Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/christmas-in-prison/)
Erin Dale, a probation officer in Cobb County, Georgia’s juvenile drug court, has never come across a kid who started using marijuna as young as Zach Dykes. “Seven years old,” Dale said. “Pre-teen, like 11 or 12, is the earliest I’d seen before Zach.”
Zach, 17, is currently in the Cobb County, Ga. Juvenile drug court program. Up until this April, the Hillgrove High School senior had smoked marijuana on and off – mostly on – since he was 7.
No one is 100 percent sure what Christmas in the Dykes’ house will be like this year. But Zach Dykes, 17, a senior at metro Atlanta’s Hillgrove High School, is pretty sure it’ll be better than last year’s. It almost has to be. Zach was in the Cobb County Youth Detention Center on drug charges until Christmas Eve last year. His older brother, Robbie, 23, was in prison, serving an 18-month prison sentence on a drug conviction.
Christmas was usually a good time for me, when I was in prison. One of the nicest things was getting packages from home. My mom, sister, or someone else would be able to send me a cake, candy, nuts and other goodies I couldn’t get during the rest of the year. Besides these packages we would also usually get a “Happy Sack” from the authorities. These would be grocery bags filled with various things that came from the inmate store and from donations.