Incarcerated Youth

My first encounter with the penitentiary system was Illinois at the Illinois Youth Center for boys in St. Charles, Illinois. I was a newly hired pastor at Willow Creek and prison ministry just happened to be one of the ministries that I had inherited in my new role. The people who served in that ministry had a tendency to be a little bit distant from the mainstream culture at the church – incredibly passionate about their ministry interests and not always wise about the way that they pursued getting their agenda accomplished. As I drove through the gates at the youth facility, I didn’t have much context except that the team leader of the ministry had been serving for over 10 years leading a Bible study for the boys on Friday evenings. The kids who attended the meetings came by choice and were only allowed on the list if they had good behavior and had stayed out of trouble during the proceeding week. Of the two dozen kids who attended, most were kids of color – African American and Latino – only two or three were white. I went to the Bible study and engaged in an evening full of study of the Scriptures, active dialogue, story telling, and conversation. I met one young man who told me that his father was incarcerated, his brother was incarcerated, and his grandfather was incarcerated. He shared with me his fears that once he got out of “juvie” he would be going right back into an environment where he felt he didn’t have any choice, but to continue in the activities that got him put away in the first place. I talked to another young man who told me that he was raised by a single mother who was never around because she was always at work trying to make ends meet. He was the primary caretaker for his younger siblings and felt like he couldn’t take all of the pressure. Another young man shared about how he had to carry a weapon and to protect his interests when he was on the street, because otherwise he would be killed. He said his choice was to ‘kill or be killed.’ Some of the stories that I heard were very difficult for me to relate to, but I couldn’t help and feel that the young men who I spent an evening with that night were just kids! Kids who were trying to ‘make it in the world’ and had made bad decisions. I was struck by how overwhelming the circumstances were to predispose those young men to act out the way that they were acting. Can you imagine being the third generation of people in your family to be incarcerated? Should we expect things to be any different? As I drove out of the gates that evening, I started to weep. I felt like I was leaving a part of my family behind the chain linked fence and security gates. I was overwhelmed by how little support and encouragement those kids were receiving in their home environments. I couldn’t help but think that any one of those young men could have been my brother or my son. My brother has made some poor decisions in his teenage years. However, my family has had the means and resources, both financial and otherwise, to keep him (for the most part) out of the system. How could these young men ever make it without family around them to support them? How could they get good legal representation to fight their case and advocate for them if their families couldn’t even afford to keep food on the table? I am not saying, in any way, that they should not face the consequences for the poor decisions that they have made. Some of those young men have done some really terrible things. Nonetheless, as I encountered bits and pieces of their stories, I left with a firm conviction that God has called the church to stand in the gap where society and people around them have failed. What would it look like for the church to walk alongside young men and women in detention centers and speak words of hope, encouragement, and affirmation while also offering practical tools, support, and programs to help them live differently when they transition back into society? The questions that are raised by these types of encounters are not easy ones to answer, but I do not believe that the church has the luxury of sitting back and not responding. May Christ’s love compel us to ‘get in the game’ and to extend His mercy and grace to the young men and women who are behind bars.