A jail stay as a teen led me to advocacy, but incarceration leads many to ruin

Muhammad Ali Nasir, also known by his emcee name MAN-E, the advocacy, policy and civic engagement coordinator for 1Hood and founder of Community Care & Resistance In Pittsburgh, stands outside the Allegheny County Jail on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, in Uptown. CCRIP does outreach on Tuesdays outside the jail, where Nasir served time in his youth. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

To this day, a hard knock on the door — like the one that preceded my arrest at age 16 — can floor my mother with anxiety. I work to help people coming out of incarceration so they and their families won’t be caught in a spiral.

First-person essay by Muhammad Ali Nasir for PublicSource

In the early hours of Sept. 2, 2005, my family’s sense of normalcy was interrupted by an aggressive banging on the door. I stood at the top of the stairs as my brother answered only to be pushed aside by four police officers. They pointed at me, stating I was under arrest.

My brother demanded to see a warrant, which they eventually presented after threatening to arrest him for obstruction of justice. I was allowed to put on shoes before being handcuffed, along with my nephew, and escorted into the back of a police cruiser.

It was the start of my long and challenging journey through the criminal justice system. I was just 16, wrongly accused and horribly unprepared.

Even as the county moves to reopen the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center – ostensibly to get kids out of the Allegheny County Jail – my own experience with incarceration shows that the entire approach to law enforcement of youth needs to be reexamined beyond the location of their detention.

Naive beliefs, feelings of insignificance

Two weeks after my arrest, following my release on a $3,000 cash bail, I stood in front of Pittsburgh City Council, speaking about my experience in the Allegheny County Jail.

This was solely at the urging of my mother, who had been deeply affected by my arrest and incarceration. Her anger was visible, and she made it known to everyone who would listen, from the Carnegie Police Department to the corrections officers at the jail and my public defender. She believed my story needed to be heard and that I was the best person to tell it.

Muhammad Ali Nasir at roughly 18 years old. (Courtesy of Muhammad Ali Nasir)

As I spoke before Council, I remember feeling a mix of nervousness and encouragement bolstered by the presence of my mother and aunt. However, the response was disheartening as only one council member seemed to listen attentively, while the rest and the audience ignored me completely. I felt that my experience was common enough to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

It wasn’t until 2019, when I joined the Bukit Bail Fund, that I began to see value in what I had been through, and to understand the context.

In November of 1995, the Pennsylvania Judicial Code was amended under Act 33, allowing minors accused of certain crimes, such as armed robbery, to be charged and tried as adults. This legal backdrop meant that instead of being taken to a juvenile detention center, which I had anticipated, I found myself treated as an adult instead of the child I was.

Muhammad Ali Nasir talks with people outside the Allegheny County Jail on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023. Community Care & Resistance In Pittsburgh tables Tuesdays outside the jail and provides direct aid such as cash, supplies, transportation, support, and resource navigation for unhoused individuals and those recently released from the ACJ. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)Reflecting now, I see parallels between my story and those of many young people I’ve supported over the years who have been similarly charged as adults and placed in jail. The closure of Shuman and the subsequent doubling of the juvenile population in ACJ underscore the urgency and importance of my work in advocating for these young individuals and their families.

My firsthand experience with the criminal legal system at such a young age was a rude awakening. Before that, I had held a naive belief in the fairness and justness of the law – that police required substantial evidence to charge someone, that judges were impartial, and that, according to the U.S. Constitution, one was innocent until proven guilty. However, my arrest, based solely on an accuser’s word against mine; my original bail of $25,000, which was arbitrarily set significantly higher than that of my co-defendant; and my subsequent treatment in the Allegheny County Jail quickly dispelled these beliefs.

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A jail stay as a teen led me to advocacy, but incarceration leads many to ruin

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