“There is nothing harder for a prisoner to do than reform him or herself.”
MOVING FORWARD.
Our efforts are as much for society as a whole as they are for the citizens confined. We recognize that every recidivating citizen creates at least one new victim. The yearly victimization of millions of Americans is the price we currently pay as a society for disregarding the needs of our citizens while they are confined. It is easy to be angry at criminals, but if we continue to allow our anger to justify our deliberate indifference of them, the cycle will never end; more innocent people will be victimized, and we will all suffer the losses. This is how we see the current state of confinement, and this is the motivation behind our organization to reform the justice system.
Our Founders
Invested Youth was co-founded by Colt Lundy and Miles Folsom in 2021. The story of their relationship goes back to the early 2010s in Southern Indiana. Both were Youth Incarcerated as Adults at the Wabash Valley Maximum Security Prison. They had been sentenced as juveniles to sentences within the adult department of corrections. There was a special unit for juvenile offenders there where they met.
Miles arrived at Wabash Valley Maximum Security Prison when he was 16, and Colt arrived when he was only 15. The boys had yet to conceive of how strong of a brotherhood they would grow nor of how their paths would parallel throughout their sentences.
Miles turned 18 first, and he was transferred off the juvenile unit and into general population with the rest of the adult offenders. Colt still had a couple of years before his 18th.
It took them 3 years to reunite again within the prison. Miles had been moved to one side of the institution and Colt was moved to a different side. The two renewed their bond in 2013 when both were accepted into a program unit that had its own dedicated living space. Colt and Miles lived in the same cell together for the next 2 years.
Their bond grew strong through sharing a period of mutual growth simultaneously occurring in both of their lives. They woke up every day with the deliberate intent to self-educate. From one to the other, they tore through books and climbed the 10 rungs of vocabulary.
Meanwhile, Colt and Miles also mused over retooling the correctional system they were caught in. The “10,000 Hour Rule”, often mentioned by leading motivational speaker and writer, Malcolm Gladwell, inspired them. This rule holds that if a person does something for 10,000 hours or 10 years s/he will become an expert in that thing. This idea led Colt and Miles to view their incarceral experiences in a new light; it was the catalyst to a paradigm shift. They set out to transform their time in prison through a simple investment: to study the structure and behavior of correctional institutions from the inside looking out. This experience is what led them to becoming correctional consultants with a rare authority to speak from first-hand experience on a number of topics.