Joel Elliott has a uniquely American story 👦🏾

He grew up in Miami’s Overtown Neighborhood, which he affectionately refers to as Swamp City and Rat Town. As a kid, he was known as Lil Smurf; he loved skateboarding—he idolized Tony Hawke—and he loved to go with his mom to catch mullets in Biscayne Bay.

Then, at the age of 13, he was incarcerated. He spent most of the next 35 years in prison. I wish Joel’s story were an outlier, but it’s frighteningly common here in America, where the imprisoned population is greater than 2 million.

The deal is, Joel was not set up to succeed. As he describes it, he grew up in a war zone. He was often hungry; he didn’t have enough to eat. He and his six siblings had to sleep on the floor at night so they didn’t get hit by a stray bullet. They had to walk past dead bodies on their way to school.

We need to think hard about whether that’s the kind of society we want to live in. And—if it’s not—what are we gonna do about it? How do we make it so kids in Swamp City have better options? How do we treat people in our prisons humanely? How do we help them get back on their feet after they’ve paid their debt to society?