Last month, the Shelby County commission approved $11 million in funding for the Youth Justice and Education Center. Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris said in a June meeting about transitioning operations of the detention center that the county could spend over $100,000 a year to incarcerate a single child at the detention center.
When I heard about Harris’ plan, my first thought was, “Dang, that’s a lot of money to be spending on the detention center, when the things they’re doing aren’t working.”
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I know this firsthand. In 2021, I was locked up at the detention center for nine months. I was 15 years old. On my 16th birthday, I found out that I would be tried as an adult. Then-District Attorney Amy Weirich told me that I was a “menace to society.”
Today, I am a sophomore at the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff. I am a business and finance major, and the vice president of our investment club. I am a youth leader, poet, and activist who has spoken at many rallies, meetings, and panels about my experiences in juvenile detention. I was even invited to speak at the same meeting where Harris mentioned the eye-popping price tag of jailing kids like me.
To many leaders in Shelby County, I am an example of a successfully rehabilitated youth. But what turned my life around wasn’t incarceration; it was investment. It was people who cared about me and wanted to see me do better: my mentors and fellow members of Project STAND and Youth Justice Action Council. And, I wanted to do better for myself.
I know from my own experience that if you put a young person in a positive environment with people who care about them, they’ll want to turn their life around. If Shelby County spent $11 million investing in youth before they entered the justice system, maybe we wouldn’t need the detention center in the first place.
A lot of Memphis youth grow up in poverty. It’s generational. We grow up in poverty because our families come from poverty. And because of social media, we see how much we don’t have. For myself and a lot of youth I know, if we don’t have money, we don’t eat. We have to figure out how to make our own money to survive.
At the same time, we are never shown how to earn money legally. When I grew up, I didn’t see lawyers or judges in my community. I saw drug dealers and gang members, and they were the ones in our community who had money and who took care of us when we needed things.
Some youth in my community never even have a chance to make money legally, because they can’t get the proper identification that allows them to get a job. They may not have the documents they need to apply for an ID — like a social security card or birth certificate — because of evictions in childhood or family instability. Even if they do have those documents, they might not have transportation to get to the DMV. Without an ID, you can’t get a job or cash a check. For many youth in our community, the only ways they think they can make money are by stealing or dealing.
To make things even worse, a lot of youth come from abusive or neglectful homes. They take these problems to school, and they start getting expelled early on. If a kid is expelled, they’re more likely to end up in jail.
Youth are a product of their environment. If Memphis youth are never given the resources to succeed, then some of them will end up in the juvenile justice system. And when they get out, they will just get released back to the same environment they were in before they got locked up. It’s a repeated cycle.
Our elected officials say they care about youth. But many poor Memphis youth have two options: wind up dead or in jail. I want that to change. I want us to have more resources and better outcomes. To do that, our officials need to invest in us.
Instead of investing in juvenile detention, invest in our community before we go to jail. If I had $11 million, I would open as many community centers as there are gas stations in Memphis. If I had $11 million, I would give cars to youth in my community who have completed driver’s ed. If I had $11 million, I would help make sure parents had access to transportation and stable jobs with good benefits. If I had $11 million, I would invest in programs that work directly with youth who have been in the justice system to help keep them out of trouble. If I had $11 million, I would invest in youth leadership and youth action programs, like the ones that helped me.
Shelby County is willing to spend at least $100,000 a year on kids once we’re in the detention center. That’s a waste of money, because it won’t change the circumstances we live in. But if we took that money and divided that among 10 young people before they go to jail, we could change their lives.
If people invest in our youth, they will want to be better. If only we had people who believed in us as strongly as they believed in putting us in jail.
So, Mr. Mayor, I am asking again, why do we have to go to jail for you to invest in us?
Use the money to invest in us before we get incarcerated. And if you really want to see
a change in our community, give young people who have experienced the Shelby County juvenile justice system a paid role in your office. Let us tell you how we would spend that $11 million.
Trekeria Rainey is a justice-impacted youth and a sophomore at the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff.
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