One Young Woman's Journey In and Out of Jail

This story is part of Kids Incarcerated, a Teen Vogue series on youth incarceration in the United States for National Youth Justice Awareness Month. Here, Isadora Kosofsky — who has been a documentary photographer since she was 14 — tells the story of a young woman named Alysia, who she started following in 2012, during her time in and out of a New Mexico youth detention facility. Images from "Alysia," which is ongoing, were part of Kosofsky's exhibition this year at the Visa Pour L'Image International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France. At 24, Kosofsky was the youngest woman ever exhibited in the festival.

When Alysia was 16 years old, the police raided her aunt’s trailer and arrested her for being under the influence of methamphetamine. It was her step dad that introduced her to meth when she was 14, after her mother was arrested and sentenced to three years in state prison for car theft. She was detained at the Juvenile Detention Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we met.

During her childhood, Alysia was shuffled between homes, often staying with her grandma, her aunt, or a friend’s house. The oldest of five siblings, Alysia helped raise her brothers and sisters, saying once that her fondest childhood memory was “watching my siblings grow up.” When she was thirteen, her biological father — who she had met for the first time six months prior — died suddenly. Around this time, Alysia says she received a phone call from her mom’s then-boyfriend, informing her that her mom was being arrested in the front lawn of his house. “The day my mom got arrested — that’s when I started f*cking up in school," she said.

Alysia completed middle school and the first month of ninth grade, but then dropped out. She doesn’t remember much from this time period, saying she was then using meth to function to “burn all the bad memories out of my brain.” She visited her mother in prison sporadically, saying, “My mom was never there for me. So I did the same to her.” After being arrested at sixteen and incarcerated in a juvenile detention center, the court ordered Alysia to a treatment center five hours from Albuquerque, where she underwent drug counseling for three months and then was placed in the foster care system.

At 17, Alysia ran away from her foster home and hitched a ride to Los Lunas, where her grandma lived. Soon after, she met Emmanuel, who became her husband a year later. Both struggling with drug use, they ended up in county jail after Alysia’s 18th birthday; a juvenile warrant had been issued after she ran away from foster care, and Alysia was ordered to complete probation even after becoming a legal adult. After completing probation twice and becoming pregnant, Alysia got married to Emmanuel and give birth to Leticia, who is now two years old. "The best part of my life was when I met my husband and we had our daughter," Alysia said.

Now 21 years old, Alysia has returned to school to finish her high school diploma. She hopes to become a nurse or radiologist after graduation. Emmanuel — who has been incarcerated 28 times — notes that “[the detention center] was practically my second home,” but has gotten a full time job as a security guard. Alysia, Emmanuel and their daughter, Leticia, reside in an area of Albuquerque called the War Zone, and spend most of their time in their apartment when not at school or work.

When asked to look back on her experiences of incarceration, Alysia says, “I hate being stuck in one place and not being able to leave. That’s what juvie was like. Even when I lived with my grandma, I was always taking off on my own.”