Rashard Johnson, 19, who was profiled in The Herald-Sun by Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan this past weekend, is at the beginning of what he hopes to be his personal road to redemption.
Johnson says that he grew up without a father, surrounded by drugs and crime, and found a sense of family and belonging in a gang. He got into trouble, straightened out some, and then went to jail after trying to straighten out the first time for crimes that included breaking and entering, larceny, and receiving stolen goods. He spent three months in jail in Raleigh.
“Jail time really changed me,” Johnson said. “What hit me is that I had something to care about, and something to lose. Someone loved me.”
That someone is his fiancée, Cheyenne Lucas. The two of them have been active in recent months, participating in a panel discussion called “Gangs and Faith” at the Holton Center on Driver Street; speaking at a meeting of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham; attending the March Against Violence downtown; and last week, participating in Action for Children North Carolina’s Child and Family Advocacy Day in Raleigh.
Johnson said that he wants to set an example, to speak out against gang life, to perform community outreach through a church. He and others rallied to change the current law that automatically treats 16- and 17-year-olds as adults when faced with misdemeanor charges.
Circumstances can seemingly conspire against turning someone’s life around. That’s true of people from all walks of life. Who hasn’t wished or wondered or prayed: If only this or that happens … if I can just catch this one break … I can turn everything around — if only.
Turning things around requires outreach, effort on all sides, and a supportive structure for people who truly want to change. People with felony convictions, such as Johnson, can face an uphill struggle to find steady employment and housing. Our society seems to lurch back and forth when it comes to questions of crime and redemption. Punishment is easier than rehabilitation. But at least in the abstract, most want to see people convicted of crimes redeem themselves. It is to everyone’s benefit that we re-integrate one-time criminals back into society – through education, job training, and the gradual reacquiring of rights.
And then, after people convicted of crimes have proven to themselves and others that they have turned their lives around, when those people want to carry forward the wisdom of what they have learned, we owe it to them to support those efforts.
