by Larry Lawton
‘If you don’t mind,” Lawton said, “I’m going to tell this kid some tough stuff.”
“You can beat the shit out of him if you want,” said the father, who was at a loss as to what to do.
“I won’t touch the kid,” Lawton said. “I won’t have to.”
Said Lawton, “The kid was in his room. He was sixteen, a big kid, bigger than me, though that doesn’t mean anything. He was sitting on a futon bed when I walked in, and he looked up at me. I was wearing a sleeveless tee-shirt to reveal the tattoos on my arms. I wasn’t a guy in a suit trying to tell him what to do. He had said to his father, ‘Fuck you, dad, where have you ever been?’ That resonated with me because he was right. He was wrong to say that, but how could his father tell anyone about prison. Where had he ever been? If you want to know about prisons, talk to a prisoner.”
Lawton scowled at him and said, “You told your father, ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Let me show you where the fuck I’ve been.”
Lawton could feel the boy’s fear, and he wanted to capitalize on it.
He sat down, calmed himself, and lowered his voice.
“I’m going to show you some shit,” he said to the kid. “I spent eleven straight years in fucking prison, and I just got out. I lived the life that you think is so glamorous. I did drugs.” Lawton started showing him the pictures.
Said Lawton, “I was in the room with him for two hours. His parents must have been thinking, What’s going on? I’m sure they were waiting to hear yelling and screaming. But I didn’t want this to be Scared Straight, a program that doesn’t work very well because when you yell and scream at a kid, he closes his mind and shuts you out. He actually puts up a barrier. He will see me, but he won’t hear me. The way you get to a kid to listen is to educate by telling the truth. I gave the man’s son education along with reality, and I treated him like an adult.
“I told him, ‘Look at this guy.’ I showed him a picture. ‘He’s dead. He was a good kid, good family, he thought he was invincible, and now he’s dead. All for nothing.’
“I told him a story about the guards abusing me. I said, ‘I don’t care how big you are or how tough you think you are, in prison you can’t beat four guys. I was strapped down naked and peed on, and that was by the guards. What do you think is going to happen to you? At your age you’re going to be sucked into a gang. If you can’t control your drug habit out here, in prison they’re going to get you hooked on heroin, and they’re going to fuck you in the ass.’
“His face turned pal white. I knew I was getting through to him without raising my voice.
“When I was done, the kid walked me out. He was respectful. I said to his father, ‘Okay, Ronnie, I’ll see you on the golf course.’”
Two weeks later the dad called Lawton at home. Larry had gotten his paralegal certificate while in the hole in prison, and he had received offers from law firms. While in prison he had been successful with cases relating to ineffective assistance of counsel. He had success gaining writs of habeas corpus – they were freed, resentenced or given a new trial. He had been practicing law, in a sense, for ten years. Law firms wanted him.
Ronnie said to him, “I don’t know what you’re going to do with your paralegal degree, but whatever it is, don’t do it. You have to work with kids.”
“What are you talking about?” Lawton asked.
He said, “Whatever you did to my son, he’s changed. He’s respectful. He talks to us. He talks about you all the time. Whatever you do, you have to work with kids.”
Said Lawton, “He asked me if I needed money. The guy was wealthy. I was living at my parents’ home getting a pension, and I was surviving. I’m hard-headed and proud. I refused his money. But he got me to thinking. I can do this. And I started putting together a program modeled after what I had said to his kid.
CHAPTER 15
The Beginning of the Reality Check Program
Until Larry Lawton got out of prison, he didn’t realize how much he was missing: family and friends, spending holidays with loved ones, hugging a woman, and smiling, but also small things like being able to change the channel on the TV without having to get into a fight with someone, or getting up and going to the refrigerator. He was eating real food again for the first time in a decade, and he savored every bite.
“Everyone asks me what I missed most,” he said. “It wasn’t sex, though I love sex and love my girlfriend dearly. It’s food -- real food. For eleven years the prisons fed me garbage. To me McDonald’s is gourmet food.”
Lawton was living with his parents in a small 1,100 square foot house in Palm Bay, Florida. He lived in a ten-by-ten bedroom in the back of the house, but after living in prison to him his room was his castle.
It was in that little room that Larry Lawton built his Reality Check Program. He bought a laptop computer and began learning the basics. Lawton was in a new world. When he went to prison in 1996, computers were on phone modems, and laptops were in their infancy.
He needed help, and he got it from his 22-year old nephew Brendan, who showed him how to write using PowerPoint.
“My goal was to help young people understand just how bad prison really is,” said Lawton. “I was sitting in my room thinking, These kids think prison’s a joke. They think it’s a rite of passage. They watch the reality shows on TV like Lockup on MSNBC, and they don’t know that what they’re watching is phony because they aren’t shown the real deal. They don’t show you what happens when the camera isn’t there. They don’t show what the hole is really like, don’t show them turning off the hot water or beating your ass. They don’t show guards making you beg to turn the toilet back on, spitting in your food, pissing on you.
“I said to myself, These kids need a reality check. They should know how sadistic the guards can be, though I also let them know that some guards were sympathetic and saved my life.
“Whenever I hold a class the first thing I say is, ‘How many of you watch Lockup? the TV show that portrays various prisons and the inmates in them.
“Most kids and adults raise their hands.
“‘It’s all bullshit,’ I’ll tell them.
“‘Huh?’ is the usual response.
“They have no idea, and I decided it would become my mission in life to tell them why.”
Lawton received a phone call from Dennis Broderick, a childhood buddy from when they were kids living in the Bronx. When Dennis was 12, his father was murdered in a robbery. Dennis and Larry were very close. As boys they gambled together, stole together, fought together, and in general caused trouble in the neighborhood. They grew up being gangsters. But as Broderick grew older, he changed his ways, abandoned the life, went into the Air Force, and became a highly respected vice-president of Primerica, a financial company. Broderick was heartsick when he learned that Lawton had been sentenced to eleven years in jail for robbing jewelry stores. When he learned Larry was out of prison, he called to be there for him in any way he could.
“He wanted to help me,” said Lawton. “He understood where we came from, and he didn’t judge me. He bought me a set of golf clubs, and on the way to playing different courses we’d talk for hours. To this day he probably doesn’t know how much he helped me just by talking to me and not judging me.
“We were in the habit of eating out after golf, and Dennis would always order the same thing, a chicken sandwich, no cheese, with lettuce. It was a really bland lunch, and I tease him about it to this day. But when the waiter asked what I wanted, I would always say, ‘I’ll have what he’s having.’
“One time we were at the Harmony Golf Course, and he said, ‘Larry, you can’t make a choice, can you?’
“‘What?’ I answered defensively.
“He said, ‘You have all day. I’m going to sit here and make sure you read over the menu and you order something you want. Nobody is going to say a w
ord.’
“I thought to myself, Does he think I’m an idiot and can’t read? I was getting angry inside, but I didn’t say anything. I knew he cared and wanted to help me.
“Finally I ordered a hamburger the way I wanted it. I ordered it with onions, cheese and bacon, the way I like it, and it was a relief. I hadn’t even realized what I was doing. That broke me of the habit of doing that.”
*
Lawton was out of prison about three months when he learned just how fragile his freedom was. His day began when he left his home to play an early round of golf with Dennis.
“We’re both early birds when it comes to golf, and we had a tee time for 7:00 a.m. at the Harmony Golf Course about forty five minutes from where I live,” said Lawton. “Dennis’s birthday was coming up, so I decided to stop at the 24-hour Walmart to buy him a birthday card.
“Dennis and I were going to meet for breakfast at a Denny’s restaurant on US 192 at 5:30, so I was out of the house at 4:45. It was pitch dark, and I was driving the old blue Buick Skylark my father gave me when I got out of prison.
“As I approached the light on Palm Bay Road and Hollywood Boulevard, a cop car pulled in front of me. With his lights flashing over the bullhorn he ordered me to pull into the parking lot of a 7-11. I wasn’t speeding, so I was wondering what was going on.
“Stay in your car,” the cop ordered.
“When another cop car pulled up, I started getting nervous. I could see the two cops talking, and they then headed towards my car, one cop on each side with hands on their holsters. One asked for my driver’s license as the other looked inside my car. They then backed away. Seeing I had only been out of prison for about three months, I was sitting there really getting agitated.
“The minutes seemed like hours, and then yet another cop car pulled up. And then another. There were four cop cars, and four cops who were all outside their cars talking and looking at me. I knew they had checked my record, and of course it came back that I was a convicted felon. The time seemed to stand still while all these crazy thoughts were going through my head.
Do I run? What did I do? I’m not going back to prison. This is a nightmare. Are they going to arrest me? What do I do if they arrest me?
“It was crazy. I was sweating.
“A fifth car pulled up, and out came a cop and a civilian. They all talked. Two cops headed towards my passenger-side window, while the civilian and the other two cops headed to my window. I about shit my pants.
“The civilian looked in my window and clearly said, ‘It’s not him.’
“The cops ordered me to wait, and a few minutes later came back with my driver’s license and said I could go.
“As I was driving away I realized how easy it would be to get arrested for something I didn’t do. I thought, Who would believe a guy with my record was going golfing at 4:45 in the morning? Another golfer might have understood, but not many other people. I later found out a Circle K was robbed, and the robber had a car like mine. I couldn’t help thinking, What would have happened to me if the guy who robbed the place was bald and had a goatee? To this day I remember how I felt. It was like it was yesterday. God was on my side that day. I don’t know what I would have done if the cops had tried to arrest me.
“When I got to the Denny’s, Dennis said to me, “You look like you just saw a ghost.” I told him what happened, and we talked about it. Incidents like that keep me thinking about ways to help ex-cons readjust back into society.
*
Dennis’s wife Glenda, it so happened, worked with at-risk school children at a place called the Brevard Achievement Center. Some of the kids had learning disabilities, and others had discipline problems. They were between the ages of 11 and 22. Glenda felt these were perfect kids for Lawton to talk to.
Glenda, like Dennis, was very caring and compassionate and never judged Lawton. She felt that having Lawton come and speak to her kids about what he experienced during his years in prison might just save one or two of them from pursuing a life of crime.
“Larry,” she said, “I’d love to bring you to my school to speak to the kids.”
After talking to the golf pro’s son, Lawton was sure that the best way to get into a young person’s head was through telling stories of his real-life experiences. A police officer, teacher, or parent could try to give the same message as Larry, he felt, but the kids wouldn’t take them nearly as seriously because the kids would know they weren’t talking from experience. Larry had eleven years of horror stories to tell, and when he told them, they registered with the kids in a big way.
“If you want to know how to fix a water leak,” says Lawton, “call a plumber. If you want to know how to put handcuffs on a person, call a cop. But if you want to learn about the consequences of making bad choices, you should go to a man who has made those bad choices and has suffered the consequences by going to prison.
“A cop can’t tell a kid what prison’s like. But I can. I’m not reinventing the wheel, but I have found that young people listen to what I have to say. In the end my message is one of hope and change. If I can get them to see themselves as people who have made bad choices but are good people, they can turn their lives around.”
When Lawton arrived at Glenda Broderick’s school, he could see that her class was a bad-ass class of kids, the worst of the worst. They were a restless group of kids, but as soon as he began telling stories of what really goes on in prison, they didn’t make a sound. The kids sat there enthralled, and a little scared. Lawton could see that the kids hadn’t just shown up and ignored his message. He could tell they were drinking in what he was saying.
Glenda was moved and impressed with the effect Lawton had on her kids. Glenda began telling others about what he had said and how her kids had reacted, and Dennis offered Lawton a meeting room in the back of his Primerica office so he could hold classes for other kids.
Lawton started getting calls from parents who were at a loss about what to do about their teenage children. He held his first class in March of 2008, a mix of students sent by their families to help them understand the consequences of their actions. For some parents, it was a last resort.
The person Lawton needed to talk to, he was told, was Jean Bandish, the juvenile court coordinator for Brevard County. Lawton called her and after he explained to her what he was doing, she asked if he would speak at the drug court. He spoke to a group of juveniles between the ages of 12 and 18 in the courtroom of Juvenile Court Judge Morgan Reinman. As Larry stood in front of the courtroom, he couldn’t help but experience a strange feeling. The last time he had spoke in court, it was as a defendant. On this day he was an advocate for law and order.
After his presentation, Bandish set up a meeting for him with Judge Reinman, who asked him to give a presentation to a group of court personnel involved in the juvenile justice system including two judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and others who were involved.
“It was an important meeting,” said Lawton, “but I wasn’t nervous. I never get nervous because I’ve been through so much in my life. I say to myself, I believe in myself. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They don’t like me? I’ve already survived the worst of the worst. So to this day when I speak in front of important people, I don’t really care who they are. We are all the same. They put their pants on just like me, shit like me, and you will either like me or you won’t. I am a free man either way.”
Lawton walked into Judge Reinman’s chambers, set up his computer, and connected it to the projector. Everyone entered the room, and Jean Bandish introduced Lawton.
“Your honor,” said Lawton, “Do you want me to talk the way I’m going to talk to the kids? In my program I use some pretty tough language.”
“By all means,” said Judge Reinman. “Say what you want, and do it the way you do it.”
Lawton gave his talk abou
t what prison life is really like, and those in attendance were as enthralled as the kids he talked to. When he was done, Lawton was invited to stay for the rest of the meeting. He declined and excused himself. This was a Friday, and Lawton was sure nothing more would come from it, but on Monday the phone rang. It was Jean Bandish.
“Judge Reinman loved the program,” she said, “and I wanted to give you a heads up, because she just sentenced two kids to your program. The judge told them, ‘You need to hear what this man has to say.’”
Lawton thought to himself, What program? He didn’t have a formal program, and here was a judge sentencing people to his “program.”
Said Lawton, “What a judge wants, a judge usually gets, and so I structured my formal program around the PowerPoint presentation I had showed her. I told Jean the fee for attending the program was $100 (later reduced to $50). The judge felt the parents could afford that and in addition to ordering them to take part in the program, they were ordered to eight hours of community service.
Once Lawton had court approval, his Reality Check Program had credibility. Whenever he would walk into Judge Reinman’s courtroom, she would say to him, ‘Mr. Lawton, I’m glad you’re here.’ There were times when she would ask him to have a talk with a young offender. He always did, even when he wasn’t getting paid.
*
The word spread as the program gained more and more exposure. He went on a local Melbourne radio station with several kids to talk about the program. He was invited by Karen Locke, the chief operation officer of Crosswinds Youth Services, an organization based in Cocoa, Florida, working to help families and at-risk kids, to speak at her facility.
For the first time Larry was taking the Reality Check Program on the road. Over sixty kids aged 9 to 17 sat before him.
One young boy, aged 9, touched his heart. During a break Larry asked the kid what he had done wrong, and he sheepishly admitted he had stolen a bicycle. He wore baggy pants, and his hat was on backwards. Larry thought he looked like one of the dead-end kids. Larry was concerned for his future because he could see that because he was only nine, he had no understanding of how his wrong choices had led him into trouble.
