**Editor's note: Divine Lipscomb, a student majoring in rehabilitation and human services, was the featured speaker on the second day of the Prison Education and Reentry summit held in the College of Education on March 29-30. What follows is his story, in his own words:
My name is Divine Liscomb. I am a native New Yorker. Born, bred, fed. I'm also a transplant into Pennsylvania. I've been here about 10 years.
I come from a blended family. Dad wasn't around until I was 10, so the man who raised me, he gave me a set of morals and values that I didn't learn to appreciate until he left. When a new man came into my life, he was abusive. He was a drug addict. He did all the things that a man is not supposed to do. Lo and behold, Daddy shows up. He's still no good to no one.
The streets found me. I found drugs. I found alcohol. They became my passion. They became my best friend. I didn't know that those drugs were important because I was buried in traumas – sexual, emotional. You know, those stories that we don't talk about, especially as men. Those things that we bury, because society doesn't give us that room to talk about it. I was an angry kid, quiet, isolated. So naturally, when New York City found gangs, or gangs found New York City, I was a prime candidate. I was being groomed, before I even knew what being groomed was. I was running those dark streets with my stepfather while he was cheating on my Mom 'cause I didn't know no better.
School? What's school? I'm not going to school. I can't go to school. If I go to school, when I come home, will my Mama be alive? C'ause they was just drinking last night.
All of that's irrelevant, because the educational system. They failed. How did this "A" student run around with knives all of a sudden? Why? Why did I just disappear from attending class?
The justice system. They failed. Fourteen years old. That was a heinous robbery. What kid? What normal kid would beat and rob someone like that? Ah, no, we're just gonna lock him up. Those guys from Brownsville, that's what they do. They're just menaces. We're just gonna lock him up, put him away. So that's what they did. They put me in a juvenile detention center.
I was eligible for a program as a youthful offender. They released me, still smoking weed, so I had to go to a drug treatment program, where I FIRST discovered that I had emotions that I needed to deal with, that I had traumas. But I was 15. I didn't know what to do with these emotions. Those long, therapeutic sessions, where you uncover all that grit, right? Then they just abandon you with it. And then they let you back out into society and say, "Oh, just go to school, you're good." No! He's still beating my Mama. I'm gonna kill this man, eventually. I didn't. I learned to forgive him at some point.
But not before the system caught me again. This time for four years. State penitentiary. What did they teach me at the state penitentiary? How to survive? I mean the streets taught me that before I got there.
I started reading. A lot. Especially in the Special Housing Unit. Seventeen, 18, I'm locked away in solitary confinement. The only things I had were my books. I got my GED, released back into population, then they let me go. I'm free! Wow! At 20 years old, I'm back home. Mentally I'm still that same 16-year-old kid though. I don't know how to deal with those emotions. "Well, the nature of your crime doesn't allow us to help you in this program. Maybe you should go check out this other program." "Oh, wait, you've been out too long, so we can't help you in this program."