I’m a cheerleader, so I must be a
slut. I’m an emo, so I must cut my wrists. I’m rich, so I must be conceited.
I’m Asian, so I must be smart. Stereotypes are everywhere. It is so easy to
assume things about people even knowing so little about them. Someone who is no
stranger to stereotypes is Chris, a current resident at Mid North Correctional
Centre. He knows the label ‘criminal’ intimately.
“If I could take it all back, I would. But that’s not the world we live
in, is it? I made my choices and now I have to live with the consequences. I live with them every single day”
Chris was born to be a star. As a
young teenager he was as handsome as he was talented and could charm even the
Queen out of her panties. He performed in various school musicals, captained
the basketball team, and kept his parents happy with top grades. He was never
low on friends, but always found time for his family, especially his little
brother and sister. At sixteen, Chris even had his own fan club! It was also at
the delicate age of sixteen that things started to go wrong.
Chris’s sister was only eight years
old at the time but recalls the look of disappointment on her mums face when
her and her brothers walked in from school one day. “She sat at the kitchen
table asking how our day was, but you could tell something was off. I racked my
brain trying to think if I’d broken something or forgotten to do something. It
didn’t take long to realise her attention wasn’t on me but on Chris.” Turns out
Chris had stolen over seven hundred dollars cash from his mother’s bank
account. And she had found out.
Majorly busted, the iron bars came
crashing down around Chris. He was essentially grounded. His parents had lost all
trust in him and his brother and sister wouldn’t look at him.
When teenagers find themselves
under lock and key with no foreseeable escape, they will either accept their
fate meekly or they will rebel fiercely. Chris was in the later category.
“I started sneaking out and
hanging with friends that probably weren’t the best sort. … they got me into drinking
and weed.”
This carried on for a year or so. The
family knew he wasn’t himself but didn’t know the specifics. Not until a Sunday
afternoon when Chris’s little sister came home from a sleepover and found the
house empty. Empty except for a high and drunk brother lying on the living room
couch. He lay starring up at the ceiling with an open bottle. It took a while
for him to notice her starring at him. He tried talking to her but she couldn’t
understand his slurred words. He tried walking to her and found himself
stumbling, spilling his drink all over the white carpet. The girl got scared
and ran away to lock herself in her room. He didn’t follow her. Not too long
after, their parents came home. By that time Chris was in his room, but the
girl couldn’t still told of everything that happened. The confrontation was an
explosion. Chris was caught drunk and his parents found worse evidence in his
room. Weed wasn’t the only drug he was doing. The confrontation was explosive.
“I can’t remember too much of it.
Like I know there was a lot of fighting and I think I might’ve put a hole in
the wall, but there’s only one thing I remember perfectively.”
He threatened his mum with a
machete knife. She tried to stop him from leaving the house so he pulled a
knife on her. No bodily harm was done but the knife was enough for her to step
out of the way.
A few weeks later they saw Chris
again; this time on the front page of the state newspaper. The heading read,
“Where Are The Parents?” and a large photo of Chris and two others doing drugs
on the street was directly under it. His face was blurred but his tattoos gave
him away. People assumed that because he was on the street, he didn’t have
another place to go to. That he had a hard even abusive upbringing.
Since then Chris has done it all.
He continued with heavy drug abuse and drinking. His named featured in
newspapers frequently and he was in and out of prison for years with charges
like theft, assault, drug possession, and other petty crime. His parents bailed
him out every time.
“I put them through hell. I would
take everything they’d give me while I was in, and last a few weeks back home
before I was off doing my own thing.”
He has been serving his current
sentence since 2009 for armed robbery and assault against a police officer and
isn’t expected to go for parole until 2013 at the earliest.
I asked Chris what he plans to do after
he gets released. Will he go back to crime?
“I can’t think too much about the
future, you’ve got to take every day as it comes here or you’ll go insane. But
I never want to be back in here. I’ve been clean for a long time and I think
I’ll be okay. …[I’m] getting too old for this and I want my family back.”
His brother and sister have
started building back their relationship with Chris and visit him often with
their parents. He calls with news of new songs he learnt on the guitar and receives
letters of encouragement weekly.
Chris is not your stereotypical
criminal. He is still a very smart, very talented, and very charismatic person. He also has a strong support system on the outside. He has huge potential to change the world for the better. Whether or not he
chooses to is the question. Only time will tell.
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