Incarceration: Asian and Pacific Islanders

Page 37

Q: When you were 16 and put into the criminal justice system and how did you feel as a teenager at the time and how did you adjust to prison life?

Eddy: Well, it was difficult, because of the fact that we did not understand. I did not understand the language. I did not understand the criminal justice system. My family does not understand it. I did not understand it. My translator, and my sister and brother did not understand it. The other thing is that they could not afford to hire an attorney. What is really crucial in the way how it immediately affected me and my case was also because of my estranged factor, my parents’s experience, so instead of telling my grandparents, who had the financial means to hire an attorney for me, they did not say anything to my grandparents. They did not say anything to our relatives. Nobody knew that I got in trouble when I was arrested.

“I did not understand the language. I did not understand the criminal justice system. My family does not understand it. I did not understand it. My translator, and my sister and brother did not understand it.� I went to through the criminal justice system with pretty much the public translator and that was it. Whatever the public translator was saying to me, I pretty much do not understand, because there

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