When Your 18th Birthday Gift Is a Transfer to Adult Prison
This article was published in collaboration with Vice.
B orn and raised in Washington, D.C., I spent part of my childhood in foster care, as my mother struggled with drug addiction. Without support or guidance, I turned to the streets for belonging; I looked up to a lot of the older guys and wanted to fit in.
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When I was 16, a group of us took part in an armed carjacking, and I was tried and sentenced as an adult and sentenced to 12 years in prison. But because the District has no prisons of its own, they could send me to any federal penitentiary in the United States.
I was transferred to a Bureau of Prisons-contracted juvenile facility in
