a story about July 12th, 2017
6 years ago today, I got a text from my mom. It read: “The cops are here, I think I’m going to jail.” That was the last text I received from her before text messages started flooding my phone with “oh Kar I’m so sorry.”. The amount of confusion and shock that went through my body was unlike anything I’d experienced. I was across the country on a road trip with my aunt and uncle when she got arrested. I vividly remember riding in the car that day, tears streaming down my face. I wanted to be subtle because no one else knew. How was I supposed to tell them my mom just got arrested and I don’t know why or what I’m supposed to do? Next thing I know, my brother is encouraging me to delete social media right now. Facebook and Google were filled with articles and comments about my mom, written by people who didn’t know her. They didn’t know she had kids who could read the things they were writing.
If you were to ask 16 year old Karson how she felt, she would say crushed. Broken. Betrayed. Confused. She had known her mom had some struggles but never imagined she would be imprisoned.
One month went by before I got to see my mom again. Life got busy, and since I was only 16, I had to find an adult to take me to visitation. It was the first time I saw her in county jail. I still remember that moment like it was yesterday. I walked through the door and saw my mom through a glass window in orange clothes, battling back tears. She had chains around her feet. We just sat there together and cried. Neither of us knew what to do. Around this time is when I began seeking out Jesus and taking comfort in Him. As I started falling more in love with Jesus, I had to share Him with my mom too. We would talk about Jesus as often as we could, clinging to the hope that we would be reunited and would see the purpose of all this messiness and confusion. I don’t know if she fully believed it yet, but we clung to it even still.
Time went on, and I continued making frequent visits to see her. That’s when she began telling me more and more about the details leading up to her arrest. This is when I started finding out about the town meeting held the night before her arrest, about the two women who broke into her house and beat her up, about the cop on duty who would come over to her house (the same cop who arrested her), about the pregnant girlfriend. It all just disgusted me and broke my heart. None of this is to say my mom isn’t guilty of what she may have done, but it’s to point out the injustices surrounding her arrest and sentencing.
Trial day finally comes (a year later), and I find myself in the courtroom with my grandparents anxiously awaiting what is about to happen. Mom walks in, chains on her feet, and it hurts me more each time I see her like that. The judge walks in, and without hesitation, he says, “15 years.” I eventually learned that this judge had an end goal in all of the people he sentenced, and it was to hit one million years of sentencing before he retires. In other words, he was sentencing every person to the maximum number of years to hit a goal of his, without considering the person or why they were there. We went upstairs to meet my mom’s attorney--a pro bono attorney because Mom didn’t have much financial support during that time--and he tells us that the other reason she got the maximum sentence is because the judge wanted to make an example out of her student/teacher case.
Once again, I was left broken and confused. I just missed my mom and didn’t know that we would all have to pay for this crime too.
In the first year of her imprisonment, she is placed on suicide watch multiple times. She gets sent to solitary confinement multiple times--52 days of solitude at one point. She is denied health care and treatment for a knee injury and is still made to limp up four flights of stairs. In county jail, she is assaulted by one of the sheriffs. She is given a top bunk and ends up fracturing her foot and being forced to work many months of physical labor without medical attention. Her health has declined so much since being incarcerated that many of the things she could physically do prior, she can no longer do. I got to visit her in May, and during that visit, she could barely get in and out of her chair or even go for a walk because of her knee. Six years, and still nothing has been done. This only scratches the surface of the lack of care they give to those who are incarcerated.
Before I had someone so close to me be incarcerated, I was clueless about all of it. I was insensitive. I didn’t really care because, full transparency, it didn’t really affect me. And that perspective now, looking back, sucks. It’s selfish. It’s heartless. I never want to be someone who doesn’t fight for the things that matter, that they care about. These are people we are talking about. They’re being treated like animals with no rights. They are humans, with souls, with needs, with passions, and with dreams.
22-year-old me still wants my mom out. I still think her sentencing was too long. I still think that if a person wants to change, they will; the number of years they're given isn’t going to make them change. I think her arrest was necessary because six years later, I see it rescued her. I think she might have been dead otherwise. I think she sought change and transformation within the first two years. I don't think she deserves to do 15 years. I think she knows what she did and will never do it again. She's found Jesus. He’s all she ever wants to talk about now, and I praise Jesus for that miracle. I don't know the timeline, but maybe if she hadn’t been arrested she wouldn't have this same relationship with Him as she does now. I see the blessings in her arrest. I do. I see the good as much as I see the bad. But I know with everything in me, she should be given rights. Her and other incarcerated women don’t deserve to be neglected and mistreated the way they are.
I’m thankful that there are organizations and people out here already advocating for prisoners and seeking prison reform. My goal is for a percentage of the income I make from every shoot per month will be donated towards one of these organizations: The Sentencing Project, Books through Bars, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, CURE National, Women Prison Association. My hope in doing this is more awareness would be brought to these issues that are so often looked over or dismissed. I hope that we can all become more enlightened on some of these realities; though they may not be our personal reality, it is for some. I will always try to advocate for incarcerated women, and keep the faith that we will see positive change.