crimes before their rational facilities have fully developed. He teaches them to locate their human values and allow these values to inform their emotions and actions. He said he wants to empower these youths to contribute constructively to their environment and to themselves.
“It’s how I make meaning out of my past,” Spence said. He’s the peer counsellor in VOGUE (Victims Offenders Education Group), where he helps men process their traumatic histories. He hopes to bring them healing, so that one day they’ll be able to pay that healing forward.
Spence has a lot of plans for the future. He’s a few classes away from a Bachelor’s Degree in Specialized Studies, Psychology, and Leadership. He’s also studying the LSAT, so he can attend law school upon his release.
“I have the experience of a young man coming into the system, and, with a law degree I’ll have credibility with the audience I want to address.”
He also wants to return to Agate Beach, a special place for him on the coast of the California-Oregon border where his grandfather used to fish from the shoreline into the surf for perch.
“I used to watch him from a little plateau on the beach, I could sit there for hours, absorbing the sounds and sights and him. I dream of going back there.”
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