That's a Real Dysfunctional Family.

Valerie Chang
November 8th, 2012

     I have never heard of a real life event where a family commits crimes together until today. A father and a son were sentenced to prison for "attempted bank robbery, armed commercial robbery, and using and carrying firearms during crimes of violence." The father was not only charged with robbing a single bank, but a series of them and was therefore sentenced 50 years and 8 months of prison. His son was given a less harsh sentence of 16 years and 2 months, but here's the catch: the son, Jackson, did all this so that his father would accept him. I can't even imagine being in a relationship where the means for acceptance are felonies. 
     Jackson claims that his father, Durham, had asked him twice before to join him, but Jackson refused. It wasn't until one day, when he felt that his relationship with his father had to be saved, that he decided to do the deed. But the father was involved in other scandals such as previously serving 8 years in prison for possessing a firearm. I would like to think that Durham would have learned to stop committing crimes-both misdemeanors and felonies-but he didn't. He ended moving up the levels with smuggling items and the obvious bank robbing. 
    But Jackson wasn't as innocent as he claimed to be. He had already participated in a robbery of a sandwich shop where a man was shot. His stories were becoming more and more unreliable. The truth is, as much as everyone wants to pin the blame on the father, I still say that Jackson had a choice. He made the decision to join his father and he had already participated in a robbery. Although we want to believe that he was just following his father's footsteps and trying to gain his acceptance, we need to open our eyes and see that there is always a choice in everything and Jackson made the wrong one.