My Poor, Dumb Cousin

He just started serving a ten year sentence last month over some illegal activities. Apparently, he was beefing with some other kid (my cousin's only 20) for a period of time and at one point it came to some gunplay where the other kid had a gun and he and my cousin struggled for it and the kid got his index blown off. I'm not exactly sure of the law, but it's something like anything above the waist is attempted murder and anything below is assault, so he was being charged with attempted murder. But there's more: he shot at a house full of people. He threatened a witness. And to top it all off after being charged with all this stuff he rode around in a car piled with guns up to his nose. The earliest he can get out of prison is 2020, the latest 2028.

I haven't really seen him since he was 4, but I'm wondering; should I reach out to him? He was a beautiful kid, sweet, smart and you just couldn't help liking him. I was at my aunt's house a lot then because I have a sister who's a few months younger than him and they played together a lot. I don't know this man, though (can't really call him a boy after all he's done), but I'd like to hope that beautiful kid is somewhere inside still and is reachable. I know if he weren't my cousin I would give him two seconds of disdainful thought before discarding him from my mind, so I really have to wonder if he's worth it to me.

Question - You say you haven't really seen him in 16 years, how come so long?

I don't know really. I guess I was a teenager at the time and that would have been right around the time when I was about to get my driver's license. I have this weird family thing where it's just difficult for me to keep in contact with them. Nothing actually happened to cause a rift.

He sounds dumb for sure. Thing is, we read about these sorts of things all the time, and you can be sure as much as we shake our heads at them, and call them stupid, not knowing who their families are, they too have families, and once were innocent children.

Aside from the possibility it may have been unintentional, the original act of blowing off a digit, his other actions speak of a violent and dangerous criminal. Sounds like he could use the break from society, and society from him.

Should you reach out to him? No idea...that is your call. No harm, no foul, right?

I'm just trying to figure out if it'd be worth my time. I mean, he's going to be out someday and it would be great if my REHABILITATED cousin came home and not a new-and-improved criminal.

Hopefully Allah or Jesus are hanging out in there and get to him.

He might really appreciate it if you visited him in jail. Whether or not the two of you see eye to eye or whatever, it can't hurt.

If you havn't seen him in 16 years I guess you really don't know him at all or whether he would even want you to go and visit him or not.

If you want to offer him some blood support and let him feel like he's not alone then my own thoughts would be to write to him in jail first.

Let him know you're thinking about him and would like to offer him some support if he would like that and tell him you'd like to visit him, or support him in any way.

Then it's up to him. He may be glad of the fact that you havn't turned your back on him and that you are offering to stick by him during his incarcaration.

He may not give two shits and just won't bother replying, or he may be embarrassed about his situation and appreciate you wanting to communicate with him but not feel up to face to face visits.

He's only 20 so plenty of time to turn his life around and we all make mistakes in life.

Are you in touch with his mother and father or other family?

Good luck with it, if you are a lot older than him it may benefit him to have a wiser head around him and someone to instill some positive values.

Write to him first though, it's non threatening that way and is less likely to make him feel awkward about having some cousin he doesn't even know turn up in jail to speak to him. He may not like that, so writing first and/or checking with his parents so that they ask him might be the most sensible approach.

Good luck