“Honestly I just ended up in the wrong place and the wrong time,” is how Daquon Beaver describes in arrest at age 14.
The now 22 year-old spent his teenage year behind the brick walls and razor wire of the Bon Air Juvenile Correction Center and other Virginia youth prisons.
He was sentenced for a robbery at just 14, he would not get out until he was 21.
“I went in as a child, I came out at a man. The world doesn’t look at you like oh ok you were young, you’re just thrown into the water,” says Beaver.
Beaver shares his story standing in the midst of an Art 180 exhibit on Marshall Street. The work, done by kids from Richmond’s Juvenile Detention Center, calls on viewers to “step into our cell” and rise for youth.
Jeree Thomas an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center describes to 8News what these youth prisons are like.
“They look very much like adult prisons, they have razor wire, three rounds of razor wire around them and many of the young people who are there are hours and hours away from their family.”
Thomas often visits the children locked up in Virginia’s youth prisons. Some are as young as 11. Most incarcerated are non-violent, charged with grand larceny.
Virginia has one of the lowest thresholds for grand larceny in the county.
Thomas explains, “It’s taking something 200 dollars or more. So have young people who might take an Iphone or a nice pair of tennis shoes and that could land them in a juvenile prison.”
All too often for these children behind bars, it all began with a problem in school.
A recent report from the Center for Public Integrity found Virgnia leads the nation in schools referring kids to cops, creating what some call a school to prison pipeline.
“We are still dealing with youth that are growing and maturing. If you lock them in a cage it has nowhere for their minds to kind of go,” says Beaver.
Beaver, Thomas and the kids who’s stories hang on the walls of the Art 180 exhibit say youth prisons don’t work.
They claim these kids are not educated or rehabilitated but on a path to become a career criminal.
73.5% end up back behind bars within 36 months of getting out of their first incarceration.
It also costs taxpayers big bucks $137,000 per kid per year.
“Let’s tell our policy makers to think about our youth, are we trying to rehabilitate or are we trying to punish them,” asks Beaver?
The Rise for Youth campaign believes family and community based programs work best in rehabilitating kids.
The Virginia Department of Education says they and they Governor are aware of those student referrals to police and they have been working hard to adopt new strategies in dealing with what might be a discipline issues as opposed to a police matter.
They were even awarded a school climate transformation grant to help with that.
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/news/news_releases/2014/10_oct17_gov.shtml
Police departments are also re-thinking their approach.
