Reversing Fate
You will meet, as I did, 16- year-old Israel Rosario, a street kid essentially being raised by his grandmother in a crowded north Philadelphia row house. Israel's father is in prison. His uncle just got out of jail. During our interview, there on the street, with a vacant lot and a car hiked up on cinderblocks in the background, Israel was happily surprised by the arrival of his grandmother's boyfriend, who was also in jail, released just an hour before. As Israel hugged this man, a man he views as his grandfather, the central truth behind Israel's life was right there visible in this embrace. Every close male relative he has is in the criminal justice system. Not one is successful in any traditional way.
Prison, quite literally, runs in Israel's family.
In our research, we learned Israel isn't alone. Academic studies have estimated that 70% of the children with locked-up parents will wind up in jail themselves, mostly because these children are never taught how to behave and survive outside of a life on the criminal edge.
But that's not the focus of our story.
Our story is mostly about how to reverse this pathway to crime. It's about mentoring, specifically a national program called Amachi,which arranges mentors for the children of people behind bars.
So you will meet Israel's mentor, a New Jersey painter named Kenneth Taylor who decided years ago, as a matter of his Christian faith, to spend several hours a week with Israel -- guiding, asking and sometimes flat out begging Israel to stay straight. He's succeeding, but again—so far.
And you will meet Wilson Goode, the former Mayor of Philadelphia, who, no kidding, became an ordained minister after leaving office and later became the founder of Amachi.
Late last summer, I watched as Goode walked into a Philadelphia prison and was greeted by the inmates like a rock star--and I mean cheering-stomping-standing ovation-rock star. This was in the woman's side of the prison and Goode had told me before-hand that female prisoners were more likely than male prisoners to refer their children into mentoring. Why? Among prisoners, he said, women are more likely than men to know their children.
Every woman inmate I spoke to wanted at least one of her children to receive mentoring. Every single one agreed with the notion that crime runs in the family; in fact, several were seeking mentors because the child's father was also in jail.
This, to me is the interesting part. The idea that mentoring might help reduce crime is simplistic and naive, right? But in prison, these women take for granted the notion that their children will follow them to jail without some kind of positive intervention, which is why Goode is such a revered figure here. They weren't just cheering him; they were cheering the chance that through him, their children might find a reversal of fate.
There's something else to know about Wilson Goode. As a boy, when his own father went to jail, Goode himself was mentored by a family that pounded into him the sense he could do anything, beginning with college, then law school. So he sees himself in young men like Israel Rosario. He told me --with gut certainty ---that mentoring is among the most effective crime fighting strategies we'll ever invent, and that targeting the children of inmates is how we begin.