[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/221213377″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

At 16 years old, Calvin Young committed a burglary and ended up in a juvenile detention center. During the next 24 years, he was in jail at least four different times. But, Young, who is a writer, got his GED and completed 33 college credits, wishes he would have chosen a different way.

Milwaukee Stories link: Read more about Calvin Young at milwaukeestories.org.

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Scroll down to copy and paste the code of our article into your CMS. The codes for images, graphics and other embeddable elements may not transfer exactly as they appear on our site.

*** Also, the code below will NOT copy the featured image on the page. You are welcome to download the main image as a separate element for publication with this story. ***

You are welcome to republish our articles for free using the following ground rules.

Credit should be given, in this format: “By Ron Smith, Wisconsin Watch”
Editing material is prohibited, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and in-house style (for example, using “Milwaukee, Wis.” instead of “Milwaukee” or changing “yesterday” to “last week”)
Other than minor cosmetic and font changes, you may not change the structural appearance or visual format of a story.
If published online, you must include the links and link to milwaukeenns.org
If you share the story on social media, please mention @milwaukeenns (Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky), and ensure that the original featured image associated with the story is visible on the social media post.
Don’t sell the story or any part of it — it may not be marketed as a product.
Don’t extract, store or resell Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service content as a database.
Don’t sell ads against the story. But you can publish it with pre-sold ads.
Your website must include a prominent way to contact you.
Additional elements that are packaged with our story must be labeled.
Users can republish our photos, illustrations, graphics and multimedia elements ONLY with stories with which they originally appeared. You may not separate multimedia elements for standalone use.
If we send you a request to change or remove Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service content from your site, you must agree to do so immediately.

For questions regarding republishing rules please contact Jeff Bauer, digital editor and producer, at jbauer@wisconsinwatch.org.

On the Block: A different path

by Jabril Faraj, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
August 28, 2015

<h1>On the Block: A different path</h1>
<p class="byline">by Jabril Faraj, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service <br />August 28, 2015</p>

<p>[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/221213377″ params=”auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]<br />
 <br />
At 16 years old, Calvin Young committed a burglary and ended up in a juvenile detention center. During the next 24 years, he was in jail at least four different times. But, Young, who is a writer, got his GED and completed 33 college credits, wishes he would have chosen a different way.</p>
<p class="normal">Milwaukee Stories link: Read more about <a href="http://milwaukeestories.org/2015/08/27/if-i-could-write-a-book/"><span style="color: #1155cc">Calvin Young</span></a> at milwaukeestories.org.</p>
<p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://milwaukeenns.org/2015/08/28/on-the-block-a-different-path/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://milwaukeenns.org&quot;&gt;Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/milwaukeenns.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/cropped-NNS-Favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;</p>
&lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://milwaukeenns.org/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=28029&amp;amp;ga4=G-HGM4XK3QCM&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://milwaukeenns.org/2015/08/28/on-the-block-a-different-path/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/milwaukeenns.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

On the Block: A different path

Related

Contact

Hey neighbor, let's stay in touch!

Related