Most of the news that comes out about prisons is bad. They are costly, they are dangerous, and in New Hampshire about half the people who leave them end up coming back. But in the shadow of those reports, are stories of success. People who have passed through the corrections system and are able to make their way in the world outside.
Today, we hear the first in a series of reports about two men and the friendship behind bars that fostered the best in both of them. NHPR's Dan Gorenstein begins with the story of one of those men.
James Gilbert is a successful computer salesman for a small company in the Upper Valley.
When clients meet him they see a tall, muscular guy in his late 20's, affable, and bright.
But he has a problem.
MJ T.1
1:26 They see me as another of those corporate guys.....A lot of them don't know I have a past, I lived in group homes, or I went to prison...I went to school in YDC. You can't tell somebody you went to work with, yeah, I went to school in a juvenile detention center. How does that work?
James left prison five years ago.
But he shakes his head when he looks at how much he has changed.
From a volatile, sometimes dangerous kid to a working professional, who lives on his own and has even become a volunteer firefighter/EMT...
...This is a story of his transformation.
It's about prison. It's about James growing up. But maybe most of all it's a story about a friendship flourishing in an unlikely place.
When he was a teenager James terrorized his family.
He scared his parents so much, they locked their bedroom door at night.
As young as 11, his parents sent him to one of his many stays at a residential home.
TERRORIZE
J.3 T.22
1:07 95% of the kids in those institutions were there b/c they had no where else to go. They didn't have family that would take them in, or they committed crimes and they had to be there. I was there b/c my family wanted me there. That was painful. That hurt. To know your own family didn't want you home and that's why you are in these places with people who can't get out are. And all your parents have to do is tell them they want you to go home.
GIL. T.4
:23 ... when he worked his way out of one of the residentials...he came home and it was obvious he didn't want to work towards staying in the family unit...
That's James' mother Rose Gilbert.
James was 15.
...He was extremely verbally abusive. You couldn't set any limits with him...and we became extremely scared of him. sometimes I think, my husband and I both, there was that fear of is this kid going to do something drastic like pull a gun on us, or a knife. I think it was just the fear of the fact that he had become so oppositional defiant, there was no way we could control him in our home anymore.
The final confrontation between the boy and his parents was the ordinary argument over music.
Rose and Ed and had banned harsh rap in their home.
And inevitably, one day Ed heard the forbidden sounds thudding from James's room.
GIL. T.5
:05 we knew there were things going on in his bedroom. I was looking for those cds, but when I looked down in the cold air return of the heating system, which is right here...I took the cover off and he had taken some beakers out of the science class at the hs and he was growing some marijuana inside of here. And that's when I confronted him with it...
GIL. T.4
10:07 he was so mad that we found all that, that we said we have to report this...you are not going to have this in our home, and it's illegal and you are not allowed to do that.
GIL. T.4
8:58...and at that point there was such violence, I could tell, my husband was getting scared at that point, b/c he said if J starts hitting me, I want you to call the police.
J.3 T.20
8:42 I went to leave. He was in the doorway. I asked him to leave and I told him to move. he wouldn't move. I asked him again to move. he wouldn't move. I told him, if you don't get out of the way, I'm going to hit you. And he didn't move. so I hit him..where did you hit him? In his face. And his head fell back. They had taken the door off its hinges. B/c they didn't feel like I needed privacy anymore, so they could always see in my room. He hit his head on one of the hinges of the door frame, and cut the back of his head.
GIL. T.4
10:07 ... they got into a fist fight and a struggle and they were banging around in there and I called the police and the police came and got them. And he was so violent and so mad...
GIL. T.7
5:08 he said, if I had had a gun, he said to the police...I would have shot the SOB is what he said. He didn't have the thing planned he was going to do it. But he said in the situation in the house at the time, if he had had a gun he would have shot me. (do you believe that would have happened) ummm....I do. I do. At that time of his life? I do. b/c he never thought of consequences of his actions.
J.3 T.22
1:40 I hated them. I hated my parents. I couldn't stand being around them. I didn't respect a thing they said. I didn't want to leave the group home...I did not want to go back to the House.
James got his wish.
The 15 year old was sent to the juvenile detention center for the next three years.
After he got too old for YDC, he drifted from apartment to apartment, drank hard and used drugs often.... ultimately selling cocaine to an undercover police officer.
He was sentenced for up to four years and shipped to the Concord Men's Prison.
DOOR
J.1 T.15
:14 when you first walk in there is this huge steel door, you get out of the sheriff's car, you are shackled, you walk up the stairs into this big brick building you've never been to before. And you get in, the door slams and it just echoes, doom, doom, doom. That's pretty much where my mind was. There was no plan. No understanding of what was going on around me, it was just 'oh, shit. What have I got myself into?'
James was given one chance to avoid serving his full sentence.
He could get out before his 21st birthday if he could complete the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in Laconia.
