Author: mpau@thebeatwithin.org

by Genaro Patterson Hello Future, yes you, every child who resides in the juvenile detention center, you are the future and the world is depending on you to help make it a better place than what it was when you first came. You might not realize it, but your existence could have a drastic change on how we live here on earth. You could be the next miracle doctor, the next senator, the president, the next Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or James Patterson, the best fiction writer in the business. Now is the time to make your change, to take

by John Vasquez Sometimes the stress seems unbearable. My younger brother is homeless, and I haven’t seen him in twenty-two years. My mother, who turns sixty this year, is in poor physical health and she must drive three and a half hours just to visit me. Here I am in prison and I can’t do anything about it. I feel powerless to help the people I love, and it stresses me the hell out. I got locked up at sixteen years old and my family has been waiting twenty-five years for me to come home. I’m doing life in prison

by Henry Inocencio I am thirty-eight years old. I have been incarcerated almost fifteen years now. I have a sentence of LWOP (life without parole) plus twenty- five to life for a first-degree murder with drive-by enhancement. I was raised in the Bay Area on the Oakland side of the water. My family was big. Dad’s side was Mexican, mom’s side was white. In the 1980’s life for a kid was fresh and exciting. There was music and break-dancing in the street. All the older people were fun and cool and I gravitated towards those qualities. Then, as if it