Sheila missed the action of the drug trade. She was having lifestyle withdrawal. She still went to parties and was still dating an up-and-comer in one of the neighborhood gangs, but she worried that her peers didn’t look at her the same way anymore. Her boyfriend said that her holding down a day job reflected poorly on him. It made him look like he wasn’t a good earner, like he couldn’t provide for his girl.

You want to tell young people that the things they care about now won’t matter in a couple of years. They’ll make new friends, meet new people, see new places, gain and lose a half dozen jobs before they’re settled, but this insight, like so many others I’d hoped to bring to the job, was tied to my own experience, to class if not race, and hopelessly inapplicable. Most people on probation and parole in the Seventh Ward didn’t go away to college. They rarely left the city limits for any reason. When you don’t go far from home, the local ecology is the only one you care about.

The Second Chance Club: Hardship and Hope After Prison
Jason Hardy