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September, 2007
Life changed for 7-year-old Denise Carr when she pulled up in front of her family's Chicago home in June 2002 and saw her mother being escorted into a police car.
It had been a good day, she remembers. An aunt had taken Denise and her younger siblings-two sisters and a brother-to the beach.
"All of a sudden, I just saw [the police] there. I wanted to get out, but we had to stay in the...
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September, 2007
This is a story about "Belushi" and "Little Belushi"-Manuel Feliciano and his son Jovanny.
This story takes place inside the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, just like the film "The Blues Brothers." But unlike the film, this story runs longer on tragedy than comedy. It is about the power of living up to a family name and the bonds that push fathers and sons in and out of prison...
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September, 2007
In 2004, as he was leaving prison for the fifth time, Andrew "B.J." Atchison had to make a choice, what he called a "butt-naked," honest decision. He could stay within the confines of penitentiary walls or make a change to become part of society.
He'd made the promise to change before, but Atchison vowed that this time would be different. This time he would surrender himself to a different...
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September, 2007
On a rainy winter morning, Nicole sat across the table from her father in the living room of his Englewood apartment. Sitting upright in a chair with her legs crossed at the ankles as if she had attended charm school, Nicole positioned herself parallel to her father and avoided eye contact. It has been nearly three years since they first began rebuilding their relationship.
She pulled out a...
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September, 2007
Brittany Brown didn't want to wake up on the morning of May 28, 1999. Sharee Williams, her mother, had told her many times that she was going to prison, but Brittany says now that she was too young to understand. Eventually, Williams roused the 10-year-old, walked her to the Joseph Warren School in the Southeast Side's Calumet Heights neighborhood and told her that she would not be back to pick...
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September, 2007
The 6-year-old boy scrubbed the towel back and forth against the kitchen floor to remove the dried blood from the grout between several feet of white tiles. It was two days after Easter. And earlier that day, the boy, Brian, was at home with several family members. He lived in the basement with his mother, Charmain Cook, and his two sisters, Diana and Felicia. Charmain Cook and her estranged...
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September, 2007
Denise Bailey-Gordon moved off of the wooden bleachers and past a volleyball net, her face exploding with joy as she approached her family.
Her blue eye shadow matching her shirt and pants, her hair prepared in an artful curl, Bailey-Gordon was enveloped by the 10 relatives fresh off a three-hour bus ride to visit her.
The family moved upstairs, where they settled around a large...
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September, 2007
Across the nation, children of the incarcerated, as much as their parents, bear the consequences of misdeeds or mistakes. They are disproportionately poor, African American and Latino and, for many, their lives are shaped by the same cycle of poverty, violence and recidivism that ensnares their parents.
Community Renewal Society, publisher of The Chicago Reporter, hopes to stop this cycle...
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September, 2007
By Matthew Blake
The Rev. James Coleman estimates that he helps 1,600 male ex-offenders re-enter society each year at the West Side Health Authority, a nonprofit based in the West Side's Austin neighborhood.
Coleman's mentorship and support program reaches out to clients while in prison and then channels them into a community support network upon their release. Its services include...
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