Taili Thompson
While incarcerated, thompson made only
a dime a day doing manual labor
By Katia Faroun and Griffin Sendek
It was a warm afternoon in the late 1980s and young Taili Thompson was in the back of a rowdy, yellow school bus on his way home from school, his thoughts on trying to balance getting his homework done and going to basketball practice. His backpack, chock-full of school supplies, sat beside him.
The bus slowed to a halt near his home on the North Side of Pittsburgh, and Thompson peeled his legs off of the sticky seat and slung his backpack over his shoulder. He hurried down the stairs to the cobblestone road of Jacksonia Street. Immediately, a group of four police officers pulled up behind him.
They slammed his face into a brick wall, and an officer patted him down and emptied his backpack on the ground. Scared and confused, Thompson could not stop wondering, “How did they not know I was a good kid?”
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Photo by Griffin Sendek
He was an honors student, the president of the student council and a winner of Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award. He thought all these accolades would prevent him from being characterized as a delinquent, but with his face shoved against the wall, Thompson realized that he was caught up in a stereotype, one that stripped him of his achievements and reduced him to a criminal.
All the way through high school, Thompson remained studious and motivated, a good kid destined for great things. But not long after high school, his life would take a turn down a path toward incarceration.
Thompson's experience at the bus stop sticks out in his memory almost 30 years later. Since then, he has spent three years in jail, received a degree in legal studies and had a child. He now works in the Office of Violence Prevention for Allegheny County. His time inside and his successful reintegration into society not only make him an expert returned citizen, but have formed him into who he has become today.
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Born on the winter solstice of 1972, Thompson spent his childhood on the North Side with his five siblings, each from different fathers, and his single mother. He had a close relationship with his mom, but the same can’t be said about his father, who really only saw him during the summers.
Growing up, his days consisted of school and basketball. He wanted to become a professional basketball player, a dream he knew he could only achieve by going to a Division I university. However, he never got a Division I offer; rather, he received an offer from Bethany College, a Division II school. Attending a Division II university was a sign of defeat for Thompson. He rejected Bethany College’s offer, and his aspirations of becoming a professional basketball player immediately dissolved.
“One day I realized I wasn’t going to bounce a basketball for income,” Thompson said. “To me, my identity was crushed. My dream was crushed.
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Thompson settled on Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, where he started to pursue a degree in business administration. It wasn’t long before he was low on money and struggling to earn more.
In Thompson's community, there were few images of successful people who earned their money and paved their way with education. Instead, he saw men making a living from selling drugs. These dealers drove nice cars and carried pockets full of cash, offering a promising symbol of stable success that a four-year degree couldn’t guarantee.
“In hindsight, it was fool’s gold, but you don’t know that at the time,” he said.
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Photo by Griffin Sendek
Thompson dropped out of college to become a full-time dealer back in Pittsburgh. He’d drive to New York over the George Washington Bridge, buy cheap drugs from dealers in low-income neighborhoods and sell them for a profit back in Pittsburgh.
One day in 1994, police pulled over Thompson and his friends and arrested them on the bridge. He was charged with drug and arms violations and sentenced to five years (later reduced to four) in Bergen County, New Jersey. From 1996 to 1999, Bergen County Jail was his new home.
During his time inside, Thompson was put to work. Throughout the week, he’d spend a few hours a day on a farm knee-deep in mud in a pig’s pen, making 10 cents a day. With those wages, he was unable to save for what he might need upon release for transportation or housing.
Thompson compared his time working to slavery, referring to the jail as “the plantation.”
“This is a business. This is an economy. I realized the slavery that it was; I realized that I was a product,” he said.
The Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Its wording, according to Thompson, does not completely eradicate slavery within the justice system, leaving it possible for individuals who have committed a crime.
“When we’re talking about fighting mass incarceration,” Thompson said, “we’re talking about something that’s directly connected to slavery, and people don’t want to have that conversation.”
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Thompson was serving time when his brother, Cheo, was murdered. There were conversations Thompson still wanted to have with him, he said, but Cheo’s life was taken away before Thompson ever got that chance.
Living through the death of his brother changed Thompson.
“I told myself when I got out that I would actually speak what I felt and what I should have spoken to him, and live my life as the role model I knew I could have been to my community,” Thompson said.
Thompson was finally released in 1999 and returned to Pittsburgh after three years of serving time in New Jersey. He had a son, Taili Jr., who he said gave him “a purpose greater than life.” The purpose he found in his son and the motivation he received from his brother’s death to become a better role model prompted him to find a new personal character, one that would make a difference in his community.
Thompson got a job working as a contractor for the Allegheny County Health Department in the Office of Violence Prevention. Here, he works toward preventing violence in the county and developing initiatives to help eradicate violence at its roots and prevent it from happening.
“The greatest chance of catching the flu is your exposure to the flu. The greatest chance of being a perpetrator or a victim of violence is your exposure of it,” Thompson said. “If you don’t have that exposure to the disease of violence, you don’t typically just want to be violent.”
Thompson aims to bring awareness of violence as a public health issue and tend to those who engage in violence.
“You end up having to value the people that you’ve devalued,” he said. “We have to give these individuals a second chance.”