As the narrative moves through the students’ tragic life stories, one fact emerges clearly: These youths did not develop their criminal tendencies in a vacuum. They all came from families that had been dysfunctional for generations. In Ronnie’s case, his mother had already experienced her own neglectful and abusive childhood: “Marina was one of eleven children […] Marina’s father was a Pentecostal minister who had a small congregation. In the pulpit, he led his flock through hail, fire, and brimstone to salvation. At home, he was hail, fire, and brimstone” (27).

Marina’s father beat her mother and sexually assaulted Marina from the time she was 11 years old. As so often happens in such cases, Marina’s mother refused to believe the abuse allegations. Instead, Marina was sent to a youth facility. As an adult, she developed a cocaine addiction that exacerbated her own neglectful parenting of her two young sons. Marina says, “After that, it was nothing but coke. Coke, coke, coke. I was going to college, I wanted to be a registered nurse. I had grants, every two weeks I got a check for five hundred dollars. We used that money to buy drugs” (35).