Everything that I do is driven by a need to redeem myself,
with an obligation to give back to our society.
It all started when the metal door slammed shut onto the cell.
It sent shivers down my spine.
The chamber was cold, and it smelled of stale air.
You know, there's something about a door slamming shut,
that provides an eerie level
of finality and reflection.
You hear the echo of it in your mind for a long time to come.
And as that door slammed,
I started remembering all that advice that my parents,
and my teachers gave me,
and I ignored it.
And there I was, with plenty of time to reflect,
on all that information,
that I met with disbelief,
laughter, and scorn.
June 24th, 1992, I made mistakes that I couldn't fix.
After a long night of being violent,
I ended it with beating a man, taking his wallet,
then trying to run him over with a car.
That's how, at age 17,
that I was arrested, charged, and convicted,
as an adult.
At an age where most kids are thinking about their high school prom,
or thinking about who they're going to vote for next,
I was facing 11 years.
And while facing those 11 years,
again I had plenty of time to think about all of my decisions.
After being sentenced to prison for 11 years,
it took,
well, you may think that out of all the information that I did receive,
that somehow it would get through to me,
but it didn't.
Then I was finally sentenced,
to prison, where I met some of the most interesting people that you'll ever meet.
(Laughter)
I met a man who ate mice, rats, and bugs.
This man was also serving a life sentence
for trying to kill another man after a drugs deal went bad.
I watched grown men melt into puddles of insanity,
as their minds could no longer take the conditions
of the monotony of being in solitary confinement.
I watched massive amounts of violence,
that included guards beating prisoners,
prisoners being stabbed,
and all this before I turned 18.
And again, you would think that with that information,
and with what I saw, and what I experienced,
that that would get through to me.
But it actually wasn't.
It was actually one of the most unlikeliest people,
in one of the most unlikeliest of places that finally did get through to me.
And it's a man who I'll always be grateful to.
His name was Alamin.
In our conversations, he would tell me that his cell was actually his tomb,
and that's how he would call it.
He would say, "This is my tomb, this is where I'm living at."
He was serving two life sentences,
and when there were disturbances or things going on,
the guards always wanted to make sure they knew where he was,
because they knew he was a man with no reservations about what he might do.
As we served our time together,
he started teaching me a little about the strategy of chess.
Eventually, I started to understand
about how to look at chess in a whole different light.
We were both in solitary confinement,
but through the clutter, through the 30 floors,
through the constant banging and yelling,
I would get down on the floor and yell my chess moves through the vent,
and he would yell his.
Through those chess moves,
he would always make sure that he would take time to execute them
with another lesson.
Some of those are lessons that I started thinking about
in that cell, that dirty,
sometimes toilet-flooded cell.
I started to practice virtues in life.
And some of those virtues that I started practicing
were simple, yet profound.
It all tied into chess,
through those many years of laying on the floor,
playing this game.
One, first lesson;
respect everybody, no matter what their differences.
Looking at the chessboard; respect each individual piece,
and understand that each square they are in is an important square.
Two; protect the weak.
You may look at the pawn,
and it may appear at the beginning of the game as the weakest piece,
but it actually has the most potential, more than any other piece on the board
to actually become the most powerful piece.
Three; be humble.
Play the game as if every move counts.
And that's how you make decisions in life.
Don't take it as a given.
Lastly, practice restraint.
When playing the game, do not chase pieces;
play the game to win.
We used to play 10, 20, 30,
40, games of chess.
And tied in there, I learned the art of losing.
Because I lost a lot of games.
(Laughter)
But through our many conversations, interactions,
and just our ability to communicate,
I realised that my redemption was going to be obtained
through education, perseverance, and helping others out.
I began to read, and I read a lot.
I read everything from Plato to Nietzsche,
to Machiavelli to Carl Von Clausewitz.
I read everything.
You may be surprised, but some of the most accessible books to prisoners
are law books.
They are heavy, they are really sturdy.
Not only do they make good weights,
but I also, through reading those law books,
and understanding them a little bit better,
realised I could fight battles without ever having to pick up a sword.
But I knew that I had to make sure, and I wanted to make sure,
that once I was released, I was to never to return again.
But in order to do that, when I did get out,
I need to make sure I educated myself much further.
Well, thank goodness for fast food restaurants,
because the fast food industry does hire felons.
When I got out, I started working at Taco Bell,
and I also enrolled at the local community college.
And in that local community college,
I started there and eventually,
two, three colleges later, five years later,
I eventually graduated with my Bachelors of Paralegal Studies.
(Applause)
After I graduated, because of my volunteerism,
and because of the fact that I did obtain a much more formal education,
I was granted permission by the state of Iowa
to actually work in a facility with juveniles.
Actually at the same facility where I spent time as a juvenile.
Currently, I supervise over 50 employees that include case-workers,
that include program supervisors, residential counselors,
and nighttime workers.
I also provide crisis intervention to our local police department, hospitals,
and I also work part-time at our local juvenile detention center.
I was a guest there too.
I feel as though I'm making a difference, but that's not really enough for me,
not at all.
What I need to do, and what I knew I needed to do,
in order to affect real change,
and in order to affect any type of policy change on a local, state,
and federal level, I knew that I needed
to further my education even more than that.
I eventually did receive a masters degree in criminal justice,
and I'm very close to receiving a PhD in criminal justice.
(Applause)
What I'm looking at is, "How do we work with kids in the system?"
We have to examine everything that gets them where they're at.
We have to examine the trauma that a lot of these kids have experienced,
We have to then introduce trauma-informed care.
If you take anything from what I've said, I want you to take this;
when you look at these kids, when you look at them,
even the adults, these young adults,
I want you to look at them,
and instead of saying, "What's wrong with you?"
I want you to say, "What happened to you?"
That is the lens that will allow you to sort of look at these people
in a different manner, so then,
as these policies eventually go through the game,
they become one of the most powerful pieces as well.
Currently, as I mentioned, I'm working in this field.
This is something that is important to me,
but if I could change four things
to help facilitate the habilitation of these juveniles,
I want to list those out.
Now, notice I said "habilitation".
It wasn't a mispronunciation.
Habilitation is what I say because
we can't really say "rehabilitation"
because that assumes that you have to be able to go back
to what you were, and a lot of these kids were not there,
so how can you rehabilitate someone who was never habilitated to begin with?
You can't.
The first thing that I believe we need to take a look at and focus on,
when looking at reforming the juvenile justice system
is one; we need to look at the individual.
We've got to understand what got him or her there,
especially if they are at a young age.
One thing I want you guys to realise is that this,
what I'm talking about, and what I'm speaking about,
it isn't just my experience that's making me say this,
but this is what science says.
The adolescent brain doesn't fully form until age 25;
the frontal lobe is still not connected at all.
What you have then is someone telling these kids,
"Don't do this, don't do this!"
Not understanding that in addition to the frontal lobe not being connected,
you also have someone who has also probably
had multiple amounts of trauma,
violence in their life that they witnessed.
That affects the brain on another level,
in the way that it sees, hears, feels things, and perceives situations.
We need to focus on the individual,
and that's the first thing I want us to look at.
Second thing is we need to actually engage the family.
The family need supportive services put in there as well,
because a lot of times,
we work on the child, but we don't work on the family,
so you send the child back to the family,
and we're right back where we started, right?
Is that habilitation? That's rehabilitation there then, right?
That's not what we want; not that type of rehabilitation.
We have to work with them at the same time.
You have to work with the family, you have to work with the child,
and you have to create a child interaction plan,
that will allow them to go back;
The child with the right tools,
and the family with the right pieces of services placed in there
to support them with what's going on in their lives,
and their individual, diverse situations, whatever those might be.
Third; I want us to really,
and this is one of the more personal things for me
is that we cannot allow
juveniles to be with adults
in prison settings.
I have to tell you that when I first went to the Iowa State Penitentiary,
there was 550 prisoners there,
I was the youngest for at least a year.
And I was still 17,
the neighbor to my right when I walked in and I go to the lines of cells,
I go to a cell, my neighbor to the right, his name was "Shank",
he's doing a life sentence.
Neighbor to my left, he's doing a life sentence,
and he just shanked somebody.
So what we've got then is,
this is who is influencing our kids when we put them in there.
Then, my first cellmate was a 50-year old man,
who was in there for second-degree murder.
And I'm 17.
Again, he had the whole thing going on,
from the "three-time loser" on his arms, to, you know, everything going on.
That was my roommate; that was my cellmate.
We cannot continue to house juveniles and adults together.
That's wrong.
(Applause)
Lastly, the other point I want to make, the fourth one,
is that we've talked about the individual, we've talked about the family,
we've talked about, "They've done something; where do we put them at?"
But then they've also got to go back to the community, right?
That's what shapes everybody as they're growing up, is the community.
We need to re-establish community connections.
Those community connections have to involve job opportunities,
they have to involve the ability to complete education,
school, because school was one of my saviors.
And they also have to be able to engage in community service.
Everybody here has a choice, and that choice is simple.
You can either continue to invest
in prisons, and we do, a lot, don't we?
We invest in a lot of prisons.
Or we can invest in our children.
Thank you.
(Applause)