Dionntai Holyfield is a 2026 graduate of Wheaton College, where he studied Psychology and Anthropology. He graduated summa cum laude and was the 2026 recipient of the J. Richard Chase Award of Merit. At the age of 16, Dionntai was convicted of a felony and tried as an adult, receiving an 18-year sentence in Ohio. He was released two years early in 2022 at the age of 31.
Naomi Thompson, a sophomore Urban Studies major at Wheaton College, leads a ministry at a local juvenile detention facility. She sat down with Dionntai to hear his story.
This is Part 2 of a two-part interview that was conducted on April 22, 2026.
There is currently a bill in Washington, D.C. that would lower the age at which individuals can be tried as adults from 16 to 14. Legislation passed in D.C. often influences policy in other parts of the country. What do you think the effects of this change would be?
Instead of pouring money into more prisons, government needs to pour money into communities.
By “pouring money into,” I mean the way you zone schools, how you fund education, after-school programs, and paying teachers better. All of these things that money can go into, but doesn’t, because building prisons has become more lucrative.
You have to remember that people get released. You put a child into prison during their most formative years, surround them with the worst influences imaginable, and more often than not, they come out more traumatized than when they went in. They usually don’t come out like me.
When I first got out, even I had PTSD. There were things that I did not know that I was gonna deal with.
It’s always easier to put someone else’s kid in prison. But if it were their kid who committed a crime, most people would see things very differently. When it’s somebody else’s kids, they’re labeled as animals who need to learn a lesson. When it’s yours, they’re a child who made a mistake.
Like I said, pour money into communities, man, not into prisons, because people aren’t coming out better. Locking people up doesn’t reduce recidivism. Especially because when you lock people up, there’s usually no treatment. You dehumanize them, tell them they’re nothing, and take advantage of their families through exploitative prison service companies. And then you release them again, and wonder why they come out with so much animosity. You put someone through all of that and expect them to come out better?
People who go to prison without having committed crimes also often come out worse. Correctional officers have some of the highest rates of suicide and alcoholism of any profession, because it’s such a toxic environment.
It’s depressing, man. This just doesn’t feel right in 2026. I’m a psychology major. You cannot find one peer-reviewed journal article that will say it is beneficial to incarcerate a teenager or child. Research says it is 100% detrimental. These are the most formative years of a child’s life.
When people say, “they need to go to prison,” what they don’t take into account is that 98% of people who go to prison are eventually released. And so lock-them-up-throw-away-the-key doesn’t really exist. I’m coming back, and how you treat me in prison is gonna really make a difference. I’m coming back to your community—I could be your neighbor, your coworker, your kid’s classmate at Wheaton College.
You know how many times I’ve run into COs (correctional officers) since getting out? And the COs who treated you and everybody nice are like, “Hey, I heard you’re doing so good, kid. I’m so proud of you, man. I always knew you were good, you had your head on straight.” But the ones who were crappy? They see you, they run the other way.
People get out of prison, so why don’t we support and invest in people, and not just throw them away and say we’ll worry about that 10 years from now?
I was reading some of the House proceeding on this bill, and here’s a quote: “This legislation lowers the age for transfer to adult court from 16 to 14 for the most heinous crimes, murder, first-degree sexual assault, armed robbery, and burglary.” They were trying to basically say, “It’s fine, because it’s only for the worst crimes.” How would you respond to that?
I would say a kid is still a kid. But also—burglary?
[laughing] Yeah, armed robbery and burglary. I did not notice that earlier.
You really put armed robbery and burglary on the same level as murder? This really shows you there is a specific demographic. Like… who is committing armed robberies? I know who’s committing armed robberies—young men from poor communities, mostly Black. Most of the dudes I knew in the juvenile block, man, from the big cities, their thing was armed robbery. Putting burglary on the same level as murder is not a public safety argument.
So this is in Washington D.C.?
Yeah. So it would be for Washington, DC. But the concern is that these policies passed in Washington D.C. often set the standard for the rest of the country.
This isn’t just a D.C. problem. Ohio already has a minimum age of 15 for adult prosecution. Some states have no minimum age at all, meaning a child of any age could theoretically be tried as an adult. I looked it up. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, as of 2026, more than 20 states have no minimum age specified in their statutes for prosecuting children as adults, including Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, among others. The D.C. CRIMES Act would move the country further in that direction, not away from it.
As a Christian, how do you think we should engage with these issues of juvenile justice, both on a legislative scale and on a personal level?
The Bible calls us to fight for the downtrodden and poor. These laws are made for poor kids, for the most part. Scripture calls us to protect those who can’t protect themselves, the orphan, the fatherless… How many of these kids don’t have fathers? How many, like me, grew up in foster care? And instead, the system can sometimes take advantage of them in many ways that are very hard to fight back against. I’ll be honest. I am frustrated with Christians right now. I love the church. I love people. Scripture calls us to love people, and I do think some Christians are really doing that work.
But so many times with juvenile justice, it feels like, “I only care about kids who go to prison.” And I’m like—you know people don’t stay the same age, right? A lot of those guys who are in prison, were those kids who were in prison. That 45-year-old guy who has been in prison for 30 years was that 15-year-old juvenile justice case. You don’t see him that way because he’s old now. That has to change.
A juvenile justice Christian effort shouldn’t just focus on the kid. But it also shouldn’t just focus on the individual. You have to engage the system. It’s in the way you vote, it’s in the way our government treats incarcerated people.
I wish we were more like Halden Prison in Norway, which has one of the lowest recidivism rates because they don’t dehumanize people when they arrive. First and foremost, the most time I think a person can serve there is 21 years. Americans hear that and say it’s not enough. People in Norway are like, “Justice has been served. They got 21 years. They did the crime, they did the time.”
Our obsession with more time, harsher conditions, and longer sentences is a reflection of the hearts of the citizens. People allow these things to happen, and I think that’s the hardest part. People always want to blame the system, but the system is made up of people who are selected.
I just want to see Christians be better. Inform yourselves. Don’t just be on the bandwagon. I need you to care with your mind and with research. And demand that when a young person is incarcerated, it looks 100% different from what it would look like for an incarcerated adult. It needs to be the best education available. And as soon as they hit the doors, the goal should be to get you out of here doing great, with therapy, with love. Let’s send you back out there loved and not abused.
Organizations like CPJ, people doing juvenile justice ministry—the key is to not stop. Keep going. Keep advocating. Keep showing up. Because these young people need to know that someone believes their life is worth investing in. I needed to know that. And I’m still here because some people did.
This is Part 2 of a two-part interview. In Part 1, Dionntai shared his story from foster care to prison to Wheaton College. You can find it here.
Graphic by Center for Public Justice / Source Photo by Pgiam from Getty Images Signature, accessed with Canva Pro.
