Ethan Thrower, author of A Kids Book About Incarceration, talks about what it means to be incarcerated in a prison or detention center and the impact of incarceration on everyone in a community.
Ethan Thrower, author of A Kids Book About Incarceration, talks about what it means to be incarcerated in a prison or detention center and the impact of incarceration on everyone in a community.
A Kids Book About Incarceration (view book)
Full Book Description:
Incarceration is a big word for a HUGE topic. It can bring up difficult questions and feelings—especially when it affects you directly. This book explores incarceration, crimes, and prison, as well as the power of choices. The author’s story highlights the impact of choices and how someone can grow, learn, and change the path they’ve been on.
About the Author:
Ethan Thrower is an alternative school social worker in Portland, Oregon, committed to social justice and restorative practices. He uses his own story of incarceration as a tool to discuss decision-making, resilience, and change.
*If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidsco.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: The Podcast
S3E03, Ethan Talks About Incarceration
[INTRODUCTION]
Matthew: What is incarceration?
Pritam: Incarceration, to me, means putting people in prison and taking away their freedom for any sort of “crime” they have committed or law they have broken.
Ethan: Well, it's a big word. But the way that I've been able to try to make it simpler, both for my kids and when I'm talking with kids, and also in the book, is I define incarceration as- incarceration is when someone is sent to jail or prison after being accused or found guilty of a crime.
Matthew: Welcome to A Kids Book About: The Podcast! I’m Matthew. I’m a teacher, a librarian, and I’m your host.
The voices you heard just a moment ago were from Pritam and Ethan.
Each week we talk about the big things going on in your world with different authors from our A Kids Book About series.
Ethan: Hi, my name is Ethan Thrower. I'm a father, a husband, I have two children, two daughters, unless they tell me different. I'm a school counselor. I'm an African-American. I'm Black. I'm from Portland. And I have been incarcerated.
And I'm the author of A Kids Book About Incarceration.
[TOPIC FOUNDATION]
Matthew: Let’s start with a reflection. What do you picture when you picture a prison? Maybe you’ve stepped into a similar space before, or maybe you have an idea in your mind? What does it look like? What does it feel like to be inside of that space? Do you picture people in that space? What do they look like? How are they dressed? Are some people dressed differently from others? Are some people in different spaces from others? What does control or security or power look like in that space?
Ethan, today’s guest and author of A Kids Book About Incarceration, is going to help us identify and unpack the stigma associated with incarceration and with people who are incarcerated.
Stigma is a negative or harmful mark or association someone has with something negative. Stigma can be informed by ignorance and, therefore, can be overcome or undone through educating ourselves and better understanding where someone is coming from.
Our goal is for you to leave this space with a better understanding of what incarceration can look like, why it can and does happen, and how incarceration can affect many different people in many different ways.
Incarceration happens all over the world. In fact, the number of people incarcerated worldwide might shock you.
Ethan: More than 10 million people in the world, more than 10 million. Yes. And I think it's not something that a lot of people talk about.
But another way that I would describe it, if you're somebody who knows somebody, or has somebody incarcerated, is that in the United States, more than 50%, so more than half of the people in the United States, know or have somebody who's been incarcerated. But again, not a lot of people are talking about it.
So, all over the world, it can happen and is happening. And even in the United States, more than half of the people know or have somebody. And it's just a topic, something that people aren't talking about.
For me, it's just really big. And anytime you have something really big that not a lot of people are talking about, it's super important to talk about it.
Matthew: “Over 10 million people in the world are incarcerated, and almost 50% of people in the United States are close to someone who is incarcerated.”
That’s more people than the entire population of New York City, the most populated city in the United States.
Going back to our reflection and asking about the people you picture when you draw an image of a prison in your mind, are the people who are incarcerated all adults? Because it is important for you to know that our prison and detention systems also include young people.
Ethan: Young people can even be incarcerated. They have places like juvenile corrections where youth go. They have adult facilities or places where adults can be incarcerated. It doesn't make it easy. It doesn't make it even easy to think about, but incarceration can happen to anybody.
It's not something that I think you have to like wake up every day and be worried, like, “Is it going to happen to me today?” But I think it's also important to not forget about it and think that it couldn't happen or that it's not happening.
Matthew: With a better sense of who can be incarcerated, let’s now ask ourselves “For how long?”. The length of time one is incarcerated is sometimes referred to as a sentence, as in, “They were sentenced to twelve years of incarceration.”
Ethan: Incarceration can last differently or the amount of time someone is incarcerated can be different depending on the crime that they're accused of or committed.
For me, I was incarcerated for eight and a half years. So for some of the people listening, that's like your whole life. For other people, it could be a few years. For some people, it can be their whole life.
And incarceration is decided when someone's accused and then found guilty of committing a crime. And depending on what they did is the amount of time they do or what they were accused of doing. For some people it's their whole life. For some people it's a year. And it just depends.
And a judge makes the decision or a jury and a jury is a group of people that come together to make the decision with the court.
Matthew: Let’s take a quick break. And when we return, Ethan shares his incarceration story and what the space and the experience felt and feels like to him.
Ethan: Incarceration affects everyone. For people who are incarcerated, it affects them because they're away from people. I think I remember the hardest thing for me about being incarcerated was not being able to be with my family.
But when I went away and was incarcerated, my school was impacted. My family was impacted. My community was impacted. And I think that incarceration also impacts everyone because everyone has something to offer, and when someone's removed from our community, they no longer can offer what they positively, they would have offered.
And so even if you're somebody who doesn't have someone incarcerated or someone from your home or your community wasn't removed, it can still impact you because the people who are gone aren't being able to contribute to your community.
Matthew: We’ll be back in just a moment.
[BREAK]
Matthew: Welcome back to A Kids Book About: The Podcast. On today’s episode we’re talking about incarceration with A Kids Book About author Ethan Thrower.
[PERSONAL CONNECTION TO TOPIC]
Matthew: Incarceration looks different for different people. The length of their time incarcerated. The quality of the incarceration facility. The person’s ability to cope with the environment inside a prison or correctional facility. And much, much more.
Those experiences are private and personal. So when given the opportunity, I asked Ethan if he felt comfortable sharing some of his experience being incarcerated with us.
Generously, this is what he shared:
Ethan: I think that it was really hard. That's one of the first things that comes up. And it was really lonely. That's another feeling that comes up.
I had a room, but it was really small. I could touch the walls with both sides. And in my book I talk about how there was a sink and a toilet and a room where I could touch both walls and that you can spend up to even most of your day, like 22 hours of a day, sometimes in that room. So that's only two hours out of that room sometimes. And that can get really lonely or sad.
And I shared it earlier, but not being able to be around your family can be really hard. But I think being incarcerated doesn't not let you be a person. I read and I did other things, but for the most part I was worried sometimes. I missed out on a lot of memories and things that were happening at home.
Matthew: Now that you’ve had a chance to hear from a previously incarcerated person about the process and impacts of incarceration, I wonder, listener, how you are feeling in this moment.
I’m grateful for the care and thoughtful approach Ethan is taking in this conversation because I know it is a topic that can be flooded with questions and reactions and feelings, all of which are valid.
Let’s check in. How, listeners, does thinking about incarceration make you feel? About the people who are incarcerated? Or people who share a connection with someone incarcerated?
Pritam: And when I think about incarceration or the people who are incarcerated, it makes me feel extremely sad and disappointed that, in “the land of the free”, we have some of the most… one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.
And it also makes me really scared and concerned that oftentimes these incarcerations are biased and maybe people who have not even committed a crime are incarcerated.
Ethan: I shared about my incarceration with you and my incarceration experience had me frustrated or had me sad or had me lonely and miss my family.
But I also know people who are incarcerated who didn't commit the crime. So that's called wrongful conviction. And I know people who did commit crimes, but are incarcerated for the rest of their life. And thinking about them being in prison makes me sometimes pretty angry and also makes me feel sad or confused.
And so I think both my experience incarcerated and thinking about people who I know who are still incarcerated, it's really hard and it feels really tough sometimes to think about that as a way of how things get handled.
Matthew: From A Kids Book About Incarceration by Ethan Thrower:
“Some of you may be reading this book because you know someone who is incarcerated.
Some of you may want to know more about something that’s happened to you or someone you love.
If that is you, I want you to know that you can love someone and not love the choices they’ve made.
You can also love someone and not want them in your life.”
Ethan talks to all readers and all of you listening when he writes this. But also, he speaks to a very specific someone.
Ethan: I’ll name right off the bat that although this quote can be something that anyone can use, it also was something that I wrote for a lot of young people who may have somebody currently incarcerated or someone was incarcerated because of something that impacted them. And it can be really confusing.
And sometimes when people are incarcerated, it can feel like a lot of power is taken away from you or control is taken away from you. And one of the things that's important for me when I'm talking to people about incarceration is that they know that they get to be in control of their feelings. And that a person is made up of a whole bunch of things.
And so you could love who someone is, and again, not love the choices that they made. And that just because somebody made a choice and you love them or you care about them., it doesn't mean you even agree with their choices.
And I think that when you talk with your family or as if you're an older person listening to this, as you think about what's best for you, it doesn't take away how you feel. And so you can have feelings where you care or miss or angry or all those feelings you get to have, and it also does, like, that's why I use the phrase, “And you may not want them in your life right now.” That may not be best what's for your family, but you still can have the feelings of how you feel.
Matthew: There are many, many different topics explored across the books published at A Kids Co. For Ethan, having the chance to share his voice and his story was deeply meaningful.
Ethan: It was like an explosion of me being able to have a voice and talk about something that's super important to me that I know a lot of people are experiencing, but I wasn't seeing being heard or read.
And in my conversations with Jelani,
Matthew: A Kids Co founder and author of A Kids Book About Racism, Jelani Memory…
Ethan: I just really got a chance to feel like, “Okay, here's a place where I can talk about this and be myself.”
And it also opened the door for me to think about how I can expand these conversations that I'm having with my own children. But I think the biggest thing with A Kids Book About that I really love and care about is that they put kids first. And when I talk with my own children or my students, they need to feel like they're heard if they're going to listen.
[LISTENER QUESTION]
Matthew: Ethan thinks a lot about what it looks like for kids to feel like they are heard. Like when kids like Pritam ask questions like this:
Pritam: And a question I have about incarceration is: what laws can we pass to stop this mass incarceration rate and to make sure that justice can still be served in the right way?
Matthew: You can tell by the way Ethan talks about his experiences, but also by the way he challenges all of us to understand incarceration better and to more fully support those affected by incarceration.
Ethan: I think the first and probably biggest action is asking a lot of questions. I think curiosity gets people to learn and just, whatever you do, always be a learner. And that's whether you know someone incarcerated or you don't know anyone incarcerated, be a learner and ask a lot of questions. That's something that if you do that, change will happen.
The other thing that I would ask of people is to have empathy, to just listen to yourself and think about ways that you feel like things are right, or things need to change.
And for me, I think that I say that particularly to young people, because when we think about rules or we think about what happens, particularly when we talk about incarceration, young people will be the people that get to make decisions.
I believe young people are some of the smartest people in the world. They're geniuses. And I think that this is going to be your world, so I think why not have geniuses that are young people take it on?
And so the advice that I give is if you're someone who knows someone incarcerated or someone who has someone incarcerated, it's okay to have feelings and it's okay to take care of yourself and that you can help by just being your best self. And if you don't know somebody, be a listener, be a learner, ask a lot of questions.
Matthew: As we close our time together today, and as each of us considers the things shared throughout this conversation, Ethan offered up these final thoughts:
Ethan: I think it's important for people to know that my story is just a story and that there was lots and lots of stories of incarceration. And again, I mentioned it before, but even wrongful conviction and wrongful incarceration is a real thing. And it's important for people to know that that's a true story also. And that everybody experiencing or talking about incarceration may have a different view or different opinions on it. It's important to ask questions and be brave. I also would say thank you to young people because I really appreciate young people for being willing to be brave enough to talk about these topics. Sometimes they can be really hard to talk about.
[CLOSING]
Matthew: Thank you to Ethan Thrower, author of A Kids Book About Incarceration, for joining us today. And special thanks to Pritam for lending their voice to this episode.
Pritam: Hello. My name is Pritam. I am 15 years old, and I live in California. My favorite thing is to listen to music, play music. I play flute and saxophone. And just go on hikes around the Bay area.
Matthew: A Kids Book About: The Podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Matthew Winner. Our executive producer is Jelani Memory.
And this show was brought to you by A Kids Co.
Follow the show wherever podcasts are found and check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsco.com.
Join us next time for a conversation about radical dreaming with A Kids Book About author Alvin Schexnider.