With homicides in Detroit spiking last year -- the city reported 327 in early December, up 12% from a year earlier -- community leaders are trying to figure out how to stop the killing.
It's not just the level of violence that has people talking; it's the surreal senselessness of much of the carnage. A man dies because he bumps into another vehicle while parking. A teen is shot to death for an expensive pair of glasses. A baby dies after a drug dealer opens fire on the wrong house.
No doubt, violence in recent years has become more indiscriminate, and shooters more indifferent to who gets killed in the crossfire. Even many old-school gangsters are shaking their heads.
When the community seeks answers, however, the voices of young people -- killed in disproportionate numbers -- are often lost. Equally disturbing, the people who have done some of the shooting aren't even at the table. If we want to understand the culture of violence, we need to listen to people who have been part of it. Truth be told, they're probably the only people a young man who has already picked up a gun will listen to, anyway.
Which brings me to Ryan Correctional Facility on Detroit's east side. Inside prison walls and razor wire, some of the men who helped build Detroit's reputation are now working to change it.
In 2008, more than a dozen inmates -- members of an NAACP prison program -- started bringing troubled young men, ages 15-18, into Ryan once a month for some real talk on life and crime. It happened again on Dec. 16, when more than 20 Detroit teenagers, mostly from Osborn High School, walked through the metal detectors into the drab prison visiting room, many expecting some kind of lame and discredited Scared Straight show.
But Ryan's Youth Deterrent Program is not Scared Straight. I'm not sure you can scare kids today, anyway. Prisoners don't scream, threaten or get into anyone's face. They speak calmly and respectfully, sitting with young people in a circle on cheap plastic chairs, telling their stories, asking questions and listening.
As corny as it sounds, this is a dialogue driven by love and concern.
A taste of recognition
Early in the three-hour session, most of the young men acknowledged their fathers were not part of their lives. Prisoners then walked around the circle, embraced each young man without a father, and apologized to him for not being able to serve as a mentor.
When a 17-year-old started to cry, after relaying how his mother was shot to death, he was embraced by prisoner Michael Hatifield, 24, who had also lost his mother a year ago.
"I'm not much older than a lot of these guys," Hatifield, who joined a gang in southwest Detroit when he was 9, told me later. "They draw you in by showing you the love you're not getting at home. Once they draw you in, they want you to prove your loyalty. By then, you're so caught up, you're lost. You're in a dark tunnel and you don't know which way is up."
Now Hatifield and his fellow inmates try to give young men a taste of the recognition and love they may get only on the streets.
"Many of you have not heard a man tell you that he loves you,'' said prisoner Michael (2X) Tubbs, 42. "After today, you will know there are men who really do love you. We don't get paid for this. We don't get special privileges. We do it from the heart because we see ourselves in you."
Wearing numbered orange and blue uniforms, most of these prisoners are serving life sentences for murder. Only they can separate the fantasies of thug life from the realities of living doubled-up in a closet-sized steel cell, losing family and friends, submitting to strip searches and enjoying no privacy.
"Be loyal to yourself," inmate Shannon Keys, 39, told them. "Don't believe that thinking for yourself and saying no to your ride-or-die homeboy makes you a punk. When I leave here, I go into another room, strip and spread my cheeks for another man. That's what makes you feel like a punk. That's what makes me feel like a punk. I ain't never going to get used to that."
On his second bit, Keys mentioned a letter from his daughter, asking why he left her again. "I cried like a baby," Keys said. "The decisions you make affect more than you. Your whole family will do time with you.
"I thought I was helping my mom by selling drugs, but I was just making the situation worse. Prison is a dream killer."
Prisoners in Youth Deterrent say they want to help heal a world they have wounded. To get the program started, they had to first overcome the Michigan Department of Corrections' security concerns.
"We owe a huge debt to our community," said inmate Darryl Jamual Woods, 39, of Detroit, who heads the NAACP program at the Ryan prison. "Transforming a young man is a miracle, and it gives us a sense of purpose. When we see a young man succeed, that's the biggest reward we can receive."
Encouraging results
Like most of the visitors, D'Anthony Brown, 15, a sophomore at Denby High School, expected a prison tour and Scared Straight routine. Instead, he received a "powerful message about the value of my life and making better decisions."
Brown told the group about staying in a car while a friend attempted to rob a bank with an AK47 in 2008. He watched his friend get shot to death after leaving the bank. It's the kind of mistake prisoners are working to ensure others don't make.
So far, the results are encouraging. Noah Bruner, founding director of Operation Reach community center in Saginaw, brought 100 teenagers into Ryan from March 2009 to March 2010. (Ryan inmates just contributed $500 to the community center to help pay for two vans.) None got in serious trouble afterward, Bruner said. The community must, however, follow up with mentors and other social and recreation services.
Youth Deterrent has taken referrals from foster care, juvenile halls, public schools and alternative schools in Saginaw, St. Clair Shores and Port Huron, but it has had trouble getting referrals -- and cooperation -- from agencies in Detroit. That's crazy.
Thanks to the work of Cardinal Mbiyu Chui, who helped develop Youth Deterrent; James Booker, executive director of MADE Men; Victor Muhammad, regional director of prison reform ministry for the Nation of Islam; Peggy Goodwin of MADE Men; and the Rev. Spencer Ellis, founder and senior pastor of Citadel of Praise Ministry, the program had plenty of Detroit participants in December. Those efforts must continue if Detroit wants to really do something about violence.
"It's important for young people to know that having a criminal record or going to prison will impact their lives in more ways than they can imagine," Ryan Warden Raymond Booker told me.
It's a message more young people need to hear. No one can deliver it better than the men at Ryan Correctional Facility.
