Boy With A Knife
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Nearly a quarter of a million youth are tried, sentenced, or imprisoned as adults every year across the United States. On any given day, ten thousand youth are detained or incarcerated in adult jails and prisons. Putting a human face to these sobering statistics, [i]Boy With A Knife tells the story of Karter Kane Reed, who, at the age of sixteen, was sentenced to life in an adult prison for a murder he committed in 1993 in a high school classroom. Twenty years later, in 2013, he became one of the few men in Massachusetts to sue the Parole Board and win his freedom. The emotional and devastating narrative takes us step by step through Karter's crime, trial, punishment, and survival in prison, as well as his readjustment into regular society. In addition to being a powerful portrayal of one boy trying to come to terms with the consequences of his tragic actions,[i] Boy With A Knife is also a searing critique of the practice of sentencing youth to adult prisons, providing a wake-up call on how we must change the laws in this country that allow children to be sentenced as adults.[b]Jean Trounstine is the author of the highly praised [i]Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in Women's Prison (St. Martin's) about her decade directing plays and teaching at Framingham Women's Prison in Massachusetts. She has written numerous articles on prison issues for publications including [i]Boston magazine, the [i]Boston Globe, [i]Working Woman magazine, the [i]Women's Review of Books, and [i]Truthout, and has been the subject of many articles, radio broadcasts (NPR, The Connection), and TV shows (the [i]Today Show).
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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR BOY WITH A KNIFE
“Through skillful storytelling and rigorous research, Jean Trounstine shows us why young people engage in crime and violence, and how we can create rehabilitation and redemption for those caught up in the system. This book is an argument for why youth justice should move to the top of our national priorities if we want safe and equitable communities for all Americans.”
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After I met Karter at MCI-Shirley, I visited New Bedford several times between 2008 and 2012 to learn more about the place he came from. Karter once wrote in frustration about his hometown that “there’s absolutely nothing [t]here but drugs, guns, and crime.” His statement was partially right. The first teen in Massachusetts tried and convicted of murder in an adult court was from New Bedford: Antonio Ferrer, a fourteen-year-old charged in 1992 with shooting a man.40 Only two years before Karter’s crime, in 1991, New Bedford was deemed by the FBI as “the most violent city in New England.”41
While whaling sagged a few years after New Bedford had formally incorporated in 1847, the textile industry aided the city’s economy.46 The population burgeoned as hopefuls arrived to work in the mills; the Irish, French Canadian, and Portuguese joined the Native Americans, Africans, Azoreans, Cape Verdeans, and Brits who already dotted the city’s landscape.47 Long before federal officials tore into the Michael Bianco textile factory in 2007 and arrested approximately 360 out of 500 workers, separating mostly Central American “illegals” from their children for deportation, we might have heard Karter’s words in a 2008 letter without a trace of irony: New Bedford was a place “hospitable to immigrants.” 48
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