You Got To Be Kidding Me
Have people truly lost their minds? It seems that people find more and more pleasure in the suffering of others. If it was not for mean spirited jokes, there might not be any comedy at all. I am no different than anyone else, I have certainly laughed at a friend that took a spill (after I helped them up of course), but I wouldn’t try to record it and profit off of a low point in someone else’s life. Unfortunately for people who get locked up in Franklin County, everyone does not feel the same.
There is a weekly publication in my city called Slammer which displays anyone who has been jailed in the county in the previous seven days. For only $1, anyone who has the whim can pick up a copy of Slammer and know who is in jail and for what. There are even stories in it that highlight popular cases and they are often written in a humorous tone. So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to walk in any corner store in the ghetto and see some young brothers laughing about one of their boys having his face on the front page; each of them knowing that it could be either of them in next weeks.
I guess the problem is not the paper but the trend that makes the paper possible. The question is how to get those young brothers to start getting angry about their friend being arrested for whatever reason. What they do not realize is that they are the ones that can turn this entire thing around, my only question is how to get them to realize it.



Not much goes on in Wampum, Pennsylvania. Located about 50 miles outside of Pittsburgh, the Lawrence County borough is home to less than 1,000 people, over 17% of which live below poverty level. In 2009, 11 year old resident Jordan Brown (pictured here, in a photo provided by Lawrence County Prison) was described as a normal “all-American boy”. He enjoyed local leisure activities such as football, riding bikes, reading Harry Potter books and hunting. A year later, Jordan, now 12, faces grown up charges with a possibility of life in prison without parole.
Being a teen is hard enough. Being a teenage mother is infinitely harder—and according to a study by John Santelli of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, there are 

