A small part of him wondered if he’d have more than thirty dollars to his name if he’d just bent the rules a little. Unfortunately, he’d seen what happened to his foster brothers and sisters when they’d bent the rules. The system hadn’t had much mercy.
Foster kids didn’t have wealthy parents to hire lawyers to either get them acquitted or get them a slap on the wrist. They were unwanted, the detritus of society and without a family to speak up for them, they sometimes had harsh sentences.
Clark had overheard one social worker talking about the statistics; forty to fifty percent wouldn’t complete high school. Sixty-six percent of them would be homeless, go to jail or die within one year of leaving the foster care system at eighteen. Thirty five percent would go to jail while still in foster care.
Seventy five to eighty percent of the youthful prison population had once been in foster care.
Clark had been determined that he was going to be one of the ones to beat the odds; instead, here he was.
Very good analysis of what happens to kids in the foster care system. (I work in a school with a lot of foster kids; frequently, they're pulled out of school in the middle of the semester with no transcripts and sent away so they don't get attached to their foster parents. It's no wonder so many don't finish high school -- and it's no wonder so many get into trouble when they've never had a chance to learn how to connect with other people.)
