Make Good Choices Program

Click here to see Gang Prevention Flyer

Make Good Choices continues to be one of the Crime Commission’s most effective programs. Conceived and developed by the late Jerry Hoggatt, Commission Past President, as an awareness program to gain the attention of young people while encouraging them to consider the consequences of their choices. Over the years, the Make Good Choices committee has designed and produced a number of important messages which are displayed throughout all schools in Sedgwick County. 

The Commission continues to work closely with Wichita Police high school School Resource Officers to sponsor bus trips for selected students to tour Kansas Correctional Facilities at Hutchinson and El Dorado. The cost of transportation for the students is paid from the Make Good Choices budget with their lunches generously provided by QuikTrip Corporation. This exceptional program provides selected students with an opportunity to hear from prison inmates how making bad choices damaged their lives. The Wichita Crime Commission Make Good Choices golf tournament along with contributions received from many members underwrites the cost of the Make Good Choices Program.

Below you can read an actual letter received from one of the high school students who visited a nearby prision in March 2011.

Dear Inmates,

 

Thank you guys for telling me all your stories, a lot of them got to me because there so similar to my life right now. I to, am going through the system, only being 15. I have done a Jot wrong in my life and plan to do more wrong, not because I want to but because it s a part of life. Listening to everyone's stories helped me to know that I'm not the only one who makes mistakes. I always feel so alone going through the stuff I go through because my "so called homies"  are never there when I'm down locked up or getting into trouble. It seems the people who claim to be this and that  with you really aren't  your true homies there  only there when it's convenient for them, when they get something out of it. This last time I got arrested for possession at school (second possession charge) they were going to send me to the Boys Ranch but the court gave me intensive supervision progration and extended it to 3 more months and for me to serve a sanction over spring break starting this Friday March, 18th.  I'll be in there until Friday March 25 and I'll be the first to tell you jail is not where it's at.  I've spend an overall time of a year in there since i first got arrested.  All kinds of other kids I know get arrested and go to J.I.A.C. (Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center) and think there hard and what not just because they been there.  When half of those kids never go to J.D.F (Juvenile Detention Facility), which is where I'll be over spring break, and that place is really not where anyone wants to be. One of the things that got to me the most is when one of your stories ta lked about how school doesn't  mean anything, this and that,that's exactly how I have been feeling about school.  I feel it's so pointless sometimes but now I see why it's important.  The last time i got arrested I decided to make a change in my life and so far have kept with the change.  But thanks again for all of your stories today, it really helped me a lot.  

 

 Sincerely, D.

 p.s the kid with all the tats on his arms and hands.