Album Notes

If this one young woman’s story moves you, consider how many thousands of young children might be helped if we opened our hearts to different ways of nurturing them when they needed us. You can make a ripple – you can be a child advocate, you can vote your conscience, you can speak up…

Stats are from August 9 2009 NY Times article “Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System,” by Solomon Moore which can be found online.

REF) Rough justice, and we can do better
Rough justice...its the spirit not the letter
Rough justice, children learn what they live
We must have something better to give

Well a girl needs options before it gets rough…
Somewhere to turn when the going gets tough.
What do we offer that's not streets, jail or prison,
Is it a school or asylum we're missin'?

Meds kept her mind up, from those bad places
...all those black eyes, bloody faces...
It was still hard, but it kept the hardest memories at bay
'til the warden - cold turkey - just took it away

REF) Rough justice, and we can do better ...

Yea, the one who beat & raped now is dead…
she did it... and wishes sometimes he killed her instead
Hard time's a lifetime, sleep’s like a friend
waitin' for a dream to come free her again

REF) Rough justice, and we can do better ...

Who wins and who loses when we make these deals
swapping meds cold turkey… who cares how it feels
slavery wages making bras for a dime?
She’s stopped growing up, now she's just doing time.

REF) Rough justice, and we can do better ...

Ten thousand juvies per mental health pro...
Two thirds have problems... or didn’t you know?
compassion is out, incarceration is in
an industrial complex, an obsession with sin...

REF) Rough justice, and we can do better ...

She’ll pay the cost - 18 years
She’ll pay the cost in cold angry tears
Good Lord loves you, locked away there
Even when you think nobody, nobody cares…we care oh yeah

REF) Rough justice, and we can do better ...