Youth crime is a significant national issue. Annually, 200,000 youths are tried as adults in criminal courts. In September of 2009, Jessica Turral, Baltimore native and recent alumnus of Hopkins, founded a non-profit organization to fight those numbers. Called Hand in Hand, the program works with Baltimore youth who have committed crimes and been tried as adults and aims to empower them through mentorship.
"We work with these individuals while they are detained and once they are released," Turral said. "We work with them on a lot of planning things. We talk about what is going to change when they return home and what their goals are, and what their action plan is for getting things started."
Turral explained that Hand in Hand mentors partner with incarcerated youths to assist them in planning and achieving life goals once they have finished their sentences. Sometimes this involves helping the individual return to high school or obtaining a GED.
"The goal is to empower youth so they no longer see crime or jail as an option, because they finally know that they are better than that," Turral said.
Turral was inspired to found Hand in Hand after volunteering for Notre Dame-AmeriCorps. She was given the task of analyzing the population of youth charged as adults and was surprised at what she found.
"I did not expect how many hundreds there were, and it really bothered me. They looked so young. They are so young. And there are so many of them; it's crazy," Turral said.
Turral was further astounded to discover that many of these individuals had not only served jail time for one crime but often two or three before the age of 18. She found that the reason many of these youths returned to a criminal lifestyle was rooted in the fact that they did not receive post-incarceration counseling.
"They would be in jail and no one would talk to them about what to do when they got home," Turral said. "They would go back to their communities, where there were no resources and no connections. They would go back to what they were doing because they had no other option."
"The hardest thing is when you meet a young person who does not want to change right away," Turral said. "It is difficult because you can see where [his] life is heading, but [he doesn't] want to change his ways."
Not only is there the risk for more jail time, Turral remarked, but a criminal way of life has an increased risk of injury and death.
Turral mentioned that that the unresponsive and negative attitudes of many of the youth makes it difficult for some Hand in Hand volunteers who are not experienced in interacting with such individuals.
"It's hard because we have to teach our kids to be respectful and grateful," Turral said.
Hand in Hand has two locations, one in the Baltimore City Detention Cetner, and the other at 2505 N. Charles Street. Youth in the detention center can apply and interview in order to gain mentorship through the program. Turral said that while the organization often works with parole agents to bring in youth, most of their partnerships are attained via word of mouth.
"As founder, I do everything from writing grants, to finding space, to running programs, to talking to youth, to looking for jobs [for Hand in Hand's partner's]," Turral said. "Everything we do, I have a little part of. Every day I work with youth in some capacity."
While at Hopkins, Turral majored in Psychology, which has proved invaluable to her non-profit work.
"Hand in Hand is founded in mental health, so my psychology background helps a lot because I know the basics of how to create behavior change," Turral said. "When I am talking to kids about introducing new aspects of life. . .I understand such behavior change, and that new stimuli will create new behaviors."
Turral said that her background was particularly helpful to Hand in Hand because many re-entry programs do not combine their mentorship with a mental health approach.
Turral does not believe that a bachelors' degree in psychology provides enough experience to run a program like Hand in Hand, so she has plans to return to school to earn her doctorate in psychology.
She also has plans to establish another Hand in Hand site within the next five years, most likely in Washington D.C. or Virginia.
"I want to take Hand in Hand everywhere," Turral said. "And once Hand in Hand is in every urban city, I want to move forward to prevention."
Her ambitious plans involve a unique aspect of prevention in which mentored youth would later return to the program to mentor those currently in the position they had been in just a few years earlier.
"Many mentoring programs shun [applicants] who have criminal records or records of drug use. But if we want to reach youth ‘at risk,' we need to bring them around people who have been where they are and succeeded."
Turral said that the individuals Hand in Hand partners with strongly desire the ability to relate to their mentors. They need someone to truly understand where they are coming from. Hand in Hand's strategy is to provide mentees with a solid combination of mentors who are different from and similar to them.
Turral attended Baltimore City Public Schools growing up and has always lived in this area.
"What connected me to my students is that I'm not too far removed from them," Turral said. "My mother was the first in our family to get a degree, the first to introduce the idea of getting an education."
"I understand how one person can change a whole family," Turral said. "I saw my mom be a strong woman and set milestones in our family. She has given me an inner strength and motivated me to push myself and not use excuses."
That mentality certainly marks her college years in addition to her pursuits beyond the Homewood Campus.
"When I was at Hopkins, I was in, like, everything," Turral said. "That's the kind of person I am. I figure, why not be involved."
Turral said that she is proud to be able to say that she was in the first class that had Baltimore Scholars, a Hopkins program that provides full tuition to Baltimore City Public High School students admitted to the university.
Additionally, Turral was very involved in her sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, volunteered with a mentoring program and served as a senior leadership consultant. Through her campus involvement, Turral wished to promote an atmosphere in which Hopkins gives back to the Baltimore community.
Turral pointed to a fair she started her senior year, called "Welcome to My City," as one of her favorite aspects of her Hopkins experience. The fair gave her an opportunity to bring to Hopkins an entirely new view of Baltimore.
"It was an original idea and it turned out beautifully," Turral said.
"It was important to me to fight the stereotypes [attributed to] Baltimore Scholars," Turral said. "People from Hopkins assume that Baltimore is like The Wire. And that [Baltimore Scholars] are charity cases and that they were admitted because of affirmative action. If a person is saying something because [he] is ignorant, you have to teach [him]."
"A lot of people liked the fair because it showed the positive aspects of Baltimore: clubs, restaurants, museums and non-profits," Turral said. "People could see how they could get involved in Baltimore and outside of the Hopkins ‘bubble.'"
Originally, Turral thought she wanted to become a doctor, so she focused her undergraduate studies on behavioral biology. She also took Writing Seminars classes because she wanted to learn how to write and how to express herself. In the end, Turral decided that she didn't want to be a doctor and shifted her focus to psychology.
"I was interested in why people do the things they do," Turral said. "Some of the things we do are crazy and I just wanted to know why."
Turral's advice to undergraduates is to not overvalue the necessity of a plan for after Hopkins.
"It's okay if you don't have a plan," Turral said. "Hopkins students are the best of the best, and they always try to plan, but that's not realistic. Sometimes our plans don't work out, and I don't want people to see that as a failure."
"I never planned to start a non-profit and partner with youth or to go back to school," Turral said.
"Follow your passion, and when you follow your passion, sometimes it doesn't come with a manual or a plan," Turral said. "Find something that makes you become so focused that you can't imagine doing anything else. And if you fail, just start over again."
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