AN ASSEMBLY LINE FOR CAREER CRIMINALS

Where do teenagers learn the ins and outs of becoming a career criminal? Within the walls of our own criminal justice system. By warehousing juvenile offenders in adult prisons, have we created a recipe for rehabilitation or one for manufacturing hardened criminals?

Juveniles charged with adult crimes include some of the most vulnerable teenagers in the country-more often than not, these minors were victims of abuse and neglect. Yet, the criminal justice system sentences youthful offenders to violent, gang-run adult prisons where they will suffer more abuse. And so, the cycle continues.
Given the unspeakable abuse children suffer every day in this country, it is little wonder that so many of them run away to escape such cruelty. According to the National Runaway Switchboard, in every classroom of 35 kids, 7 will run away before they are 18. In the US there are more than 1 million homeless minors living on the streets.
In order to survive, these street kids are forced to sell drugs, steal, and even prostitute themselves for money. For Raymond E. Lumsden, author of the new non-fiction book, Stronger by the Day, his path to committing acts of theft in order to eat landed him in and out of juvenile courts and facilities, and ultimately into an adult maximum security prison where he witnessed rape, beatings, shank fights, and other acts prison violence.

"Burns, drowning, strangulation, and abandonment are what my siblings and I faced growing up with our alcoholic step-father. Then one day my brother and I stood in the driveway and watched as our parents moved out of state with our little sister. The abuse ended, and our lives on the streets began," says Lumsden who has chronicled his day-to-day fight for survival at the age of 16 living among the adult population in St. Cloud-Minnesota's toughest prison.

According to a Justice Department study:

- The number of youths under 18 confined to adult prisons has more than doubled in the past decade.
- Of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, 44 house juveniles in adult jails and prisons.
- Of the 44 state prison systems that house juveniles, only 18 maintain housing units designated for minors.
- The suicide rate of juveniles in adult prisons is 7.7 times higher than that of minors in juvenile detention centers.

"I attempted suicide 3 times; the last time was just over a year ago. That experience transformed me, and compelled me to write Stronger by the Day, and the screenplay of the same title. I now want to help kids who are growing up like I did. If we don't protect kids from abuse then we are sentencing them to a lifetime of despair," warns Lumsden.

Lumsden believes society must be tough on crime in order to protect itself, but hopes that Stronger by the Day will raise awareness of how juveniles are being swept into the system and forgotten.

The book tells the extraordinary story of the author’s day-to-day survival at St. Cloud, a Minnesota adult maximum-security prison, at the age of 16. Ray also recounts what it was like growing up an abandoned and abused child left to live on the streets with his brother.

The book offers hope, and clearly illustrates the determination of the human spirit to survive despite overwhelming adversity. This is an important book because it explores the issues of child abuse, the incarceration of juvenile offenders with adults, and how it not only impacts the life of a child, but society as a whole. It reflects the struggle and survival of growing up the victim of sexual, physical and emotional abuse as a child.

(Stronger by the Day by Raymond E. Lumsden; soft cover; 5½ x 8½; 296 pages; Lighthouse Publishing)