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| Branden Staples has made more blankets than anyone else. He's serving time for attempted murder and will be released on Thanksgiving
Day, aided in his readjustment by the Blanket Project. Mary Knox Merrill - staff   Incarcerated Crochet |
Juvenile offenders start life over with a crochet hook
At a facility in Maine, Brendan Staples and other teenagers make blankets in a program that teaches valuable skills and life lessons.
from the November 21, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
His first brush with authorities was at age 6 when he was caught rifling through a mailbox looking for checks. While he says he was an A and B student and was moved up to varsity-level football as a freshman, Branden's childhood was full of run-ins with the law: fights, marijuana, alcohol, oxycontin abuse.
Branden's description of his most troubling crime – attempted murder – is a fog of conflicting facts and emotion. He was 15 and drunk. He tackled a man he says was beating a woman; the fight escalated when the man pulled a knife and Branden either grabbed the knife or one of his own – his story changes in the telling. In the struggle, Branden stabbed the man – 29 times – and ran. "I knew I did something wrong," he says. But what most concerned him at the time, he recalls, was whether he'd get to school the next day because he didn't like to miss. The man took six months to recover, leaving Branden waiting to learn whether he'd be charged as an adult with murder, or something less.
It's difficult to discern if it's streetwise pragmatism or childish petulance that Branden displays when he says, deadpan, on the eve of his release: "I don't feel remorse.... If he hadn't been assaulting a female and pulled a knife ... then none of it would have happened." Branden admits he had a knife that night, but adds, "his was a lot bigger than mine, though."
For all that he's missed on the outside – getting a driver's license, the prom, the football team, taking care of his brothers and sisters – Branden's been a star in the Blanket Project. He's made more blankets – 25 crocheted, and hundreds more tied fleece – than anyone else. And to think, he refused to join the group for his first 18 months, saying, "This is granny knittin'; it ain't for me."
Authorities here have reason for hope for Branden – he's been exposed to all that Long Creek has to offer (education, counseling, job training, and the Blanket Project).
"He has a chance," says Reardon.
Branden's Thanksgiving Day chance is the kind every boy here longs for but that, ironically, all fear. It's safe here – a respite from the jungle. "The thing I fear most about leaving this facility is that I can't come back here," says Branden, who will go home to his sister's in Lewiston, just miles from the streets that shaped him and sent him here. "I don't want to get back out and fall into the same group. If I leave here this time and get in trouble.... I'll be guaranteed to be away a long period of time."
But Branden utters the words "I hope" a lot – about everything from his dream of being a Fortune 500 CEO to being able to make his stuffed mushroom specialty for his family on Thanksgiving. The hopes that still survive in a boy already incarcerated for a quarter of his life are something Branden can be thankful for.
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