I Don’t Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine: Tales of Kids in Adult Lockup

A veteran teacher gives an inside view of the lives of juveniles sentenced as adults

David Chura taught high school in a New
York county penitentiary for ten years-five days a week, seven hours a day. In these pages, he gives a face to a population regularly demonized and reduced to statistics by the mainstream media. Through language marked by both the grit of the street and the expansiveness of poetry, the stories of these young people break down the di-visions we so easily erect between us and them, the keepers and the kept-and call into question the increasing practice of sentencing juveniles as adults.