We met with Ramel Small. Ramel is a guard for Rikers and other prisons. Ramel worked with all ages from 16 all the way to senior citizens he also worked with mentally troubled prisoners. Being guard for Rikers prison is hard because there are three officers for 50 prisoners and they all have to make rounds to make sure no one commits suicide or there are no fights that are happening. One time he saved a kid from committing suicide because he talked to him and he told him to “control the controllables”. Ramel tore his labram while breaking up a fight. Rikers has a school program for youth to try to set them up for the future.

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We met with Jarrell Daniels and heard his oppionon on ways to kids getting involved in gang violence and ending up in jail. Justice embasseder is a 12 week seminar that helps young people who have been incarated. Jarrell spoke about his expriences growing up in a gang setting and being incarated at a young age. Daniels changed as a person advocating for kids rights and countuining to be a role model to many kids. He belives that kids in low income communties should be given more recoruces and oppurtunity.

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We met with Jarrell Daniels. Jarrell Daniels works for Center For Justice. Jarrell was a gang member and was indicted. Jarrel and his foundation want to reduce gang violence in low to moderate income neighborhoods. In New York City Brownsville Brooklyn, Bedford Stuyvesant South Bronx and South Jamaica Queens are most affected by gang violence. I learned that there are 40,000 things you can’t do once you get a felony. When youth go into the prison system they start to become sinical of the government. The biggest issue that the Center For Justice Foundation does is to help kids get back on their feet once they get injured.

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Today, I interviewed Jarell Daniels of the Justice Ambassadors. He is a Columbia University graduate who helps the youth who are affected by the government prison system in any way shape or form. Jarrell used to be a member of the BLOODS, a gang originally formed in the 70’s. My social justice group, studying the Juvenile Prison System met with him over video and learned a whole lot more about our topic. He talked a lot about the importance of building a community that you could trust, and how implementing organizations similar to his into normal society will prevent the likelihood of juveniles going back to prison. His fondation in particular runs a course for 18-25 year olds, all of which are underprivileged kids. Jarrell’s goal is to change systems, foster institutional change, and resolve issues in the community.

One of the main things that he told us while we chatted with him was another common theme; the most incarcerated youth groups were all living in marginalized communities and had poor living conditions. We learned that your access to healthy food in your community, your education and even your housing conditions have a big impact on mental health and your likelihood of being imprisoned. Neighborhoods like East Harlem, Mount Vernon in The Bronx, and some areas of Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn are all places that have low incomes in NYC. All of this info Jarrell has given us came from personal experience. As a former gang member and someone deeply affected by the prison system (being arrested and incarcerated for 6 years of his life) he has great insight on this topic. Seeing how it messes with people’s lives and his in particular, he used that as a driving force, an inspiration even, to turn his life around and start the Justice Ambassadors. Now he is a scholar who creates opportunities for those who were in similar positions as him when he was younger. That right there, is how you create change. The last piece of advice Jarrell gave us was to sign up for different programs, and initiatives to try and keep the youth out of the government prison systems. He told us to research the Next Generation Politics, a group focused on spreading awareness about this issue and ways to help through activism and donations.

Thanks to our meeting with Jarrell Daniels, I learned about different ways to help juveniles around the city and got a little bit more information on why and how the prison systems impact our communities.

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We met with Jordyn Wilson from the sentencing Project. The Sentencing Project tries to help kids that are getting tried as adults to be tried as juveniles. I learned that putting children in the adult system messes up their mental health . I also learned putting children in adult prisons doesn’t help at all. Race also goes into it as Black kids are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than white kids. In Maryland juveniles can be charged for adult crimes in 30 plus ways.

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We met Jordyn Wilson from the Sentencing Project

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