A New Deal

摘要

Sam amaya was six years old when he first pulled a gun on another person-his father, who was beating his mother. At eight he would produce the gun when he wanted his sister to change the channel from a soap opera to a cartoon. At 13, after a fight with his father, he fled from his house to his school's playground, where some members of the Two-Six gang were meeting. He was initiated later that afternoon. He began running drugs as a teenager, picking up consignments of marijuana and cocaine near the border with Mexico and selling them around Texas.rnWith such a background, it is perhaps not surprising that Mr Amaya was arrested after pistol-whipping a girlfriend and is today, at 28, about to finish a long sentence for aggravated assault. Statistics would suggest that he will be back before too long: according to the Pew Centre on the States, more than half of released offenders return to prison within three years, and Texas has the country's highest rate of incarceration. In fact, Mr Amaya's future should be more cheerful than those numbers suggest.