Courtney - ODYS - Blog 4

Today was our second day at the Circleville correctional facility. We started off our day by meeting with the Superintendent of the facility, a social worker, and the recreational administration programmer. Our group was able to eat lunch with the youth, which happened to be barbeque chicken wings. We spent majority of our afternoon in the gymnasium with one of the units. I was the only girl who participated in multiple games of knock out and five on five basketball. While playing with the youth, I usually forgot that they were in that facility for committing some serious crime. Circleville is where the most violent offenders in the state of Ohio are sent, but it wasn’t evident in everyday activities. After another panel with three of the youth at Circleville, we left the facility and went to a middle school in Columbus. This specific middle school was considered to have one of the lowest graduation rates in Columbus. We assisted the kids age 6-8th grade with their homework in classrooms as well as helped out during their after school programs like fencing. We then traveled to the Franklin Country Juvenile Detention Center for a different experience than we had in the correctional facilities. At the detention center, the boys are only there while their cases are being processed and don’t usually stay for more than a couple weeks or months. At this department, we attended a group session that one of our directors set up for us. There were about ten boys that meet once a week with whom we casually spoke. They asked us questions about Kansas, college, our backgrounds, goals, aspirations, and what we thought about our trip so far. I enjoyed this part of the day the most because I felt like it was the most eye opening for myself. While we all told about our backgrounds and how we got to KU, it was obvious that we all came from a privileged middle-class white background. The environments and families that the boys we were talking with were a good example about how much of a vicious cycle they are in. They are introduced to gangs at such young ages that they grow up not knowing any different. After hearing their home lives and education in school and common knowledge, their crimes seemed to almost make sense. One youth shared that he was convicted for kidnapping a woman, but he only did so because his mom was sick and they didn’t have money to pay for her medical bills. So he thought that if he kidnapped a woman, she could not only serve as a mother figure but also he could get some ransom from the police for her return. At the young age of 14, I thought what would I have done in his situation? He was desperate to save not only his mom, but the rest of his family, too.