Twenty-two years seems like an awfully short time to already be talking about redemption. But the young man sitting on the velvet couch in the splendor of the Omni Parker House Hotel’s mezzanine is living proof that for someone who has survived the juvenile justice system in America, there is a fine line between ending your life and turning it around.
DeAngelo Cortijo sat noiselessly mouthing the words of his speech — a dizzying childhood of crime and imprisonment and intermittent homelessness, surviving the streets and long stretches of solitary. It’s a hectic and fractured life the boyish-looking Cortijo has crammed into a 40-minute talk.
As he prepared to deliver the keynote closing address at the inaugural symposium on probation system reform in Boston in early April, reflecting on his life so far momentarily left him trembling.
[For more of this story, written by Daryl Khan, go to http://jjie.org/troubled-no-mo...rofessionals/234395/]
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