-----MDOC Number: 149027
------SID Number: 8D76TF37
------Cell Number: 17
------Name: Benson, Alayna Elodie
------Aliases: N/A
------Racial Identification: Caucasian
------Gender: Female
------Hometown: Richmond, VA
------Hair: Brown
------Eyes: Blue
------Height: 5'9
------Weight: 145
------DOB: 09/27/2000 16
Crime Description
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; a lesson that Alayna learned the hard way. It was her and a couple of other kids, born into poverty with shit parents who wanted to better themselves. Alayna had always been a good kid, but when you're hungry and your mom has spent all of the money you made for rent on drugs...the line that separates good and bad becomes a little blurred.
The night after she found out her mom wouldn't make rent and they would be evicted, Alayna was desperate and venting to her friends, desperately trying to come up with an idea to make money fast. A lot of unsavory things had come up; prostitution, selling whatever drugs her mom hadn't used, but none of the ideas would get her enough money. Her friends, Jamie and Carter, were poor too, struggling to get enough money to eat every day. Then one of them, not Alayna, came up with the idea to pull off a simple robbery on one of their rich classmates homes. It was summer and the family was usually in Europe or on some other lavish vacation. They were bound to have something in there worth something.
So the trio put together a plan and off they went. Jamie are Carter were the ones that were going to break in, Alayna would keep watch by the front door. Everything was going smoothly; no alarms, the window in the front had broken relatively easily, all the neighbors houses were dark like they had been asleep. What they didn't account for was their housekeeper, who had come back after forgetting her cell phone earlier in the day and who had heard them break in, hiding in the closet. The second they heard sirens, Jamie and Carter ran. Alayna had been caught by the housekeeper, who was far bigger than her.
Because she wouldn't give up her friends, knowing that they had siblings to support, they judge decided to make an example of her; it didn't help that she had had multiple charges of shoplifting. She ended up getting a full 12 months in a juvenile detention center.
Background
It wasn't until Alayna went into kindergarten that things got bad again. Amelia relapsed, far worse than she was before, but somehow able to function enough to keep it a secret from most people. Alayna would come home from school, see her mom passed out on the couch with a needle still dangling from a vein. She wondered what was wrong with her mommy, and when she asked she was only met with the answer "Mommy's just not feeling well and needs her medicine." Eventually, Amelia lost her job and the apartment. For years they would jump from couch to couch, from sleazy boyfriend's house to even sleazier boyfriend's house.
When Alayna turned fourteen, she managed to get an after school job and worked all hours of the night so that her and her mom could afford a small apartment. Despite all the bullshit, her mom was still her favorite person and the only one in the world that she loved, and because of that she worked hard. There were nights, when working under the table, that she wouldn't get off until an hour before she had to go to school, but she did it with a smile on her face and hope in her heart that one day her mom would get help.
It wasn't until money started going missing and she was no longer able to afford her rent, that Alayna began to look at her mom in a different light. Before she was just sick, but now she was thief stealing from her daughter who was only trying to provide for her. For a few months, Alayna was able to pick up more shifts and make ends meet, but eventually it go to be too much and she fell behind on payments. Her solution was to cut corners on food, steal it when she had to (something she had gotten caught for multiple times), and whatever money she had she hid.
It was a hard life, being a parent to a parent, and she began to resent the mom she once adored so much, but she still had to survive. So she did what she had to do and it landed her in a cell.
Personality
Still, Alayna does suffer from depression and anxiety, which is only increased by the amount of stress put on her. She often can become irritable and is always exhausted. While she'll try extremely hard to push herself to be the fun, extroverted girl she was before, sometimes the effort is futile and she'll end up having a nervous breakdown instead. Not only that, but but her anxiety has caused her to react rashly: fight or flight, which is what got her into trouble in the first place. When she feels knocked into a corner and she's panicking, she has a hard time making any decision at all and even something that seems plainly stupid might seem genius. If she robs a house and gets a couple hundred dollars worth of loot...well she won't have to panic because rent will be paid, right? Nevermind the fact that if she gets caught she screwed, and she did get caught.
Now that she's in prison, she's doing the best she can to keep to herself and stay out of trouble. If she's well behaved and lays low, she might be able to get out on good behavior long before her year is up. She's been focusing on her school work and it looks like she may graduate before she gets out, she's also been on medication for her mental health issues which has helped immensely and slowly she's beginning to feel normal. Still, she worries about her mother and she hasn't been in contact with her since being arrested, which hasn't helped her anxiety even with the medication.