With the generous support of a grant from Literacy for Incarcerated Teens (LIT)[1] Prison Writes workshops are being brought to youths living in group homes in Brooklyn under Administration of Children’s Services Close to Home program. “Launched in 2012, Close to Home allows youth who are deemed Juvenile Delinquents by the Family Court to be placed in residential programs closer to their families and communities. Under Close to Home, young people receive therapeutic services

The challenge was this: how to get a group of fourteen to eighteen-year old boys, all of whom had been through the court system in New York City and had now landed at Andrew Glover, a program for at-risk juvenile offenders, to write something. I knew it wouldn’t be easy because anything that smacks of schooling is problematic for these kids, many of whom have a history of academic failure, not because they’re not smart but because in many cases the system has failed them. I w