Why would a young man kill his future over some weed?
Shelby County’s young people should be building futures. Too many are filling prisons.
How does a young person come to think that weed is something to die for?
Malik Bell apparently thought that last weekend. The 18-year-old is accused of fatally shooting Dominick Hull, and wounding three others, when he tried to rob them of some marijuana he pretended he wanted to buy.
If Bell is convicted of first-degree murder, his life will be done, too. Oh, he’ll still be breathing, but probably not outside of prison walls.
But Bell isn’t alone. Some 53% of violent crimes in Shelby County are committed by young adults like him. Instead of being loyal to their own futures, they become loyal customers of the criminal justice system instead.
Which is why, if Shelby County wants to stop spawning youths who can’t see how crime ends their own lives along with the lives they take, the latest Kids Count data should be viewed as a call to action.
The report shows that between 1990 and 2017, Tennessee was one of the top 25 states with the greatest increase in children. It also shows that Shelby County continues to lead in that area; the 232,892 people who are 18 years old and younger make up a quarter of the county’s population.
They also comprise the highest number of youths in the state. But then, there’s this. Many of those youths are, once they reach age 16, joining those 19,000 to 45,000 young adults here who aren’t in school or working. That’s the highest percentage of disconnected youths in the nation. Some of them wind up like Bell. Instead of going to college or getting a job, they go on to become part of those young adults who commit violent crimes because they haven’t learned to view opportunity as something beyond getting away with ripping someone off at gunpoint. That must change. Sarah Lockridge-steckel, co-founder and CEO of The Collective, is working on that. Her organization focuses on reaching disconnected youth through connecting them with jobs in technology and skilled trades, among other things.
She believes many commit crimes because they haven’t figured out how to navigate their way out of environments where criminality is a fixture.
“A lot of young people make mistakes, but if you don’t have access to opportunity, and you’re surrounded by gangs and violence, then the mistakes you make are going to be more extreme,” Lockridgesteckel said.
“Many of the young people don’t know how to navigate to get to the next steps in their lives, so that makes it easier to get caught up in criminal behavior.” The Collective knows about that. For the last three years, it has worked with 600 young adults trying to find their way to a successful life, Lockridge-steckel said. A number of them, she said, have records.
Then again, such navigation is a chore in and of itself, Lockridge-steckel said.
“If they didn’t take a four-year college path while in school, it’s difficult for many of them to figure out what to do,” she said. “They don’t know what trade schools to go to … they don’t know how to navigate those options…” Other obstacles exist too, Lockridge-steckel said. “A young man who went through our program got certified in property maintenance,” she said. “But to get to work, he has to take a two-hour bus ride. “
Another barrier, Lockridge-steckel said, is that many times, young adults have to work multiple jobs while in school — which makes it difficult to stay in school.
Mercifully, that young man’s employer is working with him on getting a car, Lockridge-steckel said. But besides more funding for MATA — which the Shelby County Commission recently approved — what would also help, she said, are investments that allow young people to attend school full-time.
“I think a lot of our young adults want to get to their dreams,” Lockridge-steckel said, “but they don’t have the tools to get there.”
That’s why, as Shelby County continues to lead the state in the number of young people it produces, it shouldn’t lead the state in the numbers of young people who are unproductive and worse, destructive.
Because Bell is only 18. He’s a kid. And if he’s guilty of the murder he’s been accused of, that means his life wasn’t working to the point to keep him from jeopardizing his chances to get to a more fulfilling future.
People who see a future for themselves don’t kill people over weed. They care about their own lives too much to do that.
So, what this latest Kids Count report underscores is that Shelby County and Memphis have a lot of work to do. Not just to save more youths from the ranks of the disconnected, but to save those who those disconnected youths may encounter.
An encounter that some, like Hull, might not survive.
Tonyaa Weathersbee can be reached at tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter: @tonyaajw.