A Voice From Juvenile Hall

A Story by BlankPaige

Corrections Officer Wants To Help A Troubled Kid (short story)

Think about this. You have all done something bad. You have all done something illegal. You have broken a law or committed some kind of crime. You have broken a rule of society that we who work here hold dear and have also struggled ourselves to never break.

Yet we who work here open your doors every morning and invite you to join us as we make our way, all of us together through a new day. You are sometimes proud to act like lazy teenagers. You sometimes decline to join in the programs and even entertainments that we provide. You refuse to go to the school that your community and your society work so hard to make available to you so that you may someday find a better life outside of this environment. You act as if there is a reason to be proud to be a lazy teenager.

What if maybe, just maybe, one day you decide to embrace your family, your community, your life? You may never decide to do this. You may never make the decision to change or take responsibility for your actions. What if you decided to stop acting like a lazy teenager? What if you chose to try to understand and maybe even respect some of the rules and laws and the people that hold them dear?

Will you still be able to find anyone willing or capable of opening doors for you on that day? To invite you to join them in making their way through a new day. Free will and the power to choose to do what you want to do is perhaps the greatest power and pleasure of all. There is still time for you to choose to participate in a better way of life. Your door has been opened one more time. Will you decide to step through it?