AVP-USA NATIONAL GATHERING, BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
MAY 26-29, 2017
Late Registration ENDS May 15!
PLENARY SPEAKERS: JEAN TROUNSTINE and KARTER REED
“After waiting for six hours, an officer came into the cell and I thought he would tell me that my mother was there and I could leave, and he said, ‘I’m sorry to inform you but the kid you just stabbed has died.”
The youth of two boys ended that day. For Jason Robinson, the knife that was meant to just hurt him caused his fatality. For Karter Kane Reed, the 16 year old boy with the knife, the remaining 20 years would be spent in an adult prison until he successfully sued for parole in 2013.
At the AVP-USA National Gathering, Karter Reed will tell his story. You will also hear from Jean Trounstine, activist, author and professor emerita at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, MA. Jean’s book, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women’s Prison was written from her 10 years of experience teaching college courses and directing plays in a women’s prison in Framingham MA. A copy of that book was in the library at another prison, Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Shirley (MCI Shirley). Karter Reed read it there and contacted Jean to try to help his friend. That catalyst brought Jean and her students to listen to Karter and other men convicted of murder speak about their crimes and growing transformation. What followed was a six year correspondence that continued because the monster that the press had written about in 1993 never appeared in the letters that arrived in the mail. The boy who had been sent to live behind miles of coiled razor wires had immersed himself in rehabilitative programs. Now a 32 year old man, he had thrived in spite of being imprisoned for decades.
Throughout the years of correspondence, questions formed in Jean Trounstine’s inquisitive mind that would shape her future as an author and activist. Why are 250,000 children and teens being tried, sentenced and incarcerated each year in the U.S.? Why are we sending children as young as 12 to adult prisons without adjudication? How can we throw people away? According the Huffington Post, “Research has shown us that most violent crime occurs before age 30, and that youth age out of crime. These youth most often have the qualities that make them exactly what they are—kids. The MacArthur Research Network on Adolescent Development & Juvenile Justice puts it this way, stating they manifest: ‘poor impulse control, lack of foresight, inadequate assessment of risk, and vulnerability to peer pressure.’” So why then, even though brain research has proven that juveniles are not as culpable for their actions as adults, is incarceration continuing at such a high rate? Jean Trounstine will discuss these issues as they are examined in her 6th book, Boy With A Knife: A Story of a Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner’s Fight for Justice. At the same session you will hear why Karter Reed has said: “I owe it to my community. I owe it to society as a whole. I owe it to every single person that my life intersects with on a daily basis to live in a way that benefits them; to live in a way that contributes to the greater good of people.” For both Karter and Jean, Frederick Douglass’s words ring true. “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. www.jeantrounstine.com |
