If the criminal legal system hasn’t directly impacted you, it has likely impacted someone you know. Someone you love. Or, in a year or two, next week, later today, the ever-expanding net could reach you.
RIPPLE EFFECT: These are the stories of the parents, partners, children, and loved ones of the people caught up in the criminal legal system. Mass criminalization doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and the pain of isolation and dehumanization is felt far beyond prison yards, jail cells, and the crush of a criminal record.
For more stories, see Luxury to Forget and More Than My Mugshot
Everything seems so possible and so impossible when redwoods surround you: their huge trunks and dizzying heights dwarf and shield you and your son from the rest of the world. I have pictures of him hugging the trees, standing on tiptoes and reaching for the tops. I...
At ten, I lost my eldest brother to a long prison sentence. At thirteen, I lost another brother, my best friend, to another long prison sentence. He got six years. Six years to a 13-year-old kid is forever. Then again, that much time without your brother should feel...
This is the data I have collected over the last 22 years: 6: The number of years I spent with my father before he was arrested. 3: How many years by Papi spent in jail going from cell to court and back again. My mother and I spent those 3 years traveling in a similar...
Saturdays were bacon and eggs and barbecues. Sundays were church after breakfast, fries and fish sticks at noon. Weekends with family were defined by food—even if pops wasn’t such a good cook. Everything was fine until it wasn’t. Until the day pops went to work and...
Once I went in, all communication with my kids was cut off. That hurt more than anything else. It’s been years, and I’m still trying to catch up.
Dad and I were wrestling right before he told me. One minute we were laughing and tumbling the living-room. The next, I was stone-still but everything around me was spinning. Lurching. Crumbling. I just remember thinking it must be so hard to go—he must have done...
You have to learn to forgive yourself. My son did fifteen years of federal time and ten years’ probation—for drugs. I was a single mom, struggling to get by. My son sat in jail waiting for trial, his friends—all white and wealthier—posted bail and got better deals....
Do you have any kids? It was always the next question. Yes. A son. It’s true: I have a son. He’s my miracle boy, born when the doctors said it wasn’t possible. He’s in San Diego. I’m not proud of lying. But everyone blamed me—my poor parenting must have been the...