Amanda Hall’s mother was incarcerated briefly when she was a child. Hall, now a director with the anti-mass incarceration organization Dream.org, told a committee of lawmakers in Frankfort at the time she felt an “overwhelming” sense of shame and anger.
She recalls seeing a newspaper article about her mother’s arrest on a teacher’s desk. Hall said she always felt loved by her mother despite the things she was going through, but no one offered her counseling or helped her work through her trauma.
Hall later became addicted to opioids and “things kept spiraling downward.”
“After my second son was born, I was arrested and sent to prison, and then my children had to endure the same pain that I did while I was incarcerated,” Hall said. “I missed their first steps, their first words, and my oldest son’s kindergarten graduation. It was devastating.”
Hall’s son, Jayden Spence, now a sophomore at Morehead State University, also shared the deep pain over his mother’s incarceration that haunted him for much of his life.