I did not write the following.  A friend who is 15 did.  I am thinking about starting a page dedicated to kids.  But for now thought it might be insightful to see what one teenager learned.

The “Bad Guys”

The human mind is automatically programmed to connect feelings with different people. Looking at your parents or friends may create feelings of love and admiration. Glancing at someone who has hurt you may dig up- emotions of sadness or anger. But how do you feel looking into the eyes of a criminal? Fear? Many people would answer yes to this question, myself included. But that changed when I was put in a position that challenged my views on this question.

A prison visitation room is an overwhelming place. People are everywhere. Their voices pounded inside my ears. I scanned the faces of those seated around me. They looked like normal people—no, they were normal people. There was a brunette seated a few chairs beside me, smiling and laughing despite our location. Behind me was an older lady who must have been weak. She struggled as she lifted the bottle of water to her lips. Somehow, her eyes were a mixture of both sadness and joy. I was in a room full of prisoners; I sat waiting to visit with my own mom.

When I was younger, prisoners scared me. I thought of them as people who were trying to purposefully cause trouble in the world. They were the “bad guys” in the storybooks I read and the monsters I saw on TV. I don’t know why I thought of them in this way, but I did. Years later, my mother whom I love so deeply, found herself in the midst of trouble. Suddenly she was one of the “bad guys” that I was afraid of. But the thing is, I wasn’t afraid of her. How could I be? She was my mom.

This was a turning point for me. Now that it was my mom in this scary place, it forced me to really think about my fear of prisoners. It made me realize that criminals are not the bad people that I had previously thought of them as. They’re just people who have made mistakes. Every person has made a decision that they regret. These decisions do not define you. Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who helps the incarcerated, says in his book Just Mercy that “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” There are many good people in this world that make a mistake that lands them in prison, and they are then forever stamped with the word criminal. After this, some people will no longer be able to see the good in that person. They are blinded by the weight of the crime that has been committed.

Society shines such a negative light on criminals. We have been taught to fear them without even knowing them. I believe that we can never truly judge a person until we understand their story and their point of view. Once this is done, it may become clear as to why a person has carried out certain actions. This doesn’t make it right, but as long as a person is able to rise above what they have done and learn from their mistakes, then the person isn’t such a “bad guy” after all. The fall doesn’t define a person, but how they choose to recover from it does.

However, not everybody recovers from the fall. There most definitely are some that will never be able to learn from what they have done. Crime will become their habit; a guilt-free obsession. I am lucky to be able to say that my mom has learned from what she did and has been able to rise above it and change for the better. She has worked hard to get herself back on her feet and I respect her so much for that.

Many people are very quick to judge a person. We can’t really do anything to stop the judgement, but we can change the way we react to it. My hope for society is that we can stop the negative judgement that we have toward criminals and accept the fact that we are all human; we are bound to make mistakes.

by Nikki age 15