Why do so many young men end up in prison? Christiane Pelmas confronts this question with an analysis of youth culture and coming of age.
Currently in the United States, more than 2000 of our young people are serving life without the possibility of parole. 45 of them are dying in prisons right here in Colorado. America, “the land of opportunity” whose Pledge of Allegiance states, “with liberty and justice for all” is the only nation on Earth that sentences its children to life, housing them with serial adult offenders in maximum security prisons, often located hundreds of miles from their families.
Standing in the presence of my older son Henry and my husband’s son Linden, both almost 17, both over 6’1”, both fierce and wild, full of fire and muscle, full of deep—sometimes hidden—tenderness and both rightly, biologically, full of rage about whatever injustice crosses their path in the moment, I am brought to tears by the roaring fire within them. They are programmed for this. We need them. Life cannot continue without them. Thousands of years of careful crafting makes the adolescent male one of the most potent creatures on the planet. They do not simply want to to be powerful, to have a purpose within their culture. They must be acknowledged as having a purpose. They must be given a real life/death reason for this journey of growing up, of bones stretching and muscles thickening, of hormones screaming and vision extending exponentially.
If we cannot give them a life/death purpose, if we as their witnesses and mentors, cannot see the obvious place, power and purpose of these wild young ones, they will find such a purpose on their own. If all we can offer them is an expectation to perform well in our beleaguered and hollow educational system which offers them only frustration, they will find other places for their growing rage, for their passion, for their muscle and their will. With the biology of Life itself exploding within them, they do not have the option of sitting this out. They have two choices: they can choose to follow the expectations our culture at large has for them (to suffocate their wildness and a true healthy need to find their place among the adults around them) or they can set a new course, leaving the well-worn paths of the status quo to find acknowledgment from elsewhere in the dangerous waters of a rebellious hero’s journey. Rarely in this solo journey do they find out who they really are. Rarely do they return to their people with the gifts of their courageous journey. Rarely do they receive what they are needing; the acknowledgement of the culture within which they were born, to which they are beholden. Now, with more than 2000 young men facing life in prison, we can also say they are literally dying for acknowledgement and purpose… Some of these wild young men have even killed for it. It is a beautiful biological necessity for our young men to be given the opportunity to be heroes. It is a sure sign of our own pathology that we cannot see what is really happening here.
In a culture in which we proclaim new enemies every day, we cannot pathologize our young men for inventing some of their own, for killing each other in the streets or killing themselves with drugs. We cannot offer them a nobility and heroism in war, the only acceptable place for the largeness of their warrior bodies and souls, and then act horrified when they perceive enemies right in their own homes, backyards and communities.
If we, in our own lostness and laziness, our oversight, our lack of attention to them (because we are too busy struggling to keep ourselves afloat both financially and spiritually) cause them to search for their own purpose, their own place where they can be as big as the vision and chemistry coursing through their veins…then we cannot punish them when they get it very wrong. If we do not guide them, they will make mistakes, as they do. And the consequences will be catastrophic, as they are. If they, in their attempt to find reflections in the world for the magnificence and miracle of what is coursing in their bodies, find only disappointment, lack of integrity and soul-crushing inertia in the adults around them and if, as a result, they become enraged, terrified and act out, the solution is not to make them the enemy. The only enemy here is our own lack of courage and vision as a culture to evolve in obvious and necessary ways. No matter how egregious these young men’s crimes are, no matter how many labels of pathology and criminality we invent to prove their dangerousness, we cannot lock them away and imagine this is anything other than another crime, a sure sign that we are now spinning out of control. I have come to see the adolescent male behavior, the apathy and the compliance (that we often label as success) and the violence and risk-taking (that we incarcerate), to be the voice of Life itself speaking to us. “Please wake up now. Please open your eyes. Please take a step up and out to see the inevitable catastrophe of this invented entropy.”
How can we turn our own sons into sacrificial offerings to this monster of a culture we have created? How do we stand ourselves in the dead of night when the TV is off, the words worn thin in our Bibles and the wine bottles empty? And what on Earth will we offer next, once we have silenced, medicated, castrated and sacrificed every last wild young man?
Originally appeared at www.TheReWilding.com.
—Photo carulmare/Flickr
It is not mere economics, it is also cultural attitude.
We are in year five of the Third Great Depression. Perhaps we have a year or two more for America to reinvent itself. I am not entitled to or expect a lifestyle is due to myself and my children. I work two honorable jobs, and lead at the dinner table by example. It isn’t glamorous. I rarely watch T.V. or want to compare my life to what is sold through that medium.
Other than having good mentors, these days unless you’re wealthy or have some trust/education fund set up for kids…most people growing up now are going to be wage slaves. Competition is everywhere, rich and poor gap widening…education is becoming pointless to a lot. It`s between the haves and have nots. This generation of people growing up are less likely to own their own homes…making it difficult to marry and raise a family properly. Unlike our fathers working at a one or two companies their whole lives, this modern world expects us to change careers a dozen times, and upgrade our… Read more »
It`s hard to be a good role model when the economy keeps shutting you out of legitimate work; prevents you from supporting and keeping your family afloat. I think people should be moving to China or some third world country and live better off with the money you have…and there would be more jobs there.
Additionally, studies show that people are expecting to work well past 65 in order to support themselves. So not only are there a lack of jobs, youths coming out of schools have to compete with this seasoned group of workers who are respected and valued for their skills and loyalty.
This validates so much of what I’ve been losing sleep over…thank you. Boys are not disposable, they are priceless.
I only have a moment so I can’t say all that I want. Why? Because I’m taking 5 of these boys to a overnight homless shelter called PADS to do the morning clean up. It’s 5:30am and I’m leaving to pick them up from the residential facility that I work at to get them. 98% of the kids I work with are court mandated into residential drug treatment. I work with the kind of boys that this article is speaking of. All I can say is take the rose colored glasses off. That’s it for now … more later
“All I can say is take the rose colored glasses off.” Society twists boys into the gruesome visage of its own inadequacy, then ships the broken goods off to you. And you pronounce judgment on … the boys. Tell me Tom, why do todays boys perform so much worse than those of yesterday? Why do American boys perform so much worse than those in other nations? We engineer our boys to fail from birth. Increasingly, the only purpose that society can find for male children is to make an example of them, in a very public and visible ceremony of… Read more »
Tom I agree with you, based solely on the words in this article, “take the rose colored glasses off” was my final throught. I too work with these boys, and society can not take all the blame. Each person is an individual and has their own choices and consequences that follow. Some are victims of their dna and environment. While it’s not fair they were dealt that hand, there are others that become successful contributors in our society. It’s the individual and their choices. Not all come from mental disorders, or abusive environments. I’ve seen silver spoon boys head down… Read more »
I’m not clear how your logic works here Tom. No rose colored glasses on my end. In no way am I painting these boys as harmless or hapless. And certainly, this piece was not designed to be a scientific paper on current Attachment Theory, interpersonal neurobiology and the DNA of criminality, all of which have crucially important implications in the ‘making’ of a boy who commits violent crime. This is not an either/or. I am pointing out that the western developed culture that exists in the USA demands a domestication and castration of the masculine that often leads to behavior… Read more »