Brandon Maxwell: Statement for Press Conference

Nobody knows the damage that the drug trade inflicts on our communities better than I. Both my parents were drug addicts. I didn't plan on becoming a drug dealer and I'm not proud my past. But I'm telling my story for the benefit of policymakers in Springfield who are currently considering a repeal of laws that require that teenage drug dealers be prosecuted as adults.

A few years ago, I got into drug dealing out of necessity. When my parents became addicts, they were unable to provide for me and my two younger siblings. The drug trade enabled me to pay all of the household bills and to clothe and feed my kid brother and sister. Despite the good money, drug dealing and gangbanging was a risky way to live. Many of my friends were locked up or killed. I was shot at several times, narrowly escaping death on several occasions. I was tired of the violence and was looking for a way out of the gang life when I got busted for the third time for dealing drugs.

Luckily, when I got caught the third time, I was not charged with selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school. Had I been tried and convicted as an adult, I would never have been able to turn my life around. The juvenile court exposed me to the adult role models who helped me get my life back on track. If not for this intervention, I'd probably still be on the corner, in jail, or dead.

After my third arrest, my juvenile court judge referred me to the Evening Reporting Center, a program for kids that serves as an alternative to detention, offers them counseling, after-school activities, and tutoring, and is based at the Westside Association for Community Action. She warned me that if I ever appeared in her courtroom again, I would be sent to prison.

Getting sent to the Evening Reporting Center was the break that I needed to get my life back on track. I bonded with James Alexander, the Center's Supervisor, a former gang member who had lived the street life I was living. He convinced me that this life was a dead-end street with only two options - a life in prison or a cemetery plot. He inspired me to get back into school and to get my GED. After my eighteen months at the Center were up, I stayed on and have been working there as a counselor now for the past three years.

My work at the Center has convinced me that sending teenage drugs dealers into the adult criminal court system is not going to keep them from getting involved in the drug trade or help them get out of it. Many kids, for example, would have a hard time getting a good job with a felony record, and if anything, a criminal conviction will make it harder for them to get out because it will close off other more positive paths. A lot of the kids that I work with remind me of myself - they are joining gangs to fill a void in their family and personal lives, they are dealing drugs to survive. They can turn their lives around if only given a chance. Sending them to criminal court will deny them that second chance.