The first time I went to jail, my professor sent me there. Before I could think too much about what I had agreed to do, I piled into a beat-up 12-passenger van with 11 others. I was unsure if my nerves were from my concern that the van wasn’t going to make it the 15 miles across the city or my fear of what awaited me on the other side of the bridge at Rikers Island, New York’s main jail complex. If I’m being honest, it was a bit of both.

I peered out the window and watched as my city surroundings were replaced with high fences, barbed wire and brick buildings. I took comfort in the fact that I only needed to be here for a few hours.

Inside the jail, I walked through a metal detector, and tried not to let the slamming of metal doors in the distance completely unnerve me as I was patted down by an officer. Once we were declared contraband-free and cleared to move forward through the facility, a corrections officer escorted our group down a long hallway leading to a bleak-looking staircase.

[For more of this story, written by Kathleen White, go to http://jjie.org/2017/02/23/how...my-life-path-part-1/]