Michael O’Key was 12 years old when he entered the C.A. Dillon Youth Development Center (YDC), a maximum-security facility in North Carolina. It was 2010. Michael had already spent 18 months navigating the state’s juvenile court system and another 2 months in a local youth detention center, waiting for an open YDC bed. Michael’s first and only encounter with the youth justice system led to a 3½-year stay in C.A. Dillon. Now 26, he calls that time “formative.”
“It’s really hard to encapsulate all of the emotions, experiences, and friendships succinctly, but the experience represents multiple extremes,” Mr. O’Key says. He met “the best friend I have ever had” while in the YDC, but also “experienced deep loneliness, depression, and self-loathing.” Some of the facility staff “went above and beyond to show their belief in me and my future,” he says, while others “actively told me that I had no future at all.”
Mr. O’Key definitely had—and has—a future. Today, nearly 11 years after his release, he is a Ph.D. candidate in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, concentrating in its Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) and Social Sciences, Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Policy Studies (SHIPS) programs. In the fall, he will enter the UCLA School of Law, where his research and policy work will center on youth who are or were incarcerated. For the past 4 years, Mr. O’Key has served on the North Carolina Governor’s Crime Commission, which administers the state’s OJJDP Formula Grants funding. He volunteers with the Stanford Jail & Prison Education Project and he teaches English as a second language to 10th graders from underserved areas in San Francisco, part of a mentoring program to prepare youth for—and support them through—college.
“Please don’t let your experiences, your life, your existence be watered down to ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty.’”
—Michael O’Key, reflecting on advice he would give his teenage self
After 3½ years locked in a tightly controlled environment—Mr. O’Key says he still dislikes closed doors and windows—he had a “rocky” transition to the world outside. No longer a boy, the reserved teenager needed to decide the kind of future he wanted. His “incredibly patient and loving” mother supported him throughout, but “I don’t think she was prepared to have to ‘re-meet’ me” after confinement, he says. They moved forward together but have never discussed Michael’s time away.
“I cannot imagine the experience of having your child removed from your care and worrying about their wellbeing for so long,” Mr. O’Key says. “I understand feeling relief in keeping that door shut.”
Mr. O’Key remembers feeling lost among his high school peers and their “fast-paced, ever-changing social cues.” He left confinement with a sparse and “cryptic” academic transcript that said little about his potential. Two high school teachers came to recognize Michael’s raw intelligence and advocated for advanced placement classes. Today, Mr. O’Key credits those mentors with his decision to pursue college “and with each academic milestone I’ve achieved since.” He graduated from Auburn University with a double major in environmental design and public administration, and then earned a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Cornell University. Once he completes his Ph.D. and law degree, Mr. O’Key plans to continue in academia, performing research and advocacy in youth justice, and promoting community partnerships.
For young people working to reclaim their lives, real-world opportunities make all the difference, he says.
“I am a big advocate in researching and pursuing a pathway that works for each person and their individual goals. That could look like college, or trade school, or the military, or entrepreneurship. I support it all,” Mr. O’Key says. In his case, college introduced the world’s enormity and complexity, and helped him identify his gifts and how he could use them. He learned to believe in himself and his power to achieve—to push through the doubts, both his own and the skepticism he encountered. If given the chance, Mr. O’Key says he would counsel the teenage Michael to trust in the wisdom he already has.
“It is okay to make mistakes, and it being a mistake matters,” he says. “You being young, that matters. You feeling loved and supported by those around you—even when people say they’re bad influences—that matters. You get to steer the ship of your own life, and you will learn and grow and do incredible things. But you are also smart and courageous now.”