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Jaylene is about to turn 16. But it's no Sweet Sixteen. She's among the tens of thousands of kids who wake up each morning incarcerated across the United States.

One thing's clear for Jaylene: she wants to break a cycle that she says also landed her uncles and her physically-abusive, alcoholic father in jail. She's due to get out in September after being booked for a drug-fueled, high-speed car chase and two hit-and-runs. It was her first time behind the wheel, she says.

Music, she says, gives her hope for a better life. "At the time of my arrest, I was very heavy on percs [percocet] and fentanyl. And my withdrawals would make me become a person that I'm not, make the evil come out of me," Jaylene tells NPR's Morning Edition host Michel Martin. "Music is my escape, you know? That's my therapy right there."

She performed spoken word as part of a group of 12 kids at the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center for a recent three-day workshop to write poems, compose melodies and play with six musicians from the Sound Impact collective. A larger group of 30 teens listened to concerts on the first day. NPR is only using their first names for privacy and security reasons.