ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I was locked up for the first time when I was twelve. It was in 1959, and from there, I went from being a juvenile offender to an adult criminal and convict. I escaped from an old-time type road gang in Tennessee, which came close to ending my life, at 18. Fortunately, I came to my senses when I was about 30, after spending 13 years in and out of prison. I am 60 now. I eventually wrote a book about these crimes, the jails I was in, and how I finally changed. The book, Mama Jewells, was named after my beloved grandmother and was published in 1988.

My book was despised by the conservative religious community because of the bad language and graphic talk about sex in prison. Even though I gave God credit for my life change and explained my feelings about what a mother's and grandmother's love and prayers can do, the southern states like Georgia and Alabama would not even allow my book in the library.

Though these libraries refused the book, my big break came when the New York State Board of Education placed Mama Jewells on its approved reading list. New York was happy to see screwed up kids show an interest in reading anything, and knew these kids had all heard swear words before. The Board of Education also understood that, though some of these kids were familiar with what went on in jails, it wouldn’t hurt those who weren’t to be told, graphically, what could happen to them if they chose to commit crimes.

Times have changed a lot since 1959. Gangs are unfortunately a growing problem which is here to stay. They're often organized like the mafia with the goal to earn big profits by using their members to deal drugs and commit other crimes. I believe that gangs are one of the biggest problems in the United States today, right up there with the threat of terrorism or the potential nuclear destruction of us all. Of all I have seen of evil in my life, nothing compares, in terms of the danger to our youth and society as a whole, to the street gang. The short stories on this blog are all true, and they are mild in comparison to today's world of crime. We need to wake up and do something about this growing problem many of our young people are forced to deal with in their schools and in their own neighborhoods. Gangs have reached into the smallest of towns across the U.S.

If we can’t turn this frightening trend around, and give these kids something to aspire to other than wearing gang colors and finding their sense of belonging through membership in gangs, our society will inevitably implode. No one will need to use foreign sources of terror to destroy our country. We will have accomplished this ourselves, through our own youth, who should instead represent the embodiment of our collective hopes for our future.