Aaron Kinzel still struggles to process trauma that follows over a decade after his release from imprisonment as a teenager. Now as an adult, he hosts art therapy workshops to help others overcome the effects of youth incarceration. 

Kinzel is now the director for the Youth Justice Fund, a Michigan-based nonprofit that supports former child offenders as they re-adjust to life beyond bars. He strives to help men like himself work through their mental health issues and reacclimate to society in mental health support groups with formerly incarcerated men and art workshops where participants work with their hands to release repressed internal issues. 

“It’s not just art,” said Kinzel. “But to re-enact some traumatic event. To me, it’s really cathartic.”

Kinzel spent the latter half of his teen years in the juvenile justice system and most of his 20s in adult corrections centers in Michigan and Ohio. During his first three years as a teenage prisoner, he cycled in and out of solitary confinement for aggressive behavior and stayed for as long as 10 months at a time, he said.

He said the demons he envisioned in the system now inspire his creations. His most recent project “re-enacts” a hallucination he remembered from solitary confinement when he went three days without water.

For this project, Kinzel poured clay into a piece of bronze metal, creating the image of a skull layered over his face.  

It’s the exact image he visualized as a kid, he said. 

Creating a tangible version of his mental image using clay and bronze helps him overcome trauma in his past and quite literally puts the power back into his own hands, he said. Kinzel’s most recent project required months to complete.

Many of the individuals Kinzel works with failed to receive the mental health and trauma-informed support they needed while they were imprisoned, he said. 

“When I first came home…I was so screwed up mentally from this experience that I couldn’t connect with my wife. She didn’t understand why I was getting these PTSD responses,” Kinzel said. “Trauma is deeply embedded in your psyche.” 

A 2017 literature review by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention showed that many kids in the system faced trauma or violence before they were incarcerated, and observed that difficulties youth faced while entering the system could exacerbate existing conditions while increasing their likelihood of returning.  

Other former child offenders have joined alongside the Youth Justice Fund in embracing art therapy. Lorenzo Harrell, 44, similarly struggled to speak his feelings as a child in an adult prison. 

Growing up in Detroit, Harrell attempted to steal a Michael Jackson jacket with his brothers.  That day, at the age of 9, Harrell was arrested for the first time.

He spent the remainder of his childhood in and out of arrests and alternative placement until he was placed in an adult correctional facility.  In total, Harrell estimates he spent 26 years incarcerated.

Today, Kinzel places a personal emphasis on helping others break through stereotypical expectations of masculinity, he said.

“Men are supposed to be masculine. We’re supposed to run the shot and run the world, which is really a false narrative,” Kinzel said. “Men can be emotional.”

The idea for the mental health support groups, also known as Wednesday Wellness, originated with Harrell. 

“That’s when you normally see a lot of guys similarly situated to myself, guys who spent decades in prison come out and really talk about what they’re going through,” Harrell said. “All of us are going through things.”

Harrell also participated in the art workshops, he said, presenting his creation as a gift to his mother on her birthday. 

Shaping clay and metal, Kinzel invites fellow formerly imprisoned kids to share a safe space, working with their hands to confront the injustice and trauma of the past through their artistic expression as adults.

“We’re taking something that’s thrown away –– garbage that’s rusting away –– and we repurpose it,” Kinzel said. “It’s kind of a good analogy of our lives.” 

Source photo courtesy of Aaron Kinzel

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Erin Espinosa from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency conducted a webinar in April where she presented her research on pathways of the juvenile justice system.

The webinar, “Pathways Girls Take to and Through the Juvenile Justice System,” highlighted how mental health, trauma and gender all intertwine and affect the paths that juveniles take that may lead to their involvement in the juvenile justice system.

Espinosa discussed the differences in pathways girls take that increase their likelihood of involvement in the justice system versus boys, and said girls are detained for longer periods of time in comparison to boys.

Factors taken into account when analyzing a youth’s length of stay stemmed from ethnicity to mental health markers, she said in the webinar. Girls who have experienced trauma or received mental health treatment are likely to be incarcerated for longer periods of time, up to five days longer than boys, Espinosa said.

“Boys…none of that was a factor [trauma or mental health] — it was crime-related activity,” she said. “We keep boys locked up longer, essentially for criminogenic issues, and girls tend to stay longer for treatment issues.”

Aside from higher levels of traumatic experiences, girls of color additionally face higher rates of sexual abuse that contribute to their funneling within the system, Espinosa said in the webinar.

The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice reported that four out of five girls in the juvenile system reported experiencing some form of sexual abuse in their adolescence. Additionally, 35% of Latina girls under 18 experienced sexual abuse during their childhoods, according to a 2013 study by San Diego State University scholars. 

The U.S. Department of Justice revealed in a report that minority youth make up half of the youth population in placement facilities. Black girls make up 34% of girls in placement facilities across the United States, while Hispanic girls account for 22%.

Victimization endured by girls can translate to an increased likelihood of their involvement within the justice system. Factors of victimization can include such as adultification and hypersexualization.

Girls of color, notably Black girls, are unprotected members of society who are often hypersexualized,” LaTasha DeLoach said.

DeLoach, a senior center coordinator in Iowa City, Iowa, said visibility of a body plays a role in the high levels of sexual abuse of Black women.

Upon further discussion of sexual assault and kidnapping rates, LaTasha noted how Native American kidnapping numbers “are terrible,” as many cases remain unreported, and thus remain unmentioned.

Black and Latina girls, in comparison to their White counterparts, are perceived to be less innocent and more adultlike, as highlighted in a report by The Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. Further in the report, paradigms of Black femininity –– like Mammy and Sapphire –– are mentioned which emulate the idea of Blackness correlating with hypersexuality and aggression.

As mentioned in the report, the Mammy and Sapphire stereotypes originated during the period of slavery in the United States and portray Black women as “hypersexual” and “aggressive.”

The Sapphire paradigm reflects an angry and stubborn Black woman whereas the Mammy paradigm is that of a nurturing and loving mother-figure, as stated in the report.

Black girls are viewed as being adultlike in all stages of their childhood in comparison to White girls, as revealed in a study conducted by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality.

Iliana Pujols is a 22-year-old Latina who has been involved in the juvenile justice system in West Haven, Connecticut, since she was in fifth grade.

Pujols was charged with her first offense when she was 11, and she kept committing a variety of crimes, she said.

“I ended up going into my 18th birthday with about nine assaults,” she said. “I had like larceny, conspiracy, all kinds of things.”

Pujolos was suspended during her sophomore year of high school and soon after attended an alternative school, which she graduated from and said it was a great experience.  

Pujols said from a young age she was expected to be mature and play the role of an adult. She was raised to sometimes “play the role of mom,” and on occasion act as the head of the household. 

Appearance is also a factor of adultification — individuals are perceived as older despite being of a younger age. Pujols said she was often viewed as an aggressor due to her build and mature demeanor.

“The immediate assumption was that I was the aggressor because I was necessarily a little bit bigger than the other girl,” she said. “They thought I was over 18, but I’ve always presented myself as a very mature person, and an older person. So nobody knew that I was like 16 years old at the time.”

Though a Latina –– from Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and Dominican descent –– Pujols said she was often perceived as a younger white woman, which she said sometimes “played in her favor” in juvenile court.

Pujols mentioned she was often put in a lot of “privileged predicaments” during her encounters with the justice system, citing living in West Haven and passing as a white girl as contributing factors to her privilege.

Though Pujols was able to divert some consequences for her actions, her friends were not necessarily as lucky as she was. Recalling an instance where she and her friends got in trouble, Pujols mentioned that she might “get off with a ticket,” whereas her friend “might end up locked up for the night.”

Pujols said it’s important to approach incarcerated girls on a relational level. She recalled when she first began working at the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance and spoke to an incarcerated girl who positively spoke about her experience with a counselor.

“One session in specific stood out to me when I had this conversation with this young lady, and she was like, I like my program because, like, I can talk to my counselor about sex and losing my virginity and having my period and what to use and stuff like that”  Pujols said.

Young girls are likely to go through changes while they are detained, ranging from hormonal changes to transitioning into a young woman.

“One of the things that we’ve heard come up a lot is the need for not only role models and credible messengers,” Pujols said, “but more specifically when it comes to females needing that emotional connection, no matter where you go.”

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Trauma can be triggered or heightened for youth who are detained in juvenile detention facilities, but one Chicago performing arts group is trying to help.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reports that 92.5% of youth detained in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention in Chicago have experienced at least one form of trauma such as witnessing violence or being threatened with a weapon.

Since 1984 Storycatchers Theatre has worked with traumatized youth and teaches them forms of self expression through the performing arts. Youth create and perform their stories as a way to cope with their traumas. 

Catering to youth ranging from 13 through 17 years of age, Storycatchers Theatre assists teens held in Cook County Juvenile Detention Center, the Illinois Youth Center in Chicago –– a level 2 medium security male juvenile facility ––  and the Illinois Youth Center in Warrenville which is a level 1 maximum security co-ed youth facility.   

Kateri Halbleib, a teaching artist for Storycatchers Theatre, compared the theater to be a sort of safe-haven for youth who experienced traumatic experiences ranging from sexual assault to homicide.

Some of the youth involved in the program come from socially disorganized, high-crime neighborhoods. Oftentimes these youthful offenders are victims of gun violence, having been shot themselves or witnessing a homicide.

The theater group assists young incarcerated people release emotion and address fears triggered by trauma through performing arts, she said. Teens work with teaching artists who aid them in creating musicals or plays that revolve around personal experiences.

According to the Storycatchers Theatre website: “By moving beyond their histories, they transform their own lives, communities and people like you who are ready to listen.” 

As a nonprofit youth organization, approximately 75% of funding for Storycatchers Theatre comes from institutional support and individual donations.

Erin Espinosa, a senior researcher from the National Council on Crime & Delinquency, found that  although trauma is commonly experienced among all youth, boys and girls endure different forms.

“Boys tend to witness it like fights and shooting in car crashes,” Espinosa said. “Girls tending to more likely be the victim, it’s more sexualized, it’s more individualized.”

Traumatic experiences can remain engraved in one’s mind, Halbleib said.  On one occasion, a youth was able to vividly recall a situation where his mother was attacked during his adolescent years which served as the foundation of a musical that was performed by members of Storycatchers Theatre.

The teens understood, “this is a place we need to be safe with each other and with each other’s important stories,” Halbleib said. “Retelling the stories through theater is a way to sort of cope.” 

Changing Voices – a branch of Storycatchers Theatre – allows those who have been previously incarcerated to share their experiences with youth and the community. Similar to Storycatchers Theatre, Changing Voices emphasizes the utilization of art to share experiences while also teaching them skills necessary to advance in future careers though is geared toward 17 through 24 year olds.

Black and brown youth are disproportionately incarcerated in comparison to white counterparts, leading to racial disparities embedded within the juvenile justice system. According to a 2018 briefing, per every 100,000 youth incarcerated 4,618 were Black compared to 1,792 White youth.

Hableib said a majority of participants in the Storycatchers program are Black and Latino.

Providing youth affected by the criminal justice system with space where they can safely express themselves, establish meaningful relationships, and earn skills necessary to properly reintegrate into their community is one of the main goals of Storycatchers Theatre, she said. 

“These kids are working against the system, too,” Halbleib said. “We’re providing them with resources, but we can’t take systemic oppression down in one day. But I do think it’s a step towards the right direction.”

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