The Brown & White

The old half of Northampton County Prison appears exactly like you'd expect a jail to look.

When I enter the door, I see the prison's tall fortified walls, barred doors that swing open only on command and slab floors that echo the sound of footsteps through the sun-deprived, dreary halls.

I walk by correction officers making rounds past prisoners' cells, through a couple catcalls and grumbles and down a corridor to a classroom filled with inmates.

No, I'm not an inmate. I go to the prison to tutor two men. One's a Latin King, or so he says, who has trouble reading a word problem, let alone solving the required equation, when doing math sheets.

The other tutee is called Country, for his former home in the Deep South, and although he has an excellent vocabulary, he hates reading and claims it takes him too long. But, he is quick with addition and subtraction. If he can understand what a question is asking, he can do the calculations in his head or with a few quick scratches on a sheet.

I've already come to love these two guys. They despise me for keeping them on task for the hour-and-a-half session - after all, they get tired or moody like we do when forced to concentrate. But they also try to impress me. Country wants to be the first to finish a problem, while the other is the first to ask how I'm doing.

So begins a conversation.

We laugh about our weekends, swap a story from my night at the bar with his on cellblock. We talk about our families, what we hope for our loved ones. We discuss the news - Country picks up a paper everyday - and what Obama should do about health care.

They tell me about dropping out of high school or struggling to find work, supporting siblings or moving away from parents.

I consider these two men friends now.

But with the relationships have come a frustration I wasn't expecting.

I'm angry that bad circumstances determine so much of a person's future. I'm ticked that a boy who didn't receive support from his parents growing up turns to selling drugs to make a living when he drops out of high school, and ends up struggling to get a GED when he lands himself in prison.

Then in a couple years, prison releases that man and society expects things to be different. He still won't have a good support system, won't have a good enough education and won't be able to find good work.

Punishing people for the cards they were dealt rather than helping them move forward seems so blatantly wrong to me.

I can't quite identify who I'm angriest with: Offenders for making bad choices, their families who never showed them good choices or society for taking away their choice. They all impede on any real chance for change. But I'm leaning toward blaming the system.

My frustrations are not unique. Many people struggle to answer the question of who deserves to be in jail or who deserves second chances. They are the inspiring teachers, community leaders and prison counselors who fight the judicial system, the education system and families. They realize that to give everyone a chance, it will become harder for everyone. That helping these people will be a struggle, an uphill battle.

They try to determine whether drug possession necessarily merits incarceration or whether it merely fills up our prisons with young men who will have to struggle twice as hard to find a job when released. They attempt to decide who warrants second chances, or third, recognizing the human mind is too fickle a thing to assume one action will ever determine another.

Despite their efforts, I'm losing faith that everyone will get a fair shot to "make it." I understand that helping a third-grade girl in homework club will get her a better grade in math. But how do you help grown men who were raised in lousy situations and made illegal choices, men that society believes are responsible for themselves?

My two tutees will eventually be released and - even with a GED and a new outlook on life, even though they're my pals - they will likely recidivate, like over 70 percent of those in prison already do. Circumstance just plays too heavy a role in where people end up.

I want Country and the Latin King to succeed, so someone outside of prison has to care. To anyone who sees them upon their release:

If you are a family member, house them. If you are a teacher, tutor them. If you are a business, hire them. And above all those, if you are a friend, encourage them and fight for them because I've realized not many others will.