From Terrorizing Teenager to Tonal Thespian

 Eleven months after his father died, seventeen-year-old Jamie's life was out of control. Easily influenced by his friends, Jamie and a friend went on an unprovoked three-day crime spree. Robbing and carjacking people led the two to rape one of their victims. As a seventeen-year-old juvenile, Jamie was arrested, charged, and sentenced to parolable life in prison, along with a 35-75 year sentence. 

Jamie's traumatic childhood influenced some of his criminal decisions. His father's death, feeling unloved by important people in his life, his socially learned lack of respect for women, and self-seeking attitudes led to his terrible decision to victimize others. Despite recent court decisions recognizing the immaturity of juvenile minds, since Jamie's life sentence is parolable, he does not benefit from those decisions. He will be eligible for parole only after serving the 35-year minimum on his term-of-years sentence, in 2027. 

After constantly finding himself in trouble due to his poor decision-making, even in prison, Jamie knew something had to change. He just didn't know how. When he encountered people, especially prison volunteers, who loved him unconditionally, something clicked for him. He realized that he was looking for love in all the wrong ways. These people helped him to understand how to love himself and to experience love appropriately. Today, he says the greatest lesson he's learned is that nobody has the right to victimize others. He feels deep shame and grief that he took his victims' freedom to feel safe. 

Although he fears he won't be released when he's eligible for parole, Jamie's dreams for the future are almost boring in their normality. Since he came to prison as a kid, he can't wait to get a job working 40-60 hours a week, buy or rent a home, watch football on the weekends, and be the "average, single, middle-aged man." After being the first person in his family to earn a college degree (an associate's), he continues to work towards a bachelor's degree, for which he is very proud. 

Jamie isn't the same person he was at seventeen. Instead of being impulsive, he's now a deep thinker. He knows his choices affect others, and they affect his future, so he thinks carefully about his actions. He wishes he could tell his younger self to be a leader instead of a follower. Although he felt powerless as a young man, he now knows that having resilience through feelings of powerlessness will eventually give way to having more power over his own life and circumstances. 

Two experiences Jamie had in prison were transformational for him. His sister was murdered, which made him face the pain he had caused his own victims. Learning to heal from that loss, and the deaths of his mother, uncle, and cousin, made him stronger. Today, he thinks about his sister and what she wanted for his life. It motivates him to want the best for himself, too. He lives to make his sister proud through the eyes of her two daughters. 

Someone also stole from Jamie, and he later found out it was a close friend (in prison). Being betrayed by someone close to him devastated and enraged him, but it also gave him insight into his victims' expectation of safety. Through this experience, Jamie learned to empathize with his victims and the much greater harm he caused them. The harm he caused is a weight he carries every day. 

Today, Jamie is an avid Shakespeare fan (due to Shakespeare Behind Bars) who also loves to work out, tend the volunteer garden, and sing in a choir. But more importantly, he works hard to be honest and transparent, and to remember the terror he caused so he never causes someone to feel that way again.