More Than Meet’s The Eye

The first things that I noticed about Sam were his eyes. They were hazel in the center with a ring of dark brown and then an outer most ring of green. He was fair skinned, and his smile was wide and bright as he greeted us. He was the inmate chosen to lead the discussion my peers and I (from American University) were about to have with a group of inmates at San Quentin Maximum Security Prison in California.

I remember thinking, that I had never seen eyes so beautiful in my life. As Sam greeted our group, and urged us to come closer and not be afraid of him and his peers, I began to admire the rest of the group. They were mostly middle aged men, most of whom where either black or Hispanic. Each of them was serving a life sentence. We were able to ask them questions about anything from prison life, to their lives before prison.

These men were enthusiastic speakers and critical thinkers. The more we asked questions, the more they opened up to us. And the longer I stood there in the courtyard-like area near the chapel of the prison, the less I felt like I was in prison.

San Quentin is so huge, that unless you’re in a cell block, you kind of feel “free.” Emphasis on the kind of, since there are walls with barbed wire that slipped into my peripheral vision ever time I gazed up at the blue skies and palm trees.  That’s right, Palm Trees. Just outside the prison walls is a small beachside community, right on the bay. Ironic, if you ask me.

But anyways, the inmates each shared what crime had landed them in the biggest and baddest prison in all of California- perhaps in the USA. Most of them told us the exact details of their crimes, including the names of their victims. Most of them had killed someone. Each of them included that they were “rightfully” convicted. They took complete responsibility for their crimes. But what they shared next left me feeling as if there were others to blame.

One of the inmates shared that he had been in and out of the juvenile system several times before committing a crime as an adult. He explained that looking back, he believed that he never got the intervention that would’ve prevented his ultimate crime. What is the point of a juvenile system that simply holds kids for a little while rather than seeking to correct delinquent behavior? Isn’t it the system that had failed this middle aged man that stood before me, sentenced to life in limbo?

As I stood there, wondering how I could have changed this man’s trajectory, Sam began to tell his story. His parents were divorced, and they hated each other. But since his parents didn’t live together, to take out their anger on each other, they took turns abusing him. As a child, he had to survive not only beatings and death threats from both his parents, but attempts to carry out those threats as well. It’s no wonder he left “home” and found comfort in a local gang, where people actually defended and stood up for him. It turns out that there was a story behind his eyes. One of his parents threw bleach in his face, leaving him temporarily blind in a city he didn’t recognize…. It’s safe to say he had trust issues, since the people who were supposed to love him the most, made him the most fearful.

But when he got older, he decided that he was strong enough to defend himself. He was strong enough to take care of himself. He was strong enough to have others be afraid of him… So when he found aout that a fellow gang member was threatening to kill him, instead of cowering in fear as he did when he was younger, he took matter into his own hands. He shot and killed the guy himself. He murdered someone.

But a murder conviction doesn’t start to explain who Sam is as a person. There’s a story behind his eyes. There’s a person behind his smile. There’s an intellectual, who has spent his time in prison making sense of the crime he committed. He’s a father, and a husband. He’s a leader.

But where were we when he was being abused as a child? Where were his teachers and mentors? Where were child protective services? Where were we when Sam was just a scared kid? Who intervened? Who told him that he would be okay, and that there were people who loved and cared for him?

We were no where. We were no where until we sat on a jury and convicted Sam of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. We were nowhere and yet we punish Sam to (almost) the fullest extent of the law, when we had a responsibility to step in.

Sam wants to devote himself to giving back to his community if he gets out one day. He wants to help other children who grew up in tough neighborhoods to make better choices. He wants all of us to just listen to young people when they come to us for help… And most of us are just going on with our daily lives. Society never cared about Sam, or any of the guys I met at San Quentin. But we can begin to, by thinking of these men as more then their convictions and by giving back to our communities with mentorship and resources.