Beverly Parker, Age 30

I lived for 30 years in North Philly. After I graduated Strawberry Mansion High School, I went to help my dad out. My dad had got sick, real bad. And during the years I’ve been helping, my mom wind up getting sick. Then she had passed away. Then I was stressing, going through it. At that time, I was getting high. Now I’m trying to get myself together. I’ll be leaving next month.

In ’94, I was locked up for prostitution. Try to learn the world. Try to be out in the streets. Try to do what I got to do. Doing the wrong things at the wrong time. Trying to be a big girl. So I wanted to try new things. I thought prostitution was the thing, so I tried it. I was on probation for 2 years.

I got locked up, now prostitution again. I got a year probation, but I had stopped going to see my probation officer because I was stressing over my mother’s death. I started getting high. So that’s why I wind up in jail now, for me getting high and not doing what I was supposed to be doing, not reporting. I was addicted very much. Crack. I used to get high every day, all day. It was a real crazy, strange life. A death life, when I got high. I ran into crazy people. I thought that was the shit.

God put me here for a reason, to get my life together, trying to stay on the right path. Now I got a trade. Barricades helps you in different categories like carpentry, making police limit signs that blocks off different events . When I get out of jail, I would like to do construction work. Carpentry, that’s making money. It doesn’t even matter what job I get, as long as I have a job that I can focus on and not going back to the old way. I can still have a new life.

This is my first time doing time. And I dare not come back. It’s hell. It’s some place that you would not want to be. If you ever do get locked up, God brought you here for a reason. God took you from all the miseries you was doing on the streets, saving your life from death. This is the open your eyes and let you know what’s going on. This is the coldest spot to be. You’ve got correction officers that’s younger than you telling you what to do. That’s not good in your life. You got people in here that’s older to be your mother. These young COs telling her what to do. That’s not right. But you have no choice but to do it because you in jail locked up. That’s a punishment. So they teaching us not to come back.

All I know is that I’m ready to go. The 6 months I’ve been here, I’ve learned a whole lot with the people that I live with, people I be around with, people I eat dinner with. Thank god God brought me here, because the death world that I was living in, when I was living on the streets; but now that I’m here I will never…I’m not going to say never, because that’s a bad luck word, I will not ever come back to jail again.