Featured Story - Time for a Right Turn

Renard Taylor Wright spent his teen years in and out of a lot of these places. He ditched school, embraced trouble, and, by age 16, had acquired a juvenile police record. “I was reckless and I didn’t care about nothing,” he said. “I was putting my life on the line.” As a student at Olive-Harvey Middle College, an alternative high school, he struggled with attendance and behavior, and was almost kicked out. Where did he go when he was facing expulsion from his alternative high school? “I was in these streets,” he said. Then, Lawrence Hall stepped into Renard’s life and helped him see that he didn’t have to hold onto street life anymore. He enrolled in Right Turn, Lawrence Hall’s career-focused, mentoring, and recidivism-reduction initiative that was launched in March 2016. The program exclusively serves young people, ages 14 to 24, years old, who have been involved with Cook County’s juvenile justice system.