“My life is awesome!” This is not a statement you would expect from someone who is serving a twenty-five-year prison sentence and has been isolated in solitary confinement for the past year and a half. But it is exactly what Crossroads student Buddy wrote in his...
There are pivotal moments in our lives that forever mark the before and the after. For Nicole, that moment was four years ago when she woke up hungover and exhausted and got in her car to drive to work. “I had gone out the night before until very late and was running...
La Floresta is a small juvenile detention facility in Peru. It is smaller than most facilities because it houses only the most violent of young offenders. Most of the boys are between the ages of 13 and 18, and all of them have been convicted of homicide or other...
After cycling in and out of jail for half of his life, Ernesto had finally stopped the cycle—on the wrong side of the bars. “I received my life sentence at the age of twenty-five,” he says. “However, it did not stop me from my gang and criminal mentality.” This...
To some, high school is a place to learn new things and explore new hobbies. To others, it is a place to make friends and socialize. To Jason, it was a place to sell drugs. “By sixteen, I was an accomplished drug dealer, using school for my client base,” he says. “I...
