'I literally grew up in prison': Juvenile lifers share struggles, pleasures of coming home

He said when he first got out, he relished walking wherever he wanted, spending time outside, staying out to look at the stars.

Olivier received a life without parole sentence for a crime he committed at 16 — what's called a "juvenile lifer" in criminal justice circles. He's among more than a thousand people nationwide who have been released after a series of Supreme Court decisions began chipping away at life without parole sentences for juveniles.

Those are unconstitutional in many cases and deserve a second look, courts have found. Generally, they've said that children's brains are still developing and don't assess risk and consequence in the same way as adults, and also have more capacity for change.

In interviews, Olivier and other people who were sentenced to life or very long sentences as teens, but were later released, said their reentry experiences have been marked by a spectrum of challenges and joys. As people in their situation come home from prison, they need specialized support.

"All the things that, normally, people take for granted, that's like brand new to someone that's been locked up 20-plus years," Olivier said.

Olivier now spends his days working as a client advocate for the Louisiana Parole Project (LPP). The Baton Rouge-based reentry group helped him out upon his release. Its director wasalso a juvenile lifer.

The group has worked with hundreds of clients to provide support and teach a curriculum of skills from concrete abilities, such as opening a bank account, to more abstract problem-solving, such as avoiding online scams. Such teachings are especially important for juvenile lifers, who come home to a changed world as freshly minted adults.

Before Olivier went to prison, he says he lived with parents and didn't have experience paying bills. He remembers being stunned by self-checkout machines; a supportive trip to Walmart with other LPP clients was overwhelming.

"Everywhere you turn, there's nothing but items. And you get kind of stuck there — I couldn't move. I didn't know what to get," he said.

Their transitions are made more challenging by years living in prison environments. Behind prison walls, the culture is often to find ways to tease and ridicule, said Bryan Widenhouse, another former juvenile lifer with Louisiana ties.

Over time, it becomes difficult to ask for help.

"I think on the inside that it's a sign of weakness," said Widenhouse, who now works as a state legislative affairs manager for the justice-reform advocacy group FAMM. "After decades that becomes ingrained into you."

The men’s accounts of reentry are notable, as juvenile life without parole cases continue to undergo review — and even as Louisiana courts will likely sentence more teenagers to adult prison terms. Last year, a new law lowered the age of criminal responsibility in Louisiana back to 17, undoing reforms passed several years earlier.

As more 17-year-olds are likely to face adult sentences, Olivier says LPP has lately pivoted to do some more work with younger clients.

A 2022 report from the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, which opposes juvenile life without parole sentences, says at least 99 people in Louisiana have been released under a review of such sentences.

Similar data on how many releases are in Alabama and Mississippi was not immediatelyavailable without filing a formal public-records request, spokespeople from those prison systems said. Louisiana's prison system did not immediately fulfill a request for updated numbers.

Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama also are among more than 20 states that have not outright banned new juvenile life without parole sentences, even as courts have questioned those sentences. So even as some juvenile lifers are getting out, others are going in — with their long-term prospects a question mark.

Attorneys and advocates say progress on releases is halting in some states, often depending on which courts are overseeing the case.

As part of his client advocate work, Olivier helps teach clients about navigating relationships. That area can be a challenge, explains Tarika Daftary-Kapur, a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey who has studied juvenile lifers' reentry experiences.

Family reconnections in particular can be hard to get used to. People coming home have missed years of day-to-day interactions with family members, and relatives often remember them more clearly as kids.

"They're sort of treated as children as opposed to grown men," Daftary-Kapur said. "And that can lead to some disconnect. It can lead to frustration."

They have also often missed out on critical developmental stages around dating and romantic relationships that most people go through in their teenage years.

Catherine Jones, who now works as co-director of outreach and partnership development for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth,was not sentenced to life imprisonmentbut was incarcerated when she was 13 and released at 30. She was so young that she recalls being told in prison that she couldn't buy cigarettes.

When she came home, she navigated an "identity crisis" her mother described best.

"She said, 'I don't know if you want to be a 13-year old-girl and lay your head on my lap, and be babied, or if you wanna be this 30-year-old woman that wants to be independent and figure out things on her own,'" Jones said.

"And the truth was — I was both."

Jones said it took hard work to get up to speed on the humdrum tasks of being an adult, like driving, opening a 401(k) or filling out student-aid forms as she applied to college, which she felt many of her peers had already mastered.

She now has small children, and reminds herself to savor the pleasures of being free.

"Like, just going in my refrigerator and getting fresh fruit and eating it. It's been 10 years and I still get amazed when I'm out places and I'm doing things," she said.

Daftary-Kapur said these journeys are sometimes made more challenging by what programming people have had access to inside prisons.

In some systems, people serving life sentences don't necessarily go to the front of the line for access to rehabilitation or education. She said corrections systems could be more vigilant about thinking about those things as more people are resentenced.

Training in advance of release is important, said Shon Williams, a reentry specialist for Louisiana Center for Children's Rights who was a juvenile lifer. Sometimes people have trade skills but could use more education.

People also need help navigating practical roadblocks, such as when people who were accustomed to driving trucks for work in prison run into the reality of background checks that look for past convictions.

"Guys come home being lost, being scared," he said.

Olivier's life has changed dramatically since he was released in 2018.

He and his wife have celebrated several anniversaries, and they have a young son, whom Olivier takes to school in the mornings. He spent time working in Mississippi's prison system as a director of chaplains, and even wrote a book about his story.

"One of your greatest possessions in prisons is pictures. You get pictures from home, you're looking at everybody," he said. "But now I have an opportunity to be in the picture, not just looking at the picture. ... I'm not missing anymore."

During the afternoon of a reporters' visit, he drove out to visit with some clients. The car rolled by pastures of wild grass and horses to a neatly nondescript apartment complex in Baton Rouge, which holds some of the organization's transitional housing. The smell of fresh-mown lawn hung in the air.

Inside one well-scrubbed apartment with a tile floor and a cream-and-pink floral print on the wall, he introduced Terry Vince, whom he knew in Angola. Vince went to prison on a life sentence at 17. He had been home for about a month after 29 years inside.

He is working with Olivier and other LPP staff to figure out everything new: writing a check, how to use a cell phone.

That mentorship is valuable, Vince and his roommate, who was locked up at 18 and goes by Frank, said — especially from people who have been through something similar.

”We're closer to each other than we are to even our own family, because [of] the experience that we share together," Frank said.

Theirs is an immediate world of small strangenesses — and pleasures, too. They can shower alone after years of showering with other people. If they're annoyed with someone, they can leave the area and won't immediately bump into them back at the prison dorm.

Vince said he'd had the idea when he was about 12 years old that he was a grown man. But he knows now he had not had much of a chance to experience life.

He's learning "how to function, and to be a citizen."

"A long time ago I didn't feel like I belonged. It's like I'm going in that direction," he said. "I have something to contribute to society nowadays." 

This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.