is also having a camp for young people in Stokes County this week.
Christian said that he doesn't usually travel with the bus but came on this trip because of the connection with the bankers association. Before the students checked out the cell, they sat on the bus' bench seats as Christian talked to them about such things as the correlations between dropping out of high school and ending up in prison and between dropping out and poor earning power.
According to the foundation's statistics, 75 percent of the people in prisons dropped out of high school. That was news to Ellis Ader, a rising seventh-grader at Jefferson Middle School. He plans to become a surgeon, so he still has lots of years of education ahead of him.
The young people oohed when they learned that the difference in lifetime earning power between a dropout and college graduate can be $1 million.
As part of the presentation, the young people watched a four-minute video in which real prisoners talked about their regrets about dropping out and about how much better their lives could have been if they had made better choices.
Christian made the point that life out in the world is filled with choices and amenities but that life in a prison offers few choices and few amenities.
"In prison, there are no cell phones, no video games," he said. "You notice there are no curtains or doors around that toilet."
After the presentation, Sean Halstead, one of the camp counselors, joined the young people inside the cell. Not for long, though. As he beat a quick retreat, he said, "I would not last long."
After the shock of the jail cell, Christian wound up the program on a positive note by talking about the doors that an education opens and by urging the young people to pursue their dreams.
"You've got to do what you love," he said.
Back in the air-conditioned comfort of the Y, the young people talked about the experience.
"I learned that you should make the right choices," said Jaylen Hooker, a rising sixth-grader visiting from Asheville. "Even though it is hard, you should try."
Victoria Washington, a rising seventh-grader at Wiley Middle School, said, "I learned that an education is the key to success."
■ Kim Underwood can be reached at 727-7389 or at kunderwood@wsjournal.com.
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