How Mentorship Saves Lives

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FEATURING DORTELL WILLIAMS - Crime, we know, is linked to wealth inequality. But it’s also built on social fracturing. Our special correspondent Dortell Williams has thought long and hard about the roots of public safety, how to preserve and strengthen it, and says that mentorship is a powerful, and underrated mode of human connection that can prevent crimes. 

Dortell Williams, incarcerated individual at Mule Creek State Prison, serving a sentence of life without parole, currently seeking his freedom at www.FreeDortellWilliams.com. Dortell is a regular correspondent on Rising Up With Sonali. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about mentorship, his experience with it, and why it works.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: One of the things that takes up your attention is how folks who are, whether they're incarcerated or not incarcerated, can benefit from mentorship. It's something that I've thought about over the years as someone who's, you know, had younger people I've mentored, but after having gotten to know you and some of the work that you do, it seems as though mentorship, especially within prison walls, can be life-changing and even life-saving. Would you say that? 

Dortell Williams: Oh, absolutely. And I, think my idea of mentorship is to have mentorship before we end up going to prison. Because so many of us, I mean, when you think about it, most of the kids who go astray are misguided. They've been misguided sometimes by their own parents. I'm one of them. I love my dad. My dad was, you know, as good as he could be at the time, but unfortunately, you know, he had his own traumas, and so he misguided me into criminality and, you know, those types of things. 

And, just like so many of the other youth out there, you know, we needed intervention. A real robust policy of intervention is the best way to tackle crime and to approach public policy, you know, for obvious reasons.